Professor Ethox Stripes, The Keeper of Forgotten Names
The Gentleman Who Remembers
As told by Alyss Blackwell
Professor Ethox Stripes has a habit of saying the most extraordinary things in the most ordinary voice.
I once heard him tell an adventurer his priceless relic was a chamber pot.
An old chamber pot, he clarified. A fine example of early ceremonial glazing. Quite rare in such good condition.
The adventurer demanded a second opinion.
Ethox offered to show him the manufacturer’s mark.
I have seldom admired a man more.
The adventurer did not share his enthusiasm.
Such is the life of Professor Ethox Stripes: historian, scholar, gentleman, and occasional destroyer of perfectly respectable legends.
A Very Particular Kobold
Ethox is a small, green-furred kobold with tiger-like stripes, an impressive collection of spectacles, and the unmistakable air of a man who has remembered something important but cannot recall which notebook contains it.
His stature is modest. His curiosity is not.
He can spend hours discussing the architecture of a forgotten city, then become equally absorbed by a child’s wooden toy recovered from its ruins. To him, both are precious. The palace tells us what rulers wanted remembered. The toy tells us someone lived there.
That distinction matters to him.
Ethox does not study history merely to assemble dates and names. He wants to know how people lived, what they feared, what made them laugh, and what they hoped would survive them.
He has a weakness for obscure footnotes, disputed translations, and documents that other scholars have dismissed as unimportant. He also possesses the alarming ability to transform a casual question into a lecture long enough for one’s tea to go cold twice.
I once asked him whether an old bridge had always been called the Widow’s Crossing.
He began with a discussion of regional dialects.
Forty minutes later, we had reached the history of river taxation.
The Courage of a Footnote
It is easy to mistake kindness for timidity, especially in someone who says ‘excuse me’ when another person steps on his foot.
Ethox is kind. He is also stubborn enough to argue with a mountain if he believed its inscription contained a grammatical error.
I saw that stubbornness put to good use when a visiting collector brought a damaged stone tablet to the Mughouse. The man insisted it commemorated a victorious general. He had a handsome translation prepared, complete with the general’s noble titles and an account of his glorious campaign.
Ethox examined the stone for a very long time.
Then he quietly asked why the inscription named so many bakers, masons, and water carriers.
The collector dismissed them as servants of the army.
Ethox disagreed.
He traced the surviving marks with one careful finger, compared the damaged lines, and explained that the tablet was not a monument to conquest at all. It recorded the rebuilding of a town after the army had passed through it. The names were not those of servants. They were the people who had repaired the wells, raised the walls, and fed their neighbors.
The general’s name appeared only once, in a line describing who had ordered the town burned.
The collector was furious. His glorious relic had become an indictment of the very man he admired.
Ethox did not gloat. He did not raise his voice.
He simply asked that the tablet be displayed with the correct translation.
Afterward, I found him making a clean copy of the names. Some were incomplete. A few were little more than scratches.
He worked on them anyway.
When I asked why, he looked up in surprise.
Because they had bothered to write them down, he explained. The least we could do was try to read them.
That, I think, is the professor at his finest.
A Historian’s Worst Nightmare
There is, however, a rather special cruelty in being a historian at the Mughouse.
The past keeps showing up for drinks.
Ethox has devoted considerable effort to interviewing Ezrin Vyce about events that other historians know only through conflicting accounts and heroic ballads. These conversations begin with admirable professionalism and usually end with the professor staring into the middle distance.
He arrives with prepared questions, carefully ordered evidence, and several sharpened pencils.
Vyce arrives with cider.
Ethox asks for the date of a famous battle.
Vyce remembers that it rained.
Ethox asks which army held the eastern ridge.
Vyce recalls losing a boot.
Ethox asks whether the legendary final speech was delivered as the chronicles claim.
Vyce admits that he may have been shouting at someone to return his boot.
