Koss is probably my favorite character. He is a kobold with the Wild Forrest alternate racial trait and I made him carnation scaled to compliment his backstory. He is a lawful neutral alchemist with no subclass because none of them benefit the story I created for him.
Koss was abandoned at his hatching when he was found to have unnatural pink scales. He was taken very quickly into slavery by a female black furred catfolk alchemist who lived in solitude. He was brought up to have grace and subservience by his master who treated him well. She considered him more of a companion than a slave, but still required his strict submission to her. To best describe their relationship, her highest compliment to him was “You are my most valuable possession.” When their hut was set upon by a group of orcs he was commanded to flee while the master fought and died at the hand of the orcs. The orcs chased Koss through the forest until he stumbled on the party where they saved him and killed the orcs. They questioned why such a rare thing would be seen in the forests, so Koss gave them his story of slavery. He was given his freedom by the party because none of them had the heart (or maybe thought) to sell him off to slavers for the pretty penny he was worth. He did not want freedom, as the only life he knew was one where his hours were spent at another’s digression and finances were never a thing he needed to think about. He is at a loss without someone to manage him. He eventually ended up in a strange agreement with the party ranger where he would act as a servant to the necromancer and report on her behaviors.
My favorite bit of flavor I’ve given Koss is his bad way of handling stress. He was trained to be graceful and speak Common cleanly and without an accent, but as the stresses of fighting, abuse, and being without a master well up in him his lawful neutral alignment slowly creeps down towards lawful evil and further towards chaotic evil. With this change in mindset his speech, demeanor, and actions change. When fresh and unstressed, he speaks plainly without an accent and wont do foolish or brash things without the instruction or approval of someone else in the party. As his stress level increases from fighting, interacting with other kobolds (interacting with his own kind gives him great angst), or being demeaned, his accent slips and becomes heavier until he becomes unintelligible to anyone who is unfamiliar with yip-yak, a dialect of draconic. His actions become more impulsive and he is quicker to anger until his duty to instruction is warped to the point where he would beat someone to death for not following orders.
These affects are mitigated by spending a few hours of downtimes drinking a Polypurpose Panacea. I might play with addiction in the future but I’ve not come that far yet and the only time I’ve used it everyone that came in contact with me rolled a laughably low perception roll to see that I was high on fancy alchemist juice.