A lean, ash-skinned tiefling woman with swept-back black horns, ember-red eyes, and a long scar across her left cheek. She keeps her dark hair braided tight for battle, wears polished chain mail with a scarred soldier's cloak over it, and carries herself with crisp, disciplined precision. Her tail is wrapped in leather near the tip, partly to keep it from snagging and partly as a habit from years in the ranks.

Reserved, exacting, and unexpectedly protective, Kassia speaks in clipped, practical sentences and rarely wastes words. She respects competence wherever she finds it, shows courtesy to rank and ritual, and has a dry, understated sense of humor that appears only after she has decided someone is safe.

Kassia Vane was born on the edge of a frontier fort where every shadow drew suspicious eyes. Her fiendish blood made her a convenient omen for frightened villagers, but the garrison cared less for rumor than for whether she could hold a shield line. She could, and she did, with the stubborn efficiency of someone determined to be judged by discipline instead of ancestry. By sixteen she had learned to march in the rain, clean a blade until it shone, and take orders without flinching, even when the sergeants stared too long at her horns. She rose through the ranks because she was dependable, not because she was charming. Kassia became the sort of soldier officers trusted to keep a flank from breaking and the sort of woman recruits followed when panic set in. A campaign gone wrong, and a commander who valued appearances over lives, left her unit scattered and disgraced. Kassia survived by obeying one rule she never abandoned, protect the line, protect the helpless, and never let chaos make the decisions. Now she travels as a sworn blade-for-hire, seeking a cause strict enough to deserve her loyalty and clear enough to justify her steel.