Who is Nux · The Journey of Nux Flux

Nux Flux close up: a bald gnome with bright eyes and a huge, very blue beard

Every great adventure starts the same way: a rainy afternoon, a dusty attic, and a gnome who really should have been doing his chores. This one is no different.

A Flux never walks past an unexplored cave.

Pip’s mapPick a stop to jump to that chapter

Chapter I · One gnome, one sled, no sense of danger

The boy from Sprocket Street

Nux Flux grew up at the far end of Sprocket Street, where the snowdrifts of Dun Morogh piled up against the workshop doors and every chimney puffed a different colour of smoke.

He could not walk past a cave, a locked door or a suspicious-looking hill without finding out what was inside. He taught himself to open locks with a hairpin and a hum, carried a spanner for every occasion, and talked to himself constantly, because somebody had to plan the expedition.

He explored every cave, climbed every ridge and was banned from at least four taverns in Kharanos. The neighbours called him a hazard. Nux called it research, and his favourite words were “just a little further.”

Nux Flux in a snowy forest clearing, reaching out an arm, staff on his back — “Just a little further.” — Nux, every single time

Chapter II · The rainiest afternoon in the history of Dun Morogh

The trunk in the attic

It was meant to be a spring clean. Nux had been sent up to the attic to sort out Great-Great-Grandgnome Pip Flux’s old things — Pip the explorer, Pip the inventor, Pip who had set off one morning with a rucksack and a wave and simply never came back.

At the bottom of a trunk, under a moth-eaten scarf and a jar of very old jam, was a roll of parchment tied with copper wire. Nux unrolled it. It was completely blank.

Except for the note.

Chapter III · One sneeze, one spark, one very surprised gnome

The map answers back

Nux sneezed. The dust went everywhere, and a tiny spark of frost — the only spell he knew back then — jumped from his fingers onto the parchment.

Silver lines crept across the page like frost across a window. Rivers. Mountains. A dotted trail winding out of Dun Morogh and off the edge of the paper. And in one corner, words that glittered and faded as he watched.

Where the snow meets stone and the old gates sleep,
go down, not up — the first key’s kept deep.
Frost shows the water, fire shows the hill,
and arcane shows the rest… if you’ve the skill.

Nux Flux with both hands raised and glowing blue, a shard of conjured ice hanging in the air above him — The first time the map answered back.

Chapter IV · Every new spell, another piece of the map

Learning the language of magic

So Nux became a mage. Not because anyone told him to, but because the map would not tell him anything else until he did.

Frost magic showed him the rivers. Fire lit up the mountain passes. Arcane made the riddles hold still long enough to read. Each new spell uncovered another corner of the map, and each corner pointed somewhere further away.

There were accidents, of course. Sparks in the library. A small but memorable fireball in the laundry. And the beard, for the record, was not always blue. That was a frost rune, a bucket of dye and an experiment the whole street agreed never to mention again. Nux decided he liked it. It stayed.

Nux Flux holding his staff on a snowy slope, pine trees and mountains behind him — Reading the land the way the map taught him.

Chapter V · Nobody said treasure hunting was tidy

Booby traps and bad ideas

The first clue led Nux into a tunnel behind a frozen waterfall, where Pip had left the kind of welcome only an inventor would think was funny: a floor that tipped, a door that answered in riddles and a rolling snowball the size of a cottage.

He was not alone down there, either. The Copperkettle brothers — three rival treasure hunters with one brain between them and a lot of shovels — had heard there was gold under the mountain and had followed him in.

It took one frost spell, one well-timed hairpin, a great deal of running and Nux shouting “LEFT! NO, THE OTHER LEFT!” at his own feet to get out with the first key. The Copperkettles got out with their eyebrows. Mostly.

Nux Flux hurling a fireball at a hulking blue Young Wendigo in the snow — “It was only a little fireball.”

Nux Flux blasting frost at a snarling blue Winter Wolf on a snowy hillside — Not every treasure is guarded politely.

Chapter VI · Past the edge of the map and out into the world

The trail goes on

The key opened a tiny brass box, and in the box was the next piece of the map. It showed a trail that ran out of Dun Morogh, across the mountains, over the sea and into places nobody on Sprocket Street had ever heard of. At the very end, circled three times in faded ink, was a single X.

So Nux made himself a promise. He would go on, learn every spell he could, and write down every single step, so that one day, whoever found the map next would be able to follow him.

That is what this journal is: the map, filled in one step at a time.

Nux Flux waving in a snowy forest clearing — Off he goes. (He did remember the sandwiches.)

Packed by Nux; checked twice (also by Nux)

What’s in the pack

Pip’s mapMostly blank. For now.
A trusty staffOnly slightly scorched
A spellbookThree spells and a lot of doodles
Pip’s spyglassCracked, but it still finds the horizon
A brass compassPoints north. Usually.
Spare bootsSnow gets everywhere
Cheese sandwichesSeven. He counted.
Far too much optimismDoes not fit in the pack

The X is out there

Somewhere past the last line of the map, Pip’s treasure is waiting. Nux is small, the world is big, and he has no idea what he is doing. It is going to be brilliant.