And then, without warning, Vyce mentions an obscure detail that confirms a theory Ethox has spent years trying to prove.
The professor lights up. The pencils come out. Questions tumble over one another.
For a few wonderful minutes, the scholar and the legend are both completely absorbed.
Then Vyce remembers something else about the boot.
Yet he always returns.
That is another thing I admire about him. He would rather wrestle with an inconvenient truth than settle comfortably into a beautiful falsehood.
Even when the truth is wearing mismatched slippers and ordering another round.
The Professor’s Sense of Humor
People assume that because Ethox is earnest, he must be humorless.
What nonsense.
His humor is simply quieter than most of ours, and considerably more dangerous when it arrives.
Pïppers once presented him with a forged manuscript describing an ancient order of warrior-scholars who fought exclusively with enchanted soup ladles.
Ethox studied it, examined the ink, and asked several earnest questions about the order’s ceremonial practices.
Pïppers was beside herself with delight.
At last, the professor set the manuscript down and remarked that its author had made a rather serious mistake.
Pïppers leaned forward, expecting a lecture about ink or parchment.
The manuscript, he observed, described the order as having been founded two hundred years before the invention of soup.
Pïppers stared at him.
Ethox adjusted his spectacles and added that he had been wondering how long she intended to keep a straight face.
He had known all along.
She was outraged.
I laughed so hard I nearly spilled my tea.
On the Subject of Tavri
I shall be brief, because this is the professor’s introduction, and I have no intention of allowing a certain young woman to steal it.
Tavri has taken a particular interest in Ethox.
She teases him mercilessly. He blushes magnificently. Anyone observing them for more than five minutes could be forgiven for thinking she has made a sport of upsetting his carefully arranged world.
But I have noticed that she remembers the subjects he speaks about. She asks after his discoveries. She brings him things she thinks he might find interesting, even if she presents them with some outrageous remark designed to make his ears burn.
And Ethox, for all his flustered protests, is beginning to give as good as he gets.
Recently, when Tavri accused him of paying more attention to his books than to her, he replied that his books rarely interrupted him at the most interesting part.
She was silent for almost three whole seconds.
I consider this one of his greatest victories.
Whatever may develop between them is their own story to tell.
The Man Behind the Notes
I think the quality I cherish most in Ethox is not his intelligence, although he has plenty of it.
It is his generosity with what he knows.
He does not hoard knowledge to make others feel small. He shares it because he believes understanding should belong to everyone willing to seek it.
He will explain an inscription to a child with the same care he offers a fellow scholar. He admits uncertainty rather than inventing answers. And when someone proves him wrong, he may be embarrassed, but he is also genuinely grateful.
But he is patient with beginners, generous with colleagues, and fierce in defense of people who can no longer speak for themselves.
There are heroes who preserve the world by fighting for it.
Ethox preserves the world by remembering it.
Both are necessary.
One Last Thing
I found him in the common room one evening, alone at a table beneath the windows. The candles had burned low. His tea was cold. Papers lay scattered around him in what he would undoubtedly insist was a perfectly intelligible system.
He was copying a list of names from a damaged record.
Not kings. Not Magi. Not the celebrated dead whose portraits hang in great halls.
Ordinary people.
He had been at it for hours.
I asked whether it could wait until morning.
Of course, he said. But he had almost finished, and he disliked leaving a name half-written.
He was doing it because someone, long ago, had believed those names worth preserving.
And because Professor Ethox Stripes agreed.
I sat with him until he finished.
Then I took away his cold tea and brought him a fresh cup.
He thanked me, glanced down at his notes, and immediately began explaining a curious feature of the script.
I listened.
For once, I even let him finish.
So if you meet a small, green, tiger-striped kobold at the Mughouse, surrounded by books and speaking with great excitement about something that happened five hundred years ago, do stop and listen.
You may find yourself laughing.
You will almost certainly learn something.
And if you are very fortunate, you may come away understanding why the past deserves to be remembered.
