Borbo

Current state

Borbo is a goblin who willingly surrendered his body and soul to the necromancer Vollok in exchange for a promised immortality. Instead of true immortal life, Borbo's soul was extracted and sealed into a soul-gem, which was then set into the back of an animated doll the party came to know as "Mr. Beak." The physical goblin body was left to float, hollow and inert, in a tank in Vollok's laboratory [S19 02:18:22]. The party defeated Mr. Beak before learning who powered it; Borbo's identity and the tragic bargain he struck were only revealed later in recovered vault notes [S19]. Borbo resurfaced as a teaching moment deep into the campaign. During a late session the GM explicitly invoked the Mr. Beak encounter — a bird creature carrying a soul-gem (the "shiny") intended to animate a puppet — as the party's clearest prior example of a soul imbued into an object, using it as a deliberate hint about where the missing Rose Guard souls might be stored [S58 03:58:55]. The following session the party revisited the mechanics of the encounter in detail: Mr. Beak was a puppet animated by a soul-gem mounted on its back, and that gem held the soul drawn out of the goblin in Vollok's lab tank. When the party pulled the gem free and destroyed it, they ended what remained of Borbo; the lab tank body became an empty vessel with nothing left inside [S59 01:14:07]. As of S59, Borbo has no continuing existence — soul destroyed, body an empty husk — but his case remains a live reference point for how soul-trapping and object-bound animation work within the vaults.

Recent appearances

• S59 A puppet/animated doll the party previously encountered, powered by a soul gem set on its back. The gem held the soul extracted from the goblin floating in Volok's lab tank. The party pulled the gem from Mr. Beak and destroyed it; the lab goblin's body is the now-empty vessel. [S59 · 01:14:07 · turn 0655]
• S58 A bird creature the party killed in an earlier session in the lens workshop / upper boathouse area. Held the 'Shiny' (a spyglass) and a soul-gem meant for a doll/puppet; remembered this session as the clearest prior example of a soul imbued into an object. The soul-gem was destroyed; Veve keeps… [S58 · 04:07:23 · turn 4723]

Open hooks

No open hooks are currently recorded.

Relationships

No player-visible relationships are currently recorded.

Full history