Overview
The Current-Carry Lizard Man is the quick, certain hand of The Scale Pool, a scaled, amphibious patient reptilian of the marshes and river deltas who carries the delta's goods and people through the current, the delta's quick, clannish, and most certain hand. It stands nearly two meters tall, watchful and patient, with the kind of certainty that comes from a life measured in kept carries rather than years. Where the Pool-Sense lizard men feel the pool, the Current-Carry lizard men of the delta carry the current, and they have been carrying the first load in the first delta for a very long time.
Habitat
The Current-Carry Lizard Man keeps to the outer pools of The Scale Pool, a range of scaled, river-fed ground where the delta is a promise and the pool is a treaty. Its dwellings are coaxed into the faces of the marsh-banks, hollows of packed silt and laid stone that catch the warm marsh-light on their inner face and the shelter of the pool on their outer. It favors the outer pools where the current runs widest and the carrying is widest, the places where a load can be carried without the delta's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
A Current-Carry Lizard Man stands about 1.92 m tall, long and watchful, with green-brown, olive-scaled hide that reads as bright in the warm marsh-light. Its jaw carries the bone-white band, a deliberate mark worn as a record of the long art of the carrying, and its belly is dark mud, the color of the delta's own glow at dusk. Its eyes are pale gold, bright and certain beneath the brow, and they hold still in a way that no other eye in the marsh does. It wears a patchwork of leather and reed in muted green and olive and carries a single pool-stone at its belt, set with a single current-loop at the brow, the loop of a carrier.
Behaviour
The Current-Carry Lizard Man is quick, clannish, and profoundly certain, a creature of long carries and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It waits before it carries, often for hours, waiting on a pool or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of the current, and only then does it carry, and then with an exactness that feels rehearsed over years. It is not unkind, but it is not easily moved, and a debt named by a Current-Carry lizard man is a debt the delta will keep long after the carrier has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Current-Carry lizard man is no open-ground fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the carry and the current itself, not force. Its primary defense is the water, for it knows every corner of the outer pools and can lead a pursuer through The Scale Pool until the pursuit loses its nerve and its footing in the silt. Should it be forced to act, a Current-Carry lizard man is quick and precise, 7 m/s in the current and low, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, cutting a root, dimming a light, or carrying a pool until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Current-Carry lizard man is attuned to the long word of the current, for the current is the carrying and the carrying is the whole of its power, and a lizard man that has a delta and a pool and a current does not need a spell that is not its own. It is not attuned to any art that is not the current, and it is not bound by any word that is not its own, and the not being bound is the whole of its way of being free. Its one signature thing is the carrying, which is not a magic but is a thing that the lizard men of the delta have carried for a very long time, and the carrying is the current, and the current is the whole of its power.
Society
The Current-Carry Lizard Men live in The Scale Pool in clannish, quick clans of perhaps four or five, bound by the carries they keep together rather than by blood or by place, and the eldest keeper among them is honored as the Deep Current. There is no elder and no ruler beyond the Deep Current, for a lizard man that has carried the most and kept the most is simply the one the others listen to, and the listening is a carry and the carry is the whole of their society.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Current-Carry Lizard Man is a culture of the kept carry, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is quick and clannish is the only honest word in the delta. They keep no records, for a lizard man that has kept a carry does not need a record, the carrying is the record, and the carrying is quick and clannish and does not fade. Their stories are slow and quick, told at the pool at the dusk, and they are stories of carries kept and currents carried and the quick, clannish difference between them, told in a voice that is barked and means every carrying.
Home
The Scale Pool is the Current-Carry lizard man's home and its carrying, a range of scaled, river-fed ground where the delta is a promise and the pool is a treaty, where the lizard men carry their loads and their quick, clannish words. It is a strange and quick place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Current-Carry lizard man has learned to live inside that delta rather than against it. The warm marsh-light that runs up through the outer pools is the delta's own, a soft olive glow that the lizard men have come to read as the color of a kept carry.
Relations
The Current-Carry Lizard Man keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of The Scale Pool, a truce of kept carries that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the delta. To the warm marsh-light of the outer pools the Current-Carry lizard man is a quick, clannish, and absolutely certain presence, a gold-eyed carrier that is at home in the pools and in the current, and the light has learned to glow wide and let the carries pass, for a lizard man that has carried you has decided you are a promise and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the delta, the Current-Carry Lizard Man is the quick, clannish edge of the tale, the place where the carries are kept and a pool is felt and a carrying is read. It is the figure that carries a new load in the dusk and holds the current very quick and very certain, and the figure that, when the truce with the pool-sensing lizard men grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old carry quick and clannish and absolutely certain.