Nucko (Caleb) — “The Button Thief”
Also known as: Nucco, “Jaro Guap” (heist alias — a terrible one, everyone saw through it immediately), Wayfarer, Buttons McGuap (unofficial, but earned) Status: Alive. Statistically, this should not be true. Party Status: Departed. No longer traveling with the party — see The Departure. Age: Mid-30s. Nobody, including him, has ever pinned down an exact number. Affiliation: The Ghostbloods (deep-cover operative, now rogue and hunted; RSVP status: complicated) Spren: Masken Companion: Pip, a sentient doll who has seen things and silently judges you for asking Parents: Tovin & Marla — believed, for most of his life, to be Herdazian dock workers. Actually Scadrian off-worlders and Ghostbloods. See Origin.
Overview
Somewhere on this storm-battered rock, a man tested a prison door that wasn’t locked, immediately tripped the one tripwire in the room, and kicked off a four-priest firefight before anyone had finished waking up. That man was Nucko. This wiki entry exists because he survived that morning, and also every catastrophe since — including the discovery, well into adulthood, that the organization that raised him and the organization that orphaned him were, technically, the same organization. It also exists because, after losing two of the people closest to him, he decided the story was done being about the party and started being about something else. See The Departure for that part.
Officially: a master of Illumination and Transformation, capable of bending light into illusions and soulcasting solid matter into something more convenient — usually water, occasionally a diversion, once, memorably, an entire museum’s worth of alarm fabrials. Unofficially: a button-obsessed international criminal who also happened to be one of the most dangerous Radiants in the party, in between charming Ardents over shared appreciation of antique fasteners and lying to absolutely everyone, including — until fairly recently — the rest of the party.
FILED UNDER CLASSIFIED, THEN LOUDLY DECLASSIFIED: Nucko has been a fully initiated Ghostblood for most of his life and a double agent for a meaningful chunk of it, before announcing all of it mid-campaign — at which point several people quietly re-ran every conversation they’d ever had with him. Swore a binding blood oath with Kael on the spot afterward: any future deception would be a death sentence. Grimly, the oath never got tested — Kael died before it could be.
Origin
Nucko grew up in Herdaz believing his parents, Tovin and Marla, were exactly what they appeared to be: dock laborers and fishmongers, proud, poor, and fiercely protective of their only child. When he was five, he snuck out to play after they’d fallen asleep and forgot to blow out a candle on his way out. A breeze did the rest. The house burned; Tovin and Marla didn’t make it out. Nucko did. He has disliked open flame ever since and lights his way almost exclusively with spheres — meaning the man who spent his childhood believing he’d burned his own parents alive now makes his living stealing the very light sources he depends on. He has never found this as funny as everyone who hears the story does.
Orphaned and homeless at five, Nucko learned fast that grief doesn’t feed anyone. He stole fruit, then coins, then whole purses off drunk dockhands, and was self-taught in lockpicking, shadowing marks, and knowing exactly when to disappear well before anyone was checking in on him. At thirteen, breaking into a seamstress’s house hunting for smuggled gemstones, he found a jar of buttons instead — and stole them anyway, because apparently this was always going to be his whole personality. Caught before he could fence them, he was dragged back to the seamstress, who laughed rather than pressed charges. The nickname stuck, and he leaned all the way into it: one button sewn onto his coat for every city, every job, every close call, until the coat became less a garment and more a scrapbook that occasionally deflects a knife.
Somewhere in those years on the street — the timeline is his and nobody’s pinned it down more precisely than that — the Ghostbloods found him. And instead of doing whatever a lesser organization does with a homeless child who’s already a better thief than most adults, they adopted him. For the rest of his life, as it turned out.
What he didn’t know, for a very long time: Tovin and Marla weren’t Herdazian dock workers. They were Scadrian off-worlders and Ghostbloods themselves, living deep undercover — and the fire that killed them wasn’t the accident five-year-old Nucko spent his whole life blaming himself for. They were assassinated, by other Ghostbloods. Jernah, Halidar, and Melania were responsible; Jernah has since been spared, the other two are still at large — and, as of The Departure, are now being actively hunted. Nucko learned all of this as an adult, long after the same organization that killed his birth parents had already raised him as one of their own. He knows, logically, the candle wasn’t the reason. It hasn’t made much difference to how he feels about candles. It’s made considerably more difference to how he feels about the Ghostbloods.
