Cornwallis the Gnomish Artificer

Cornwallis was not terribly well liked by his interplanar travelling companions, but he was tolerated until one day when they had used a gate into another world, finding themselves in an archeological excavation.

After engaging the locals in a bit of a scuffle, he decided to set off an incendiary near the support beams of the excavation, threatening to collapse everything. At this point, the best idea for quenching the flames that came to mind was to use the gate deeper underground to open to the bottom of a previously discovered lake...

Needless to say, it didn't end well. He survived the collapse, barely, as well as the combustion of all the alchemical fire bottles he'd crushed when he landed. He survived the wrath of his party by an even smaller margin, and upon the group's rescue by a team of kobolds the party exiled him on pain of death(and pain).

Essentially, he lived by sheer deus ex machina, but since that was required to save the innocent members of the party from sharing his fate...