Overview
The Pool-Sense Lizard Man is the clannish, certain wait of The Scale Pool, a scaled, amphibious patient reptilian of the marshes and river deltas who feels the pool-sense and waits for everything, the delta's clannish, territorial, and most certain wait. It stands nearly two meters tall, watchful and patient, with the kind of certainty that comes from a life measured in kept waits rather than years. Where the bat men of the caverns read the echo, the Pool-Sense lizard men of the delta feel the pool, and they have been feeling the first pool in the first delta for a very long time.
Habitat
The Pool-Sense Lizard Man keeps to the deep 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 deeper pools where the current runs oldest and the waiting is oldest, the places where a wait can be kept without the delta's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
A Pool-Sense Lizard Man stands about 1.98 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 waiting, 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 keeper.
Behaviour
The Pool-Sense Lizard Man is clannish, territorial, and profoundly certain, a creature of long waits and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It waits before it acts, 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 act, 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 Pool-Sense lizard man is a debt the delta will keep long after the keeper has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Pool-Sense lizard man is no open-ground fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the wait and the pool itself, not force. Its primary defense is the water, for it knows every corner of the deep 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 Pool-Sense lizard man is precise and patient, 6 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 holding a pool until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Pool-Sense lizard man is attuned to the long word of the water, for the water is the waiting and the waiting 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 water, 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 waiting, which is not a magic but is a thing that the lizard men of the delta have waited for a very long time, and the waiting is the current, and the current is the whole of its power.
Society
The Pool-Sense Lizard Men live in The Scale Pool in clannish, patient clans of perhaps four or five, bound by the waits 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 waited the most and kept the most is simply the one the others listen to, and the listening is a wait and the wait is the whole of their society.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Pool-Sense Lizard Man is a culture of the kept wait, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is clannish and territorial is the only honest word in the delta. They keep no records, for a lizard man that has kept a wait does not need a record, the waiting is the record, and the waiting is clannish and territorial and does not fade. Their stories are slow and patient, told at the pool at the dusk, and they are stories of waits kept and currents felt and the clannish, territorial difference between them, told in a voice that is barked and means every waiting.
Home
The Scale Pool is the Pool-Sense lizard man's home and its waiting, a range of scaled, river-fed ground where the delta is a promise and the pool is a treaty, where the lizard men keep their waits and their clannish, territorial words. It is a strange and patient place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Pool-Sense lizard man has learned to live inside that delta rather than against it. The warm marsh-light that runs up through the deep pools is the delta's own, a soft olive glow that the lizard men have come to read as the color of a kept wait.
Relations
The Pool-Sense Lizard Man keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of The Scale Pool, a truce of kept waits 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 deep pools the Pool-Sense lizard man is a clannish, territorial, and absolutely certain presence, a gold-eyed keeper that is at home in the pools and in the current, and the light has learned to glow wide and let the waitings pass, for a lizard man that has kept you has decided you are a promise and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the delta, the Pool-Sense Lizard Man is the clannish, territorial edge of the tale, the place where the waits are kept and a current is felt and a waiting is read. It is the figure that keeps a new wait in the dusk and holds the pool very clannish and very certain, and the figure that, when the truce with the current-carrying lizard men grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old wait clannish and territorial and absolutely certain.