Clod
A mud mephit who had set up shop at Durok Deepseeker’s sacred spring and treated the warm-ground anomaly in the middle of a frozen apocalypse as a perfectly reasonable place to conduct commerce. Three feet tall, squat, vestigial wings, cheerful in the manner of someone who expects every transaction to eventually balance out. He sold things. He acquired things. He evaluated offers with the seriousness of a merchant who knows his own stock.
Dr. Medicine evaluated him back, and offered a dagger and a title: guardian of a whole mountain. Clod accepted both. This is the important part to understand. He accepted the dagger as the guardian’s dagger, took the role at face value, and left for the mountain. He treated the commission exactly as given.
He returned several weeks later — drier than a mud creature should be comfortable being, which says something about the distance traveled. He had fulfilled his contract. The mountain had been pleased with him, and had offered gifts: hands, through the cracks in the stones. Many hands. All the same kind. Clod had no use for hands. He told the mountain no. The mountain kept offering. He left.
He returned the dagger to Dr. Medicine with the finality of a transaction properly closed: the dagger was the guardian’s dagger, Clod had been the guardian, Clod was done, and so Dr. Medicine — who had set the terms — was now guardian of the mountain. Clod wished him luck with the hands. The Coldpeak tribe prepared a small dinner for the visiting dignitary. The diplomacy went smoothly. He departed back into the tundra.
Harbinger of the Mountain Over There
He came back. In Session 11 he was waiting outside Renier’s shelter, delighted and in a hurry: the mountain was ready for Dr. Medicine now, it was time for him to take over as guardian, and “nothing ever will have been.” In Session 12 he led the party into the mountain and translated for Arveth as best he could. He offered her name as something like Quality Storage Solutions and admitted he might be paraphrasing. When it was done, he presented the Guardian of the Mountain with what solemnity a small mud creature can manage.
He has a title now and uses it every chance he gets. In Session 16 he fluttered down outside Coldpeak and handed Father Joseph a plain brown pebble from the mountain to bury at the center of the camp.