A slender, olive-skinned human man with a softly rounded face, dark brown eyes, and thick black hair beginning to silver at the temples. He dresses like a practical scholar in a patched charcoal coat, a high-collared linen shirt, and sturdy gray trousers. Small brass tags hang from several cords at his belt, each engraved with the name of a deceased former colleague. His hands are ink-stained, his fingernails carefully trimmed, and his expression is patient, attentive, and faintly apologetic, even when speaking to the dead.

Oresti is gentle, unfailingly polite, and deeply earnest. He treats every problem as something that can be improved through documentation, careful observation, and a well-maintained filing system. He has a warm curiosity about other people's lives, but he often asks questions at wildly inappropriate moments because he considers death, grief, and anatomy parts of the same academic continuum.

Oresti Mikeladze grew up above a small apothecary in a crowded river district, where his mother treated fever, burns, and the ordinary injuries of people who could not afford a physician. He learned early that the dead were often less frightening than the living. Corpses did not lie about symptoms, steal medicine, or abandon a patient halfway through treatment. When a plague swept through the district, Oresti survived by helping prepare bodies for burial, recording names, and preserving whatever medical notes he could find. His grief became methodical. His method became study. Eventually, a traveling wizard recognized his talent for memorization and took him on as an assistant. Oresti's first experiment with necromancy was not an act of ambition, but of labor management. A collapsed archive had trapped three scholars beneath fallen stone, and Oresti animated the bodies of long-dead porters to clear the rubble. He was horrified by the smell, the legal complications, and the complaints from the living, but he was also impressed by the skeletons' reliability. They never tired, never demanded hazard pay, and never complained about working conditions. Oresti now travels as an itinerant researcher and emergency labor consultant, convinced that properly treated undead workers can free the living from dangerous, exhausting work. He is sincere about granting them dignity, though his definition of dignity mainly involves clean bones, regular maintenance, and clearly posted schedules.