Jaxley

A hunter who wandered into the Grey Vale Cave thinking he was tracking a bear, found the all-hands monster instead, and was sealed on the far side of the chasm when the crevice collapsed behind him. He survived for an unknown long stretch by licking moss and water off the cave walls, too frightened to make the jump back while the pit was still small. Rescued by the party in Session 23, he is the chief source of the cave's lore.

His knowledge: the Queen/Mother Grabbler lives at the bottom of the pit and births new drones ("100 hands makes a Grabber, 100 Grabbers makes a queen"); the hand-creatures cannot climb ladders (they have no feet); they home on sound and vibration; and survival means staying quiet, staying high, and hugging the walls. Other people are still trapped down there with him.

(He calls himself "Jax," colliding with the PC Jex; rendered "Jaxley" by the GM.)

Session 23

• Found by an invisible Valmora on the chasm's far side as she crossed with the rope; eagerly begged to be carried out.
• Walked across the party's rope/ski-lift (a Grabbler leaping and missing en route), tumbled into the campfire, and was saved — then pleaded with the party to rescue the others still trapped: a wall-licking scholar and the Huffley father and son, stranded across the acid pool.
• Explained the Queen Grabbler, the ladder weakness, and the sound-luring that shapes the party's plan to fight the drones.

Session 24

• In the Grabbler fight, slung rocks badly — a nat 1 put a rock into his own head, and his only landed shot was 2 damage on a dying drone — and he broke two of his own ribs taking grabbler body-shots; Thalia healed him with thorn-vine magic. (The GM's line "it'd be funny if in this combat all he did was hit himself, hit Magra, and get hit" was a hypothetical he never managed; Magra's friendly-fire damage came from the Grabbler's Point pulling Valmora's Toll the Dead and Jex's arrow onto her.)
• Gave his departing lore-dump: the cave's smuggler's-den past (before Laewendas "decriminalized crime"), the 4–6 safe ladder-ledges, the grabblers stripping victims' hands for the bounty-proof, the other trapped souls (the scholar, the Huffley father and son, and a silent third man), and a robed, gangly "creepy man" with "weird little wood friends" who comes and goes — last seen going in, never out.
• Declined to venture deeper; stays in Valmora's camp until the party leaves.