Toad is a man who looks more like a patch of moss than a scholar. He wears heavy, mud-stained green robes that are frayed at the hem, and his hair is a wild tangle of brown curls often housing small bits of duckweed. He has wide, observant eyes and a perpetual smudge of dirt on his nose.

He is intensely curious but possesses the patience of a log in a stream. Toad speaks with a slow, croaking cadence, often pausing to watch a passing insect mid-sentence. He values the preservation of forgotten marshes over the preservation of dusty books, though he still keeps meticulous journals of everything he sees.

Toad began his life as Silas, a dedicated apprentice at the Oakhaven Conservatory of Natural History. He spent a decade categorizing rare flora, but he grew disillusioned with the way the masters kept nature trapped within glass jars. He realized that the true secrets of the world were not in the texts, but in the living, breathing rot of the wetlands that the other scholars avoided. One rainy night, he took his journals and walked into the Great Mire, never looking back. In the swamp, he found a deeper connection to the earth than any library could offer. He was taken in by a circle of druids who taught him that life thrives best in the places people fear to step. Now, he travels to record the fast-disappearing wonders of the wild, blending his academic rigor with the raw, chaotic power of the marsh. He adopted the name Toad when he realized he preferred the company of amphibians to that of his former peers.