Drox is a powerfully built male lizardfolk with dark olive-green scales, pale yellow eyes, and a jagged scar across his left shoulder from a harpoon accident. His snout is decorated with small copper rings, and strips of faded sailcloth are tied around his arms and tail. He wears a weather-stained wizard's robe beneath a sailor's coat, with a spellbook sealed in oilskin and a polished driftwood staff topped by a chunk of blue sea glass.

Drox is intensely curious, bluntly practical, and easily distracted by unusual magical effects. He regards most social customs as inefficient rituals, but he is fascinated by stories, superstitions, and the private fears of intelligent creatures. He prefers people who are honest about their motives, even when those motives are selfish.

Drox hatched beneath the mangrove roots of a remote coastal marsh, where his tribe measured worth by survival, practical knowledge, and the ability to read the movements of tide and storm. He was fascinated by the strange patterns left in the water by fish, moons, and distant ships. When a merchant vessel foundered near his tribe's hunting grounds, Drox salvaged a waterlogged spellbook from the wreckage. The book was mostly unreadable, but its diagrams of currents, stars, and elemental forces awakened a relentless curiosity in him. He eventually joined the crew of the Salt-Widow, first as a deckhand and later as an unsettlingly effective navigator. A retired human wizard among the crew taught him the fundamentals of magic in exchange for protection from pirates. Drox learned quickly, treating spells as tools rather than art, and using arcane force to repel boarders, redirect sails, and illuminate reefs. When the Salt-Widow vanished during a storm that seemed to move against the wind, Drox left the sea to investigate the disappearance. He now travels from port to port, seeking forbidden charts, unusual magical phenomena, and any clue that might explain whether the storm was natural, magical, or something that noticed him watching.