Koss

Role

One of Scur’s two spear-carrying escorts on the river expedition

Koss is the larger of Scur’s two escorts, and takes point on the march upriver, testing the ground ahead of the party with a professional caution Brink specifically admires. Koss is the first to approach the tormented, corrupted figure freed from the refinery’s machinery, reaching out with a rapid sequence of clicks and whines rather than a raised spear, an attempt at communication that is met with violence.

Koss is thrown into the refinery wall and gravely wounded by flying glass in the fight that follows, and dies, briefly, before Brink’s improvised application of “the practice” revives them. Brink spends a careful, steady stretch of Chapter Five picking dozens of glass fragments out of Koss’s face, neck, and shoulder by hand.

Koss recovers fully by the end of Chapter Five, walking point again on the journey home with what Brink describes as reassuring, confident steadiness.