Also known as Keekoo the Restorer or simply as "the hero" among Brownies. Keekoo was the greenbark Brownie single-handedly responsible for bringing the Brownie race out of the squalor in which they had lived for thousands of years. Hands down the most celebrated figure in Brownie history, young children of every Brownie tribe are told his name and story. He is supposed to have lived from 4036 - ? b.S.

Biography. Keekoo's events in life are traced as follows:

Imprisonment. Keekoo was born in 4036 b.S. in a crowded, dirty cage in the back room of a petshop in downtown Marcogg. Several people fed him and took care of him, but he never found out if any of them were his father or mother. When he was six, he was put into an individual cage and taken to the Marcogg market to be sold. After a week or so, with his birdcage hanging from the awning of the makeshift stall, a farm girl who was in town with her family saw him and begged her parents to buy him for her. Her father relented and bought him, and the girl was delighted. She took him home to the family's home to the west of Marcogg, almost under the eaves of the Auturian Forest, and called him Keekoo-keekoo (she thought it sounded cute). The farm girl was delighted with her new pet, and doted on him.

Keekoo being set free. Keekoo knew how to endure hardship, and learned much during his imprisonment, as he was always watching. He had a near-perfect memory, and before long had learned much of the human language, though he had never spoken it aloud. Then one day when the girl had taken him out for a tea party under a tree right on the edge of the Auturian Forest, he did speak, asking, pleading the little girl to set him free. She was moved to tears, pryed open the door of his cage, and watched him disappear into the underbrush. She then turned and ran for home, still weeping.

First Brownie Contacts. For the next few weeks, staying alive was quite difficult for Keekoo. Soon, however, he found a village of the Tethinrhim elves, began to furtively live off of their leavings. After almost a year of rooting through garbage to stay alive, he was approached by a small Brownie hunting party, dressed in the skins of small animals, and invited to come and stay with them.

Once Keekoo had learned the Styrásh tongue that this group of several hundred Brownies had borrowed from the elves, he found that they had once also lived on the rubbish of the elven culture, ignored by the arrogant elves, until one day, only a few generations before, a few bright souls puzzled out how to adapt bows and arrows to Brownie size. They had learned to survive on their own, and even thrive. They now lived mainly by hunting, but were beginning to domesticate the mouse and several food plants, and so slowly they became independent and self-supporting, no longer relying on the trash of other cultures in order to survive.

Keekoo's Journies. As Keekoo grew older, he learned from his elders how to handle a bow and to harvest spores from cultivated moss in order to bake a kind of bread. He also began to dream of a free and independent Brownie people, but he remembered all too well the cages that he had been raised in. At the young age of 11 (equivalent to a human teenager), he left his forest tribe and traveled alone, searching for signs that might let him know that other groups of Brownies were living in freedom. For years he searched, all through the Auturian Forest, then the Zeiphyrian Forest, and then the Almatrar, and finally the Paelelon Forest. He never found the signs of recent free Brownies that he was searching for, but he did find a living, hollow tree, the Everbark, which had stored inside, perfectly preserved, many documents and artifacts from the ancient Brownie Kingdom of Birn.

Keekoo lived inside the Everbark for several more years, consumed with the desire to know more of people's history. After piecing together some of the two most-used languages used to write the bark-paper documents, he discovered that his people had not always been slaves, they had once ruled a mighty empire. He desired to know more, but so much time had gone by, and he still had to act on his dream of seeing the Brownie people strong again, free and independent. Choosing carefully, he took as many documents as he could carry, and returned to Marcogg, now in his early twenties.

The Freeing of the Brownies. It took some time to free the first, but as the numbers following him grew, they also grew more adept at lockpicking, making diversions, and the use of the blowpipe, freeing many more in the process. One of the first places they went was the shop in which Keekoo had been born. Before the night was done, all were free. The entire Brownie population of Marcogg descended on the tiny band of free Brownies living in the Auturian Forest, much to their initial shock and dismay. Keekoo stayed just long enough to make sure the two groups despite their differing backgrounds were working on getting along, and trying to communicate, as one group spoke Styrásh, the other the human dialect spoken in Marcogg. He then left with a sizeable group of like-minded Brownies, and spent the next dozen years travelling from place to place, finding their people, hidden in or near the cities and towns of humans, dwarves, elves, orcs, and other races, and setting them free. Virtually all of these carefully made their way back to the Auturian Forest and swelled the numbers of that group. A very few got lost, and never did find their way. These ended up taking refuge underneath the cities, in the sewers and corridors that are present under any large city, joining groups that had already been there for some time, and together with them becoming the so-called Rat Brownies of today.

