Kessh of the Long Reed – Lizardfolk Marsh Speaker / Diplomatic Warden
“The reed that bends survives the flood. The reed that resists becomes debris.”
Name: Kessh of the Long Reed
Race: Lizardfolk
Role/Class: Marsh Speaker / Diplomatic Warden (Ranger)
Appearance: Kessh is tall and sinewy, his scaled hide a mottled blend of deep green, gray-brown, and algae-dark hues that allow him to vanish among reeds at a distance. His long snout bears ritual notches carved into the horn ridge above his eyes—marks of adulthood and mediation. His amber eyes are unblinking, calculating, and patient.
He wears little armor: a harness of woven reeds, bone clasps, and cured hide, layered to allow free movement through water and brush. Long strips of marsh fiber trail from his shoulders like reed fronds, swaying as he moves. In his hands, he carries a long reed-spear—grown, hardened, and reinforced rather than forged. His presence is silent, deliberate, and unmistakably authoritative.
Backstory
Kessh was hatched in the deepest neutral wetlands—territory claimed by neither settlement nor tribe. From an early age, he was trained not as a hunter or warrior, but as a Speaker, a rare role among his people tasked with maintaining balance between lizardfolk enclaves and the “softskins” who increasingly encroach upon the marsh.
Kessh learned languages, trade customs, and the subtle art of warning without threatening. He has stood between peat crews and nesting grounds, smugglers and sacred pools, ferrymen and territorial hunters. Bloodshed, he believes, is a failure of foresight.
Yet Kessh is not naïve. He knows when words will fail—and when force must remind others that the marsh is not empty land. Those who mistake his calm for weakness rarely make that mistake twice.