He has, at least once, talked it through with Masken rather than just carrying it — a rare quiet moment about fire and what it would actually take to stop flinching from it. Progress, allegedly, was being made.
Ongoing and unresolved: for a stretch, Nucko kept seeing something at the edge of his vision — there when he looked, gone the instant he rubbed his eyes and looked again. It spooked him out of at least one heist. He assumed it was his eyesight failing, which would have been refreshingly mundane, except he’d personally stolen from every Eyesmith in the city at some point in his career, so getting it checked was never on the table. Whether this connects to anything is still, as far as this wiki knows, unresolved. See also: Open Threads.
★ The Lia Job: A Case Study in How Nucko Does Business
If you want to understand Nucko in one story, this is the one.
It starts with reconnaissance. Disguised via Illumination as an entirely different person — Jaro, a real member of the party’s orbit, who at no point consented to any of this — Nucko and a similarly-disguised Theren (posing as a Vedenar muffin baker) walked straight into the Kharbranth Button Museum. Nucko’s “wildest button dreams came true”: the place was wall-to-wall rare buttons, crowned by a set of four flawless emerald buttons rumored to belong to Jezrien himself, Herald of Kings. He also met Lia, a museum Ardent of the Devotery of Sincerity — a sect built on questioning everything, which is a genuinely rough place to fall for a man who is lying about literally every fact of his own existence. They hit it off. Hard. The table rolled multiple natural 20s watching it happen. By the end of the tour, still wearing Jaro’s face, Nucko had talked Lia into walking him through the museum’s entire security setup and handing him an actual key, with a private “date” already scheduled for later that week.
The date arrived. Nucko (“Jaro Guap”) and Theren (“Guap”) showed up for what Lia thought was a romantic evening. She had other plans — leading Nucko back to the factory floor, to a bed covered in buttons, and asking him to “take her” right then. Nucko panicked. His solution was to convince her to drink a cup of spiked wine, tell her that “Gwap” needed him urgently and he’d be right back, and then simply leave her there. The guard she’d brought along as an escort got the same spiked-wine treatment from Theren, by force, until he passed out. With both of them handled, Nucko let himself back into the museum proper, and he and Theren got to work: draining all five alarm fabrials dry, soulcasting the display dome over Jezrien’s coat into water, and walking out with the actual Button of Jezrien — a flawless, non-leaking gemstone artifact — an entire historical gown, and roughly two hundred additional buttons worth over 5,000 marks. Theren, wanting to test his newly awakened Division Surge, set the whole museum on fire on the way out. Nucko did not object.
The epilogue is the part that actually earns this a place on the wiki. The next morning, back at the Glyphpool, Theren and Nucko came downstairs to find the real Jaro — the actual, unmodified person whose face Nucko had been borrowing this entire time — sitting with Lia, who was under the entirely sincere impression that she’d spent the last week falling for him. Jaro had no idea what any of this was about and was, reasonably, confused about how a relationship had apparently developed without his input. He shrugged, rolled with it, and took her upstairs anyway. Nobody ever told Lia the truth. This wiki isn’t going to be the one to do it either.
Key Moments — Now With Considerably More Evidence
More Cons & Petty Crime
- Session 1, minute three: found the cell door unlocked, tripped the tripwire anyway. Still the single most accurate data point on this entire page about how Nucko operates.
- The duel nobody won: a mutual pickpocketing standoff with Jaro over a stolen button, called a tie. Possibly the most honorable moment in the entire campaign.
- The Button Blunder: aborted a heist at Sensible Curiosities after soulcasting a window into water and immediately spotting a hidden alarm fabrial he definitely should have checked for first. Torin flatly refused to cut a hole in the wall with his Shardblade “for something so trivial.” The shop survived. Barely. This entire heist happened because a shopkeeper doubted Nucko’s button knowledge, and Nucko took it as a personal insult worth committing a felony over.
- The Cremling Races: while the rest of the crew bet chips on racing cremlings (Tiny won on a Sebarial-backed 200-chip long shot; Nucko cleared 40 chips off it himself), he quietly ran a full pickpocket operation through the crowd — lifted marks off Young Jebber, pulled a pair of ladies’ underwear out of Old Jebber’s pocket for reasons nobody has ever explained, and stole a sphere off Old Young Jebber just to try handing it to someone else. Petty theft as performance art.
