The Ledge Scholar

A dwarven scholar — recorded as Sheree, though the party never caught his name — who has made a tented ledge above the Queen Grabbler's chamber in the Grey Vale Cave his observation post. He studies the Queen through binoculars (never approaching, lest she behave differently), wears wooden clogs he refuses to remove (tied to a childhood foot-trauma — his mother once bound his feet), eats shaped "moss bread," and speaks eight languages. He is, by his own quiet admission, an agent of Laewendas — "someone that works for her" placed to watch the creature — and reveres the Queen as perhaps the last of a unique, imprisoned kind, refusing absolutely to help anyone kill her. Polite, pedantic, and unbothered: "I personally do not hold the Graveler Queen responsible for the people that get gravelled."

His observations of the Queen (shared after a hard-won persuasion): she sleeps ~23½ hours a day; her handler-creatures scavenge hands to bring her, and she grows; she cares for, sings to and cradles the "children" she makes; she goes to the cave mouth every other month but never leaves; and she speaks a language even an eight-tongue polyglot doesn't recognize. He once watched a robed figure with long black hair and gloved hands converse with her for several minutes before she squished him with her tail — very likely the cave's recurring "creepy man."

(Named Sheree — the party never learned it, the transcript only garbles it (Sharb/Sharif/Shareeb). A Laewendas servant, distinct from the mute scholar Otto on a different ledge. See Canon Questions.)

Session 26

• Met on his ledge; warns the party off killing the Queen, calling the people who die to her responsible for entering "the Graveler Cave," and tap-dances in his clogs to prove he can't sneak.
• Confirms the cave's true name is Grey Vale Cave (renamed by locals for the monster) and that he serves, at a remove, Laewendas ("she keeps us safe... that's what the Heralds say").
• Shares his findings on the Queen only after a persuasion 20, and recounts the gloved, black-haired figure who once spoke with her and died for it.
• Otto distrusts him outright, signing that he's a fool and a Laewendas man, and refuses to converse with him.

Session 31

• Watched the whole boss fight like a war correspondent. "The professor" observed the battle from a distance in a "bulletproof vest," taking pictures and writing stuff down — and afterward is pleased, having learned more from watching Caressa fight than in all his time here, with "a notebook full of notes."
• Quietly disapproving, though — he'd have preferred the Queen beat the party so he'd "still have something to watch." Despite serving Laewendas, he made no move to stop her capture.