Just don’t ask him a question unless you have the afternoon free.
— Alyss Blackwell
P.S. Professor, if you find any inaccuracies in this account, I would welcome your corrections. Please limit them to fewer than twelve pages.
Let The Record Show!
Read The Lyrics!~
[Intro — Rapid galloping guitars]
[Piano accents, double-kick build]
[Explosive full band entry]
Let the record show!
[Verse 1 — Fast, bright, aggressive]
Three feet tall in a long brown coat,
A thousand worlds in a leather-bound note!
Green-furred scholar with his glasses low,
And a million more questions everywhere he goes!
His satchel’s full, his head’s a mess,
He’s lost his pen and his spectacles!
He’ll trip on a rug, apologize to the floor,
Then discover a kingdom that was lost before!
[Pre-Chorus — Rising melody]
He may stumble!
He may shake!
But there’s one thing
He won’t forsake!
[Chorus — Huge, soaring, anthemic]
Let the record show!
Let the whole world know!
He’s got a heart of gold
And a will that won’t let go!
Let the record show!
When the mighty come and go!
He’ll be there to tell their story
When the winds of ages blow!
Oh-oh-oh!
Let the record show!
Oh-oh-oh!
Professor Ethox Stripes!
[Verse 2 — Punchy thrash riff]
He’s got a mind like a razor,
And a tongue like a quill!
He’ll correct your grammar
While you threaten to kill!
He’ll argue with a dragon,
Debate with a god!
Then politely inform them
That their sources are flawed!
He’s not built for battle,
He’s not looking for fame,
But he’ll stand before a tyrant
Just to set right a name!
A quiver in his voice,
But his words ring true,
“With all due respect,
That’s not what happened to you!”
[Pre-Chorus — Guitars climb]
Let them thunder!
Let them roar!
He’ll just ask
For one fact more!
[Chorus — Full speed]
Let the record show!
Let the whole world know!
He’s got a heart of gold
And a will that won’t let go!
Let the record show!
When the mighty come and go!
He’ll be there to tell their story
When the winds of ages blow!
Oh-oh-oh!
Let the record show!
Oh-oh-oh!
Professor Ethox Stripes!
[Instrumental — Blazing guitar solo]
[Electric violin answers the melody]
[Relentless double-kick under shredding harmonies]
[Verse 3 — Fast, playful, confident]
He’s got a laugh that sneaks up slow,
A little smile when he knows you don’t know!
You think he’s shy? You think he’s sweet?
Just wait until he sweeps you off your feet!
He’s kind to the fool and patient with the young,
But don’t mistake his manners for a silenced tongue!
He’ll admit when he’s wrong, give credit where it’s due,
Then spend all damn night learning something new!
[Bridge — Piano and violin, warm clean vocals]
Not every name
Is carved in gold.
Not every life
Has tales retold.
The hands that built,
The hearts that bled,
The little dreams
Of the long-forgotten dead.
[Drums build, guitars swell]
He’ll find their words!
He’ll trace their stone!
And give a voice
To the great unknown!
[Soaring vocal climax]
For every life
The world let go,
He’ll turn the page
And let it show!
[Final Chorus — Double chorus, maximum power]
Let the record show!
Let the whole world know!
He’s got a heart of gold
And a will that won’t let go!
Let the record show!
When the mighty come and go!
He’ll be there to tell their story
When the winds of ages blow!
Let the record show!
Though he’s small, his spirit grows!
There’s a world still full of wonder,
And a million things to know!
Oh-oh-oh!
Let the record show!
Oh-oh-oh!
Professor Ethox Stripes!
[Outro — Fast, triumphant guitar riff]
Let the kings have all their glory!
Let the warriors have their fame!
When the dust has finally settled,
Someone has to know their names!
[Final gang vocals]
Ethox! Stripes!
Ethox! Stripes!
Let!
The!
Record!
Show!
[Hard stop]