- The Gold Tooth Incident: Sebarial’s mother’s gold tooth went missing and Nucko was immediately and correctly the prime suspect — he was sweating through the entire interrogation. He was actually innocent this once; Flick the ferret had it and dropped it in the ocean. Torin’s natural 20 deception check covered for him completely, prompting Sebarial to call him “the innocence of an honest man” to his face. Sebarial promised to be “following up.” He was right to be suspicious on principle.
- The Terror of Stubby: after Kael finished terrorizing a sixteen-year-old shopkeeper into becoming a permanent informant, Nucko capped off the scene by pickpocketing the kid’s single, solitary remaining mark. There was no reason to. That’s rather the point.
- Operation Defend Kilna, Side Quest — Looting Under Fire: with forty-five minutes to prepare a city for an incoming army, Nucko’s contribution was breaking into the deposed city lord’s house, finding a hidden floorboard with a healing fabrial in it, collecting on a bribe he was owed, and then stealing a horse off the street — badly, on the first attempt, before figuring out how a saddle works well enough to ride off into a coming battle. Priorities.
The Chaos, Purely Uncut
- Mid-escape from a burning warehouse he’d helped set on fire, sprinted back into the danger zone because he suddenly needed chouta, and got it, on the strength of shouting “the chulls are beautiful this time of year!” at a visibly traumatized food vendor.
- Extorted a nineteen-year-old girl for payment in exchange for freeing her captured father. She stabbed him for it. Ravan pulled the knife back out. This is, somehow, filed under “downtime.”
- Attempted to case a grieving shopkeeper’s store for a burglary literally minutes after the party discovered a warehouse full of murdered parshmen down the street. Rolled a natural 1. Got threatened with the city guard. Fully earned.
- Threw Kael under the bus in an official party debate over “worst cook in the group,” on the logic that the strongest fighter definitely can’t cook. No supporting evidence offered, none needed.
- Picked Gavlin as his arm-wrestling target specifically because Gavlin’s Strength score is zero. Arguably the most sound tactical decision Nucko has ever made.
- Tackled and grappled Ravan mid-conversation for reasons that made sense to Nucko alone, ending what the record describes as “their quick best friendship.” They got over it.
- The Ominous Roll: rolled an unexplained flat 16 on the GM’s whiteboard for reasons that were deliberately kept secret from the table for a full week. Nobody has ever fully clarified what it was for. This wiki suspects it is connected to the thing he kept seeing out of the corner of his eye. This wiki cannot prove that.
Combat, Occasionally Successful
- Got absolutely flattened by a whitespine — critical hit, tusk embedded in his bicep, knocked unconscious before he could get a word in — then came back later in the same fight arc to finish an 800-pound whitespine off by turning it into solid stone. Not always the hero. Usually still gets the kill.
- Broke out of a battlefield grapple mid-fight and soulcast his own attacker into liquid blood, on-screen, to demoralize the surrounding troops, then reclaimed the stolen gemstones from what used to be the guy.
- Lost his own doll, Pip, to an enemy soldier who intercepted 7,000 of his marks and punted the doll thirty feet across the battlefield. Dblar tackled the grunt to break the grapple; Nucko drew a stolen sword, finished the soldier off, then dropped a second enemy commander to half health with a raw Soulcasting burst. Pip was recovered. Pip has opinions about this. Pip’s opinions were not solicited.
- Passed a critical Thievery check to relieve the campaign’s nearly unkillable final boss of the one weapon that could actually hurt him — mid-fight, while said boss was actively trying to murder everyone. Sebarial was immune to physical damage, standard injury, and Soulcasting. He was not immune to pickpocketing.
- Executed a captured Ghostblood spy alongside Torin in a synchronized flurry, then soulcast the entire corpse into clean air, leaving nothing for anyone to find. Efficient. Deeply unsettling. On brand.
- Used Illumination to disguise himself and Torin as dark-eyed during the Kilna uprising, purely to survive a city where his own oaths and the party’s politics were pulling in opposite directions. One of the rare moments his gift for lying was used for something other than buttons.
The Reckonings
- Interrogated Jernah — one of the three Ghostbloods responsible for his real parents’ deaths — with a brutal Intimidation check until he broke and confessed everything. Spared his life anyway, with a warning that the mercy would not repeat.
- Discovered that Blue, a prisoner being held aboard Sebarial’s ship, was actually Vesper (Blue) — his handler, contact, and romantic interest — who’d let herself get captured on purpose just to smuggle Pip back to him.
