In the sodden marshes of the Blackmist, 'survival' is the only word with any weight. To the lizardfolk tribes, the past is a luxury they cannot afford to carry. But Ossuary-Thrum was different. A century ago, while hunting near the edge of the Sunken Spires, he discovered a waterlogged elven scriptorium. While his kin saw only dry tinder, Thrum saw patterns. He spent forty years waist-deep in swamp water, painstakingly drying vellum and teaching himself the 'skitter-scratch' of the soft-skins. He realized that the tragedies of the world are not chaotic storms, but predictable cycles—legal precedents written in blood that the shorter-lived races keep forgetting to read.
Now an ancient among his kind, Thrum has left the swamp to serve as a self-appointed 'Judge of Continuity.' He views the history of the world as a single, massive legal document. When he encounters adventurers, he does not see heroes or villains; he sees witnesses and defendants. He has taken it upon himself to narrate the 'laws of time' to anyone with the patience to listen, punctuating his lessons with the rhythmic thrumming of his tail against the earth, a sound that echoes like a heartbeat in the silence of a library.