Departmental functionary. Reluctant hero. Looks like he hasn’t slept since cosmic inflation.
Korl is, by Department standards, unusually ambitious. By human standards, he is catastrophically stressed. Born in the Administrative Quadrants of Sector Theta-Nine, he grew up in a family with a proud tradition of procedural compliance. His first word was “form,” and his first childhood drawing was a perfectly aligned filing system that deeply impressed his nursery teachers.
He joined the Department young, initially as a Junior Temporal Misalignment Clerk, a role that mostly involved apologising to collapsed timelines. His aptitude for paperwork, despair, and maintaining composure while reality shredded itself led to rapid promotion.
Korl’s resemblance to humans is deliberate. His species discovered centuries ago that humanoid form improves audit coordination, so most adopted a partly human morphology. His glasses, however, are his own idea; he insists they help him “see the chaos coming.”
His defining flaw and strength are the same: an unwavering belief in process. Even when trapped in a literary anomaly or negotiating with a sacred memo, Korl treats every crisis like a form waiting to be filed.