In life, he was a bartender at the infamous Gellica’s Bar, Haddlesbark, Palingvyre. The swing bar was a high establishment for the glitz and glamour international socialites, but disaster would strike following the attempted assassination of ‘Cinders’ Kabira, heir to the Naron Kabira Winery conglomerate. The resulting incident lead to the Bar burning down and while its proprietor, Madam Gellica, would have happily supported all of her former employees while new premises were found, the bartender found himself tortured by boredom.
While not well travelled himself, the world had come to his door, and he aspired to document his experience thus taking up a temporary contract with Wordsmith’s Printing Press; a small private establishment publishing living interest stories. It would however, end poorly for the bartender, who died early into the contract likely due to complications arising from smoke inhalation, arsenic poisoning, and exposure to asbestos from the burning building.
Not wishing to lose the up front fee paid, Wordsmith’s Printing Press assigned the contract over to their trans-dimensional parent, Worldsmiths Inc and the soul of the bartender was moved to a mechanical facsimile. Unfortunately, the memory of the bartender fragmented during the process, leaving him with severe retrograde amnesia. It made him far less useful as a writer and so he was put into an administrative role as an archivist, although it did mean that Worldsmiths could keep him in gainful employ for as long as they wished, he not knowing any better.
Now, in the face of this emergency, the Archivist has been called up for duty. Pleasingly, he appears to have regained some of his mind; referring to himself as ’98’, a moniker he earned due to the cocktail of his own invention... not that he remembers it. Furthermore, 98 has been a favourite in the mess hall, commonly seen serving non-alcoholic beverages to other Wordsmith employees or entertaining with baton twirling using his redundant walking cane.
Archivist 98 has accepted the task for two reasons; one, he doesn’t have much choice, and two, he knows ‘something’ is missing and hopes this undertaking may lead to the discovery of this missing jigsaw piece.