Otto

A mute scholar-historian trapped (by choice) deep in the Grey Vale Cave, camped on a ledge by a campfire. He communicates only in Handspeak sign language — Silithane is the one party member who can translate — which makes him terrified of the cave's hand-monster above all others: lose his hands and he loses his only voice. He is no fighter but a remarkable climber (five pull-ups off a 2 mm fingertip-hold), and could leave the cave any time; he stays because he means to go deeper, to find the prison of seven cells he believes the vanished pre-Rivalon race sealed beneath the cave. A historian by vocation, he wants to understand what those people were and what they thought worthy of imprisoning — and idly wonders whether freeing imprisoned "gods" might give Orathos "more options than just the Flame Queen."

(Name rendered "Otto"; spoken a handful of times, spelling a best guess. Almost certainly the wall-licking "scholar of the mysteries of the past" Jaxley described in Sessions 23–24.)

Session 25

• Met on his ledge; signs his history to Silithane, who relays it. Two months trapped, by choice, seeking the seven-cell prison below.
• Hires Thalia (a contractually-bound courier) to deliver a package "to the prison downstairs," paying a coin purse and a bag — flipping the whole party's stance toward descending.
• Asks to accompany the party into the under-cave (he's ventured down "once or twice" but found it too frightening alone); the party leaves him resting with the Mush Mother while they fight the gobblers.
• His "prison" lines up with Thalia's Primeval Awareness, which senses seven significant creatures (the Queen above, six below) — and with Otto's belief it may be a "prison-temple to worship imprisoned gods."

Session 26

• Refuses to speak with the ledge scholar who studies the Queen, signing that the man is a fool and a Laewendas servant.
• Lost. When the Queen wakes and chases the water-group, Otto dives with them — but he was never included in Silithane's Water Breathing (Magra wrongly believed he was). As the slowest creature he is caught and de-handed by the Queen while the others escape into the under-prison.
• His undelivered package and Thalia's oath to carry it "to the prison" are left unfulfilled. No handless body is found — a thin hope he might somehow be alive.

Session 27

• Mourned as dead. With the party reunited in the under-prison, Magra apologises for telling him to dive without the Water Breathing, and the group concludes he is almost certainly dead — the very death they heard the Queen inflict (grimly rationalised by the trapped father as "some poor schmuck with lung cancer"). His delivery and Thalia's oath remain undone; the thin hope that he survived persists only because no handless body has surfaced.