Dervin
A nervous young beast-tamer based in Keraford, the staging town overwhelmed with thousands of adventurers preparing to venture beyond the Palisade. Scruffy and late-twenties, with medium brown hair and a big furrowed unibrow, he runs his trade from a pondside spot in the old quarter where he handles exotic creatures — his prized stock a giant Veilwood river salamander he was hosing down like a dog with a hose. His other hobby is training birds to make the wrong noises ("really interesting"), and he hawks novelties like "chickens that coo, ducks that cluck." When Eldrich and Lash approached, Dervin grew visibly anxious at the sight of an armoured knight, terrified his possession of a smuggled Veilwood creature would land him in trouble — insisting he'd raised it from an egg rather than gone into the dangerous forest himself.
Despite the jitters, his expertise with animals is genuine and caring. He sold Lash the salamander — Squishy — for 100 gold, with a clicker for tricks and a bag of treats, and warned that the creature must be taught "the song" during its adolescence or it would turn feral and become an apex predator. He gave Lash an extra night to bond with it before the caravan left, and promised her he'd stop raising the smuggled things.
Earlier vault drafts conflated Dervin with the caravan's scarred navigator — they are two different men: Dervin is this Keraford beast-tamer; the navigator (and later traitor) is Durahan. The GM rendered Dervin's name as "Durvan"/"Durban" at the table, and once slipped "Daewynn".
Met in Session 21.