Dero Shroake

  Caldero "Dero" Shroake is one of the two deuteragonists & main heroes of Railsea, the other being his older sister Caldera.

Personality
Being 10-12 years old, Dero is (understandably) more obnoxious than the other main characters, & has a penchant for making jokes on very inappropriate occasions. Like Caldera, he will do anything he has to do to reach the end of the railsea, though unlike Caldera, what they find there does not seem to confuse or dissatisfy him.

Appearance
WIP

Character Arc
Near the beginning of the story, Sham discovers photographs in a (slightly) old trainwreck depicting a much younger Dero & Caldera with two of their parents (having found the skeletons of said parents in the wreck as well), & sets out to find them in order to tell them what happened. In person, Dero is first introduced shortly before his sister, in Manihiki. He is very suspicious of Sham at first & snaps at him to go away, due to the amount of people who regularly attempt to spy on him & his family, & while he becomes more friendly towards him when he admits he came to tell him & Caldera something important about their parents, he lets this on less than Caldera does.

Though slightly stricken upon learning about what happened, Dero agrees to leave Manihiki with Caldera to finish their parents' quest, & helps her spread rumors about a false leaving date.

Dero spends the next several weeks crossing the railsea on his family's very high-tech train & trying to help Caldera avoid getting wrecked by various animals, & by other trains, & trying to ditch any persuers. He & Caldera come very close to being wrecked by an owl, at one point, however manage to not get wrecked by the owl.

After a long & difficult journey, ultimately helped by the Medes (which has been taken over by Sham) & the Bajjer tribe, Dero reaches the bridge to Heaven, however the Medes is being persued by the Manihiki ferronavy, which is being persued by the guardian angel--& all of these trains are being chased by Mocker-Jack.The angel destroys the Manihiki train, & nearly destroys the Medes, however is wrecked by Mocker-Jack (who dies wrecking it). The Medes continues as far as the other, now-dead guardian angel blocking the bridge.

At this point, Dero is quite impatient to get over the bridge, ultimately accompanied by Sham & Naphi as well as by Caldera. During the trek over the bridge, Dero jokes about the four of them being shaken off by the trains, & speculates over whether or not they would fall off if it rained. It takes them several days to get across, however they eventually arrive in Heaven--a ghost town, which has clearly been so for a very long time. While Caldera rummages through the abandoned houses in confusion, Dero is enthusiastic & immediately runs off to explore the ghost town, finding the actual ocean, which had been hidden from the world, likely by the people who made the railsea.

After a fight between the degenerative gods & the Shroakes & the Medes crew (who had arrived on the dead angel, rigged by Sirocco to become functional again), Dero decides to go off to sea with Caldera, Sham, & Naphi.