Born: Thaddeus Montague Cogglepotts

OCCUPATION:
Eccentric inventor, artificer & curator of the Curiositorium museum

The professor is in charge of the ramshackle museum, which is filled with enchanted gears, peculiar contraptions, and long-forgotten wonders salvaged from the corners of the world.

In his younger years, Thaddeus Montague Cogglepotts was a daring, wide-eyed adventurer with an insatiable desire to see what lay beyond the horizon. He joined the Royal Airship Fleet, where he quickly rose through the ranks to become a decorated Airship Captain. During his years among the clouds, Thaddeus traveled to distant realms, learned unusual languages (some spoken only by clockwork automata), tinkered with emerging gadgets and strange inventions, and sampled an impressive variety of pastries, dumplings, and unpronounceable delicacies.

Upon returning to his hometown of Whimbrassel, Thaddeus earned a prestigious scholarship to the Brassminster Institute—a floating university suspended in the sky upon dirigible towers and humming magnetic platforms. There, he immersed himself in the study of aether-tech, theoretical gearology, and temporal steam dynamics. Though never famed for a singular invention, he became locally celebrated for his eccentric lectures, often arriving in class with soot-streaked goggles, singed whiskers, and the faint echo of a minor laboratory explosion trailing behind him.

Eventually branded a “harmless madman” (and occasionally a “walking fire hazard”) by the academic council, Thaddeus was quietly dismissed from Brassminster—though he insists he resigned “on enthusiastic principle.” Undeterred, he set out aboard his personal airship, The Ticking Tempest, roaming the skies to explore forgotten ruins, recover lost aether-tech, and educate curious children on the delicate mechanics of temporal steam displacement, chronal gear inversion, and why one should never stir tea with a heated coil wrench.

To this day, Professor Thaddeus Montague Cogglepotts remains one of Whimbrassel’s most beloved—and bewildering—curiosities.

Young Thaddeus as a Royal Airship Captain

Thaddeus receiving his scholarship to Brassminster Institute

The prestigious Brassminster Institute, 1897