Keekoo's joints were beginning to stiffen a bit, and he found himself less able to perform the atheletic feats required to sneak into a city, find the Brownies there, and set them free. Reluctantly, he left this task to others, and returned finally to the Auturian Forest and the Brownies gathered there. He found that it was getting crowded, with different groups speaking various languages of other races having difficulty getting along, and that their neighbors, the Tethinrhim, were getting irritated at the noise and hunting of the Brownies, and were considering taking action against them.

The Browniin Language. During his travels, Keekoo had constantly studied the Birni documents salvaged from the Everbark in the Paelelon forest. He attempted to pass on many of the beliefs and Birni cultural values that he had read descriptions of, but most important for the future of the Brownie people, he had formed a modern composite of the two Birni languages contained in the documents and devised a phonetic writing system using only vowels to go along with it, thus creating both the common Browniin writing system, and the foundation for the various languages which later composed the Browniin language family. He spent another six years teaching everyone there to speak Browniin, and insisted that they use it.

After the Brownies finally had a race language to Keekoo's satisfaction, he divided them into three tribes and, at two-year intervals, sent each tribe out in a different direction. This had to be done, as they were beginning to wear out their welcome in a forest not their own. Each leader was given a copy of Keekoo's Browniin Dictionary, and charged to find a new land for their tribe, unclaimed by any city of any other race.

Keekoo, was now old, and had no further interest in travelling. He watched the last of the groups leave, leaving only himself, alone. He then slowly and carefully gathered his things, then departed on his last quest: to find the little girl (now surely not so little) that had freed him, and thank her from the bottom of his heart. It is not known if he succeeded or not, or indeed what happened to him after that, or how he died. He was survived by an ex-wife (legend has it that he was absorbed in his work, and only noticed that she had left three days after she had) and a daughter named Lily, who later joined the tribe heading north.

	Events in Keekoo's Life Date Incident 4.036 b.S. Born ...in a cage in Marcogg 4.030 b.S. Sold ...to a nameless farm girl living to the west of Marcogg, near the Auturian Forest. 4.029 b.S. Set free ...into the Auturian Forest. He begins living off of the refuse of the Tethinrhim elves at Ria. 4.028 b.S. Found ...by a small, independent group of Brownies living in the Auturian Forest. 4.025 b.S. Departs ...in search of other groups of free and independent Brownies. 4.018 b.S. Discovers the Everbark ...in the Paelelon forest, a huge sealed cache of Birni wisdom. He spent years learning to read parts of it and studying it. 4.013 b.S. The Freeing of Marcogg ...or more properly, the Brownies of Marcogg, took place at this time. Keekoo returned from the Everbark in the Paelelon forest and got busy picking locks and breaking cages in Marcogg until all Brownies were free. They moved to the forest en masse, and joined the free Brownies already there. He then traveled from city to city with a group of like-minded Brownies, freeing all the Brownies they could and sending them to the Auturian Forest. 3.989 b.S. Returns home to teach ...the other Brownies the language that he had "rediscovered". His joints were getting stiff, and he was thus forced to live a somewhat less active lifestyle. 3.983 b.S. Sends the first tribe north They would eventually settle on the open plains and steppes of the Akdorian continent, and came to be known by a name composed of a series of birdcalls, whose transliteration is Aohu'o. 3.981 b.S Sends the second tribe west They would eventually find what was later known as the Vale of the Brownies. They settled there and became known as LLaoihrr. 3.979 b.S Sends the third tribe south They would eventually settle on the continent of Aeruillin, just within the Etherial Void, and come to be known as Memnoor.