SDL: The Dandy

The Dandy. The Gokiburi-Gumi's resident clockwork tinker and steam enthusiast. For a mechanically-inclined fellow, the Dandy is unusually-concerned about his immaculate style of dress and his physical appearance in public. A little too concerned, as he likes to remind his employers in the Gokiburi-Gumi, who fund his ridiculous (and I daresay Da Vincian) clockwork and steam projects. But don't let his arrogance fool you. This narcisstic fellow's sharpest weapons are his surgeon's scalpel of a mind and his powers of deductive reasoning.

The Dandy heralds from the white cliffs of the Kingdom of Albion. An industrialized superpower to the far west, Albion's feats of clockwork engineering have given the Dandy his mechanical edge and his strange affinity with inanimate objects and simple machines.

The Dandy is officially on an ambassadorial and extended expedition to the Far East. Unoficially, however, the mission provided to him by the great Queen carries a darker, more covert side. Tasked with the careful surveillance and intelligence of the surrounding regions, the gaijin found it most convenient to offer his services to an organized crime ring (rather than a feudal lord), which possessed shadier channels tailored more towards the secondary nature of his mission.

Very few individuals, even within the G-G inner circles, completely trust the Dandy. But surrounded with his mechanical constructs and his clockwork toys... it's rather obvious the gaijin cares little.

And besides. Such mechanical talents are considered useful to his employers. So, from the Dandy's perspective, his longevity is assured. And that's good enough.

Additional Notes: The Dandy and his mechanical components are not powered by a compact steam engine, or any steam engine, for that matter. His propulsion system is purely wound clockwork, and the two smokestacks primarily vent heat from friction created by the gears, and vapor that results from the water cooling system that keeps the gears from deteriorating. (Oh, c'mon, people. If he had a steam engine under that mantle, He'd be COOKED. ALIVE. IN HIS OWN JUICES.)