Miran is a broad-shouldered half-elf with weathered olive skin, a strong nose, dark brown eyes, and thick black hair beginning to silver at the temples. A jagged scar runs from his left eyebrow to his cheek, a souvenir from a palace ambush. His old royal guard cloak has been cut down into a battered shoulder mantle, and his chain mail is polished in some places and permanently stained with soot in others. He carries himself like a man still expecting an attack, even when drunk.

Miran is charming in the rough, disarming strangers with courtly manners one moment and baiting them into a wrestling match the next. He has a sharp eye for danger, a soft spot for frightened people, and a competitive streak that turns every game into a test of character. He hates being pitied more than he hates being insulted.

Miran Ostavari was raised in the palace district of a prosperous border kingdom, the son of an elven laundress and a human caravan guard. He learned early that protection was not about looking fearless. It was about noticing the servant carrying a suspicious tray, the courtier who stopped smiling, or the child who wandered too close to a ceremonial blade. His patience, strength, and unusual ability to read a room brought him into the king's household guard, where he eventually became one of the monarch's personal bodyguards. His fall began with a victory celebration that lasted three nights. Miran drank beyond sense, gambled away his pay, and answered an insult with a chair. By dawn, the tavern was wrecked, its kitchen fire had spread to the roof, and half the town was watching him stumble into the street. The king dismissed him publicly, not only for the destruction but because Miran had endangered the reputation of the crown he once guarded. Since then, he has drifted from tavern to tavern, earning coin at dice, cards, wrestling bouts, and bare-knuckled fights. Beneath the bravado and hangovers, he still watches every doorway, and he cannot quite stop protecting people who remind him of the king he failed.