The Immortal Naturalist's Guide to Cryptic Creatures: Marteus Goldhide

This post is part of the Immortal Naturalist's Guide series. The explanation for that series can be found in this post.

    The people who live near the mouth of the Mustard River say that if you ever get lost out in the salt marsh, simply call out for Marteus Goldhide and he will appear to lead you home in exchange for nothing more than a bit of food when you get there. While most brush this off as a fairy tale after a few attempts, it turns out that Marteus Goldhide is real, his hearing is just very bad so he needs to be quite close to hear the calls for help. Despite being hard of hearing, Marteus Goldhide, or Marty, as he likes to be called, is quite affable and makes for a very good travelling companion. The beast knows the salt marsh better than anyone else alive and is able to avoid treacherous areas, or places where dangerous animals tend to be, and he claims to feel an obligation to use his knowledge to help others. When I asked how a gold-scaled lizard the size of a bear like Marty came to be, he explained to me that he has been cursed with his appearance, among other details. 

    Long ago, nearly 1,000 years ago by Marty's reckoning, he insulted a witch and now he is cursed with the appearance of a giant golden lizard, an unnaturally long life, and the inability to leave the salt marsh he now calls home. Marteus Goldhide has chosen to use his curse for good and has become a master of his environment, knowing the properties of all of the plants and animals that call the salt marshes home as well as all of the safe routes through them. In the sunlight, he is able to use his gleaming scales to blind anything that tries to attack and he is capable of using his claws if that fails. Marty is a very gentle soul and is unlikely to attack unless provoked.

    Marty has built up a shelter of sorts over the years by moving whatever large rocks and wood he could find into a ramshackle hut. Inside, he keeps a vast collection of mementos and tokens from those he has helped and befriended in the past. Among his collection are medals from several important people of the past, magical trinkets which are unlike any other in the world, and pieces that hold only sentimental value. Marteus Goldhide's collection is worth a thousand king's ransoms, but I think Marty sees it as even more valuable than that due to the memories associated with each object. If there is anything he would quickly jump to violence to defend, it is his collection of trinkets.