Choave the Caravan Leader

Who is Choave the Caravan Leader?

Superficially: A green vrash with a cream underbelly and red eyes. He has multiple fin-piercings and brightly colored metal inserts in his horns. He wears ingots of an exotic blue alloy around his neck and chainmail around his shoulders, with gauntleted forelegs and more conventional vrash plates on his hips. Almost conventional, that is; there's a single pink gem inserted into each of the plates before his hindfeet.

An ancient merchant Vrash who runs a Tekagoli Caravan, Choave is a deep planner who tries to cover for every contingency. He has been everywhere along the north-south trade corridor of Central Tachamund and Tachanigh Kelkaith; he is wealthy by now, yet he has no home but the road. His favorite place of all the stops his caravan makes is Tekagol itself, despite Tekagol's grim, wet weather and dismal reputation as an unlucky place, for Choave is an unusual soul who prays to Baggil for long-term protection.

The regular collections and distributions of funds on Choave's caravan sometimes catch new travellers by surprise. Choave creates a communal fund to power trade along the route, and distributes profits according to the percentage of the funds that each individual contributed. If all goes well, they get their stake back - the original amount they contributed - when they eventually depart the caravan. This was originally invented as a way to pool funds and take trade risks collectively, which Choave believed Baggil would favor. Once travellers are used to doing this enough to trust in Choave's leadership of the travel fund, this collective funding paradigm occasionally attracts the less mercantile people to stay on the caravan longer than they otherwise would have, as Choave has the more veteran merchants work for the collective fund, making available returns that only experienced merchants can achieve. For instance, an individual whose destination is Hydalath, may opt to remain with the caravan to Wraquo, and then back to Hydalath. In this way, they would get a few weeks more of such dividends.

Choave's caravan takes a little less than five months to complete its circuit from Tekagol to Wraquo and back, and he runs it once annually. In the off-season, he's a hauler on a safe, common route of Inrakaveach to Mosdenechrak. Metals to Mosdenechrak, food to Inrakaveach. Occasionally, he hauls metal scrap to Inrakaveach instead of a food haul. Either way, it takes no cleverness to run this route, but it pays a regular salary.

Who are the dragons in Choave's caravan?

There are 13 dragons in the Caravan:

1. Choave the Caravan Leader - vrash
2. Oghai the Absent - izerah
3. Chatulerin the Calculator - vashael
4. Lorvaza the Predictable - vashael
5. Ekis of Tonturaseer - izerah
6. Mosdrao of Jiasote - vrash
7. Omrezen the Hunter - vrash
8. Lorma the Vegetarian - vrash
9. Denziu the Clayseller - vashael
10. Kishka the Runepainted - vashael
11. Orachu the Unambitious - vrash
12. Honom of Mosdenechrak - vrash
13. Sharisen the Sociable - vashael

Trivia

Choave is so old that he might be one of the Primordial Souls, though he doesn't seem to lack initiative per se. He may instead have been one of the first non-primordials.