- Pitched Mraize on forging a fake copy of The Book of the Returned to feed Sebarial false intel on the location of Odium’s Perpendicularity, misdirecting him toward the mountains of Shinovar instead of the real site on the Shattered Plains. Got officially promoted within the Ghostbloods for it, advanced 2,000 marks, and used the moment to extract a promise: help finding the two remaining people who killed his parents.
- Confessed, unprompted, to the entire party that he’d been a lifelong Ghostblood double agent — landing on top of the earlier reveal about his actual parentage and the organization that raised him. Somehow survived both conversations. Swore the blood oath with Kael immediately after.
- Killed Sebarial — drove the stolen Raysium dagger into the demigod’s chest himself, trapping his cognitive shadow inside its gemstone for good, and closing out the campaign’s central antagonist. The guy who tripped over a tripwire in Session 1 personally ended the final boss. That dagger comes back up. See The Departure.
The Losses
- Stood over Theren’s body after the battle that killed him, holding his own reclaimed shardblade, and — when the party met Torin for the first time that same night — offered him Theren’s family blade outright. Torin initially refused it, calling it a symbol of his family’s corruption, before accepting it to keep it out of worse hands.
- Sat with Torin at Theren’s side when his body was brought aboard days later, before it was posed and turned permanently to stone by Soulcasting. The wiki doesn’t have a joke for this one.
- Fought through the battle that killed Kael and ended Sebarial in the same breath — the blood oath between them never got tested, because there was no more time left for Kael to break it.
The Departure
Two friends is apparently the number it took. After Theren and Kael, something in Nucko didn’t so much break as finally admit it had already broken a while ago. Whatever version of “part of the team” he’d been playing at, it stopped being enough — not because the party failed him, but because the list of things he still needed to do had gotten longer than the list of reasons to stay. Halidar and Melania are still out there. The Ghostbloods are still standing. Nucko decided he was done waiting for someone else’s quest to make room for his.
He didn’t vanish in the night, which is more consideration than a man with his track record generally gets credit for. He sat down with Torin, Gavlin, and Ravan and said an actual goodbye — the real kind, not a disguise-and-vanish job. Before he left, he handed Gavlin the Raysium dagger: the same blade he drove into Sebarial’s chest himself, still holding the demigod’s trapped cognitive shadow inside its gemstone. Whatever that thing is worth, and whatever it’s still capable of, Nucko decided it belonged with Gavlin instead of in the pocket of a man about to go pick fights with his old organization.
Then he walked off down the road with Vesper (Blue), toward a fight the rest of the party isn’t part of anymore: hunting down the people who killed his parents, and building something of his own strong enough to take the Ghostbloods apart from the outside.
The button coat goes with him. Obviously.
Relationships
- Tovin & Marla — his birth parents, and the reason he doesn’t like fire. Everything he believed about them growing up was sincere; not all of it was accurate.
- The Ghostbloods — took him in off the street as a child and raised him. Also, through other members entirely, responsible for his parents’ deaths. Now the organization he’s actively trying to dismantle.
- Theren (deceased) — former Ghostblood partner, closest friend, mutual enabler of arson. Died in battle; Nucko was the one left holding both their blades afterward.
- Kael (deceased) — blood-oath bound; trust rebuilt just in time to lose him in the fight that also ended Sebarial. His and Theren’s deaths are the reason Nucko left.
- Ravan — party’s other resident hothead; the two have grappled each other at least once purely out of principle. One of the three Nucko sat down with to say goodbye.
- Torin — reliable in a fight, correctly refuses to use his Shardblade for button heists, carries Theren’s family blade because Nucko handed it to him. One of the three Nucko sat down with to say goodbye.
- Gavlin — now holds the Raysium dagger that killed Sebarial, handed over personally by Nucko on his way out. One of the three Nucko sat down with to say goodbye.
- Vesper (Blue) — Ghostblood contact and romantic interest; now traveling with Nucko as he hunts his parents’ killers and works to bring the Ghostbloods down.
- Jernah, Halidar, and Melania — his parents’ killers. Jernah spared. Halidar and Melania still at large — and, as of his departure, actively being hunted.
- Lia — a Kharbranth Ardent who, as far as she knows, briefly dated a thief named Jaro. She does not know it was Nucko. Nobody has corrected her.