Slymaw is a tall, rangy female gnoll with tawny-gold fur mottled by dark brown spots across her shoulders, muzzle, and forearms. Her ears are large and expressive, one notched from childhood, and her amber eyes become almost luminous when she is frightened or enraged. She wears a patched crimson carnival sash over travel-stained clothes, a heavy belt of tied bone charms, and a battered scholar's satchel stuffed with notes, charcoal rubbings, and half-chewed quills. Her greataxe is wrapped in strips of old lecture banners from Blackstaff Tower.

Slymaw is openly affectionate, intensely loyal, and incapable of pretending not to be interested in something. She treats books as treasure, scholars as potentially edible but usually tolerable, and every new friend as someone who should be guarded from danger. She is clever in practical situations but socially literal, often answering metaphors as though they were field instructions. Her laughter comes easily, but so do sudden flashes of fear when enclosed spaces, distorted voices, or carnival music remind her of dreams she cannot fully remember.

Slymaw Hyghback was seven when a flock of waterfowl led her away from her forest clan and across the soggy northern edge of Highstar Lake. She had been chasing them with a half-eaten femur bone in her jaws, certain that persistence would eventually make the birds land somewhere sensible. Instead, she became lost, soaked, terrified, and too embarrassed to admit that she had no idea how to get home. A half-elf hunter named Yohrn found her curled beside the lake, chewing the bone down to a smooth knob while making sounds that were equal parts sobbing and hysterical cackling. After several bites, two bruises, and considerable patience, Yohrn and his wife adopted her. Slymaw kept the rounded piece of bone, naming it her stone bone, because it was the last thing she had touched before leaving her parents behind.