The son of a family of brewers, Breumin of Clan Timber, fifth of his name, grew up in the small hamlet of Twinshade, nestled between the dueling shades of a deep forest and a high mountain. At a young age, his village was raided by bandits from within the forest. From a hole in a cask where his parents had hidden him, Breumin watched as his father was cut down and his mother was carted away. When the ale-soaked youth emerged, sore from treading and somewhat drunk, he found his village razed, the ones who had survived or evaded capture in mourning.

Weeks after, dwarves visited from a fortress near the summit of the mountain for their seasonal stock of ale and wine. They found the city still in tatters, the few gnomes remaining struggling to rebuild. One dwarf in particular, Thissil Caskshoulder, an ironic name given he was a terrible brewer, found the lonely Breumin trying his best to repair the family's brew works. Feeling sorry for the child, Thissil took him under his wing and brought him to live with the dwarves, where he worked in their small brewery to bring the gnomish flavors the dwarves loved to light.

Nicknamed Brew by the dwarves, for his heritage and knack for flavoring malt, he grew up as happy as he could, though a distant look in his eye left an unsettling feeling in the stomachs of any who stared too long. Thinking he could distract the child with activities, Thissil taught Brew the artificer's trade, crafting armor and artillery for the militia. The boy had a solid knack for it.

After thirty years in the care of the dwarves, Thissil had no more to teach him, and Brew had trained a brewing apprentice of his own, a younger gnome from the village he grew up in, slowly rebuilt over the years. Despite working with metal for most of his life, Brew still felt anger in his hands and sorrow in his heart. Pledging to never take an apprentice but to be the best artificer he could, and to seek vengeance for his fallen family, Breumin of Clan Timber, last of his name, bid farewell to his dwarven family and went out in the world as Breumin Caskshoulder, master artificer.

As a child, the only thing Fizz wanted was to sit on her parents' workbench and watch them work. Her father was a skilled craftsman and tinkerer, a natural with a wrench, even among other gnomes. Her mother was a skilled wizard, a magical savant that taught students rudimentary cantrips by day. By night, the two crafted magical toys and trinkets for the villages both below and above ground. They'd make wind-up bears that waltzed across the floor, came to a full stop and let out a mighty roar. They’d build clocks with colored lights that changed by according to the time of day, so even the denizens of the underground could tell where the sun was in the sky, and they’d craft vases of beautiful flowers that would wilt as the day went on and bloom anew in the morning—and often, both would end up in a single residence, for who didn’t need a second way to measure the time? Fizz was often the first person to use these items and her interest in both magic and tinkering grew, though she was never allowed to touch: maybe when she was older, when she could understand that while they were toys safe enough for children when they were finished, the half-finished projects that lay strewn about the lab often lacked safety mechanisms while in development.

She was never allowed in the workshop alone but she often snuck in when her parents were preoccupied with other matters, her father with his repair shop and her mother with her teaching. Most of the time, she'd sit on the bench and stare at the scrolls and tools left out on the counter, wondering what her parents would build next. The urge to meddle grew by the day but her patience held out.

One night, her parents left her at home while they made a delivery of their latest project, a toy goblin with a cannon that shot fireballs when you said, "Fire away, Goblo!”—this particular mechanism took a long time to perfect, so the elder Fizzlewitzes were excited to deliver it into the hands of their customer as soon as it was finished.

While they were away, Fizz snuck into the shop to find a wide array of new tools on the bench, including a glowing red stone that seemed to pulse and vibrate on the counter. She picked up the stone and cradled it in her hands, feeling its warmth in her tiny hands. As she held it, the stone's pulse seemed to slow and she felt a calm like she never had before, like a flame within her that had been stoked with too much paper and not enough wood, billows of soot pouring into the air, suddenly had less to say and folded in on itself into a simple flicker. She turned to carry the stone out of the workshop, to study it in the confines of her bedroom, and tripped on a discarded hammer on the floor. The stone flew out of her grasp, and as she landed on her stomach, arms outstretched, she watched the stone crash on the floor across the room.

A flash of light. A loud bang. The calm flame suddenly an inferno. She screamed. And then: nothing.

When she came to, she was in her bed, her parents standing over her, perched on two stools like a pair of hawks, their eyes red and puffy. She had been unconscious for a week and the resident cleric had told her parents that there was little he could do. Her arms wrapped in cloth bandages, her limbs weak and unmoving, her parents’ worry over her dying became worry over how she would live. She laughed, quietly at first, then uproariously, and her parents’ worry became something else altogether. But! Fizz, she felt wonderful: she would recover and she would thrive. And deep within, she felt a flame dancing and swelling inside of her.