Kargut is a broad-shouldered goliath standing just over seven feet tall, with slate-gray skin marked by pale mineral-colored birth patterns along his arms and jaw. His black hair is kept in tight cords secured with bits of hammered brass, and a short, square beard frames a face more thoughtful than fierce. He wears weathered hide armor beneath a red military sash, carries a massive greataxe, and keeps four javelins bundled across his back. His left forearm bears an old scar from a mountain pass ambush.

Kargut is deliberate, observant, and unexpectedly scholarly for a battlefield barbarian. He studies maps, remembers every name he is told, and prefers practical questions to boasts. He is gentle with animals and children, but becomes blunt and immovable when someone in authority treats ordinary people as expendable.

Kargut Gaketu was raised among the high crags where goliath families measure worth by endurance, useful work, and whether a person returns for those who cannot keep pace. He was an unusually curious child, more interested in the names of distant valleys and the logic of old fortifications than in contests of strength. That curiosity made him valuable when a lowland commander recruited a band of goliaths as scouts and mountain infantry. Kargut learned discipline, battlefield geometry, and the grim difference between an order that protects people and an order that merely protects a banner. His service ended at a narrow pass where his unit was commanded to abandon a village during a retreat. Kargut disobeyed, held the pass with six wounded soldiers, and brought the villagers through the snow before the enemy arrived. The survivors called it courage, while his commander called it treason. Kargut left the army with his insignia, his scar, and a conviction that strength is only honorable when it is placed between danger and the helpless. Now he travels as a sellsword and guardian, seeking work that lets him choose whom his axe protects.