Squishy

Lash's salamander companion — a Veilwood river salamander (an axolotlan-familiar "elemander"), bought and tamed in Keraford. Roughly 10 feet long and up to 4 feet high when it rears (usually low to the ground), aquatic, venomous (a bite would be lethal at full size), and covered in what looks like moving seaweed; ~28 HP, weak to-hit but solid damage. Playful and dog-like, deeply bonded to whoever raised it from the egg. Originally named "Squishy" by its previous owner ("on account of his squishy brain"); Lash also calls it Salamundi. It now pulls the party's land boat and serves as a giant-lizard-cum-warhorse mount.

Crucially, these creatures turn feral and predatory at adulthood unless raised with the calming song Lash's people sing — exactly the kind that lived in the lake of her axolotlan home in the Veilwood.

Session 21

• Found being hosed down by the beast-tamer Dervin, who'd hatched it from a found egg with no idea it was a smuggled Veilwood predator (and no idea of the song).
• Lash bought it for 100 gold (extracting Dervin's promise to stop raising the things), stayed an extra night in Keraford to teach it the song herself, and folded it into the caravan as the land boat's puller.

Session 22

• Trundled along on the road and at the inn — mistaken for a "nice dog," reported to love digging (volunteered to help dig Tony's grave), and Lash proposed it eat the dead spy Tycho. The GM's objection was to doing it in the middle of a settlement, where onlookers would kill the salamander — so Lash stripped the body and dragged it off into the bushes first.

Session 23

• Trailed blood at Lash's side after the Tycho looting — and it did eat him. Lash's flat "we ate all the Tycho" prompted a feral-instinct check for having been fed sentient flesh; a 15 meant it resisted the call to violence, and its diet stays bugs and crustaceans.

Session 24

• Snapped at a Grabbler in the fight (missing) and, dog-like, tried to leap at the one bouncing 35 ft overhead.
• Carried Lash across the chasm (tail hooked to the rope) and swam the flooded passage alongside her to scout the sunken tomb — its powerful tail guiding them deep and back.

Session 25

• Fought in the gobbler skirmish: Lash sent it up with a d6 bonus die to bite (her bonus action) while she Helped Silithane.
• Padded along through the cave exploration — the Mush Mother's sprout-children clambered on it, and it ferried Lash where the water ran deep.

Session 29

• Trundled along at Lash's side through the council room (rendered "Salamandine" all session); briefly proposed to be given little horse-armor / barding, and was teased by the caged ghouls as Lash flicked at their reaching hands "like playing with cat claws."

Session 31

• Fought in the Queen Grabbler battle (rendered "Salamandine"/"Salamundine"): stealthed in beside Lash, 1v1'd a Grabbler, ate a 25-damage tail-swipe and a 50-ft fling (absorbed by a dodge), and dashed in repeatedly to bite Caressa — pumping out a solid 40–50 damage over the fight, including the "true finisher" bite on a faking-dead Grabbler at the end.

Session 38

• Beneath Tony's notice. Introduced to the new anteater, he was looked at once, registered as not-an-ant, and dropped — Tony wandered off to nose ants out from under the petals instead. (He ate no anteater: that was a joke floated at the table before the second anteater had even been bought, and both animals are alive and counted afterwards.)
• On the Guardian hunt: Lash dosed it with a cure potion (granting advantage, so it passed both the poison and venom saves), it took 12 necrotic from the needle nova, and swept its tail to clear a patch of the blinding dirt.

Session 44

• Bonding and barding. Spends the Ponterford downtime in evening training with Lash, who consults the smiths Big Finn and the otter Yuko on a set of lightweight barding for it (metal's fine if light enough not to drown the swimmer) to bump its modest AC and HP — a project for after Lash's training. ~80 lbs, "two-thirds the size of a saber-tooth," with its long tail.

Session 49

• The wall in front of Jex. Fought the silent badeedle brood at the mine cliff (rendered "Salamandine"), tail-swatting drones and screening the ranged party while Lash fed it inspiration dice. Lacking grippy fingers, it had to be hauled up the cliff by Lash via the fossil "dragon tail," slowing her climb.

Session 50

• Beast of burden. Inside the mine disguise plan (rendered "Salamandine"), it carries Lash's backpack — with Jex hidden inside — so Lash looks like a labourer with a pack-animal rather than a porter. "Looks like a beast of burden."
• The document-eater. Plays its part in the decree forgery: told to gnaw the trailing end of the scroll Silithane holds up to the mine-guards, helping keep them from reading the forged "orders" too closely before they lower the hoist.
• The shark's chomp. In the flooded lower cavern, rather than be carried it swims the passage — and a resident shark takes an 8-damage bite out of it before Lash drives the shark off with Aquan intimidation (a nose-bop) instead of a fight. It treads water, waits out the rescue, and climbs the far side with Lash's help.

Session 54

• In the dragon fight. Tail-attacked the bone dragon under Lash's empowerment for 11 bludgeoning, then took an 18-damage bite near the end — surviving only because Fenric, prone himself, had crawled 5 feet earlier in the fight to pour a healing potion into him for 3 hit points. Those 3 points were worth two death saves. He now wears armour, which the GM had forgotten and was pleased about: "oh, because he has armour now, let's go!"
• Levelled hard. At the long rest Lash spent her entire level-8 feat on him — Advanced Beast Training: +4 to all damage rolls, +3 AC, +3 to all saving throws, and hit points scaling at 4× Lash's level over an 18 base, putting his maximum at 50. She turned down Beast Boxcar, the joke feat that teaches a companion to operate land vehicles, brackets trains, despite sustained GM lobbying ("you don't know the power of a train yet — Salamandine drives a train into an enemy"). Only the piercing half of his Venomous Bite scales; the poison rider does not.
• Learned to lick his wounds. Foundry has nowhere to put hit dice on an NPC sheet, and clicking the button broke his health outright — so the GM spent twenty minutes and gave him a proper long-rest self-heal instead. In fiction: after a lifetime of never getting hurt, a couple of months of getting beaten up has taught him to look after himself. Lash now tracks a current healing line on his sheet.
• Also floated and unresolved: blading or silvering his tail, since it is his weapon and currently does nothing but bludgeon.

Session 55

• Somebody finally noticed how big he is. Silithane, seeing him properly for the first time in months: "Jesus, what happened to him? He's big." Lash, flatly: "He's always been this big… just a little bit bigger than me." Then, catching up with herself — "he was a young one when we got him. He's probably just growing up." He is casually carrying something on the order of a 200-lb weight in his mouth.
• Flagged as an enemy by the software. In the Morkid fight Foundry categorised both him and Polos as hostiles on the initiative tracker. Nobody fixed it. "Not to me," said Lash.
• Punched at, missed. The Morkid took a spiteful swing at him on its way past and rolled a 17, which wasn't enough. "Just punch a dog on the way out, there's no need for that."