Burg is an ogre who owns and operates The Little Thumb, the century-old pub next door to Sophie's apartment building Brown Betty.
In his human glamor, he looks like he stepped off a turn-of-the-century circus poster advertising old-timey strongmen — a giant of a man with a melon-sized bald head that catches the morning sun like a beacon, a thick dark mustache, gray eyes that spark with good humor, and a nose with a large lump in the middle as if it's been broken more than once.
He keeps a white bar towel perpetually thrown over one shoulder and does everything with the practiced flourish of a born performer — flipping coasters, depositing drinks, swishing his towel with dramatic flair, giving Italian chef's kisses when joking that humans taste delicious.
His thick arms cross over a barrel chest when he's issuing warnings, and when his anger rises, it pulses off him in almost visible waves that make him look even more massive than usual, his name alone enough to make vampires stutter and gang members flee.
In his true ogre form — which Sophie describes as "completely terrifying" — Burg's enormous trapezoid muscles skip his neck entirely and connect directly to the base of his skull.
His skin is thick and rubbery with bristles like a wild boar (a detail Sophie vows to take to her grave), his hands can grip flat concrete and scale the vertical face of Coit Tower without breaking a breath, and his fists swing like hammers, leveling enemies like a machete through weeds.
He lives above the bar, doesn't need much sleep, and spends his mornings hosing piss off the brick wall left by Mythicals who insist on marking their territory.
The pub itself is his kingdom and museum — every square inch covered in tchotchkes his family has collected over a hundred years, including a Pablo Fanque circus poster, a glossy violin, and the original Jules Rimet World Cup trophy his father stole in 1984. The bar is named for an ogre fairy tale about Little Thumb — who, Burg confides, was actually an ogre himself, and a distant relation.
But for all the menace he can summon, Burg is Sophie's protector, friend, and bartender-confessor rolled into one. He quietly upgrades her cheap whiskey when she's broke and pretends otherwise. He steps between her and a vampire gang without hesitation, declaring his block and everyone on it under his protection.
He shudders at the sound of a rib cutter and lets a tiny human woman gross him out over drinks just because it makes her laugh. He warns her about the Fae with the quiet urgency of someone who knows exactly how dangerous the world is and wants desperately to keep her safe from it.
