A small forest gnome with russet-brown skin, a square jaw, and a grin that reveals one noticeably silver-capped front tooth. Their dark green coat is two sizes too large, cinched with mismatched cords and carefully patched at every pocket. Their boots are soft-soled and over-polished, while their single treasured item is a blue glass button sewn into the left cuff. They carry themselves like someone who is always listening for a lock to click.

Tiv is quick-witted, watchful, and disarmingly polite. They treat conversation like a card game, rarely answering a question directly when a better question can be asked in return. Beneath the practiced charm is a sincere tenderness toward frightened people, lost children, failed criminals, and anyone trying to become someone new.

Tiv was raised among the root-houses of Brackenmere, where forest gnomes traded carved charms, mushroom dyes, and carefully exaggerated stories with passing merchants. Tiv discovered early that a convincing lie was simply a tool with no moral alignment of its own. They became a talented mimic, lockpicker, and document forger, passing as a courier, minor heir, and once, disastrously, a tax assessor. The last identity earned Tiv a week in a grain cellar and a lifelong distrust of official seals. Their life changed when Tiv forged travel papers for a frightened child fleeing a noble household. The papers worked, but the child vanished before Tiv could learn whether they reached safety. Since then, Tiv has used deception less for profit and more for escape, sabotage, and protection. Their arcane talent emerged through an obsession with manipulating small things from a distance, first spoons, then keys, then the quills of people writing warrants. Tiv now travels under several names, searching for the missing child and quietly dismantling the network that made such disappearances profitable.