Character from Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson
Round, sweaty, pastry-devouring master of Darujhistan's underworld — a man who speaks in third person, thinks in spirals, and may quietly be the most powerful mortal alive.
Kruppe speaks in the third person, employs sentences that require cartographic expertise to navigate, and consumes pastries with a devotion that borders on religious observance. All of this is real — he genuinely loves food, genuinely thinks in baroque spirals, genuinely cannot stop talking. But beneath the performance (which is not a performance, which is the terrifying part) lives a mind that manipulates the destiny of cities with the casual precision of a man arranging pastries on a plate. He is the Eel — Darujhistan's spymaster, information broker, and invisible hand — and he runs the city's underworld from a baker's shop while appearing to do nothing but eat. He walks in the dream world of Elder Gods as though he belongs there. He faces down Ascendants by being so thoroughly, aggressively himself that they cannot find purchase for their power. Kruppe does not scheme in the conventional sense; he simply occupies the center of every web by being too vital, too knowing, and too inexplicable to remove. He would be intolerable if he weren't so genuinely kind beneath the grease and the verbiage.
Rotund to the point of spherical, perpetually sweating, hands sticky with pastry crumbs and gesticulating wildly as he talks — which is always. Wears silks that strain heroically across his girth. His small, bright eyes peer from a fleshy face with the sharpness of cut diamonds hidden in dough. Every physical detail screams harmless fool, which is the most dangerous lie in Darujhistan. His mule is as stubborn and inexplicable as he is.
Also known as: Kruppe, The Eel, Kruppe of Darujhistan, Kruppe the First