Barristan is a thick, muscular hill dwarf with a skin tone like tanned leather. His most prominent features are a massive, bushy black beard and matching wild hair that seems to explode from his head. He refuses to wear armor or shirts, opting only for a pair of rugged, stained leather trousers. He carries a gleaming rapier and a heavy iron-bound shield.

Barristan is jovial but fiercely intense when his blood starts to pump. He rejects the traditional dwarven stoicism in favor of raw emotion and the thrill of the duel. He treats combat like a dance, shouting encouragement to his allies while laughing at the danger, though his sense of discipline from his soldier days still flickers during camp life.

Barristan spent fifty years in the Iron Guard, a disciplined dwarven legion where every movement was regulated by a whistle or a drum. He was an exemplary soldier until the Battle of Broken Pass, where he watched his entire unit fall to a goblin ambush. The trauma triggered something primal within him. He dropped his heavy pike and took up the thin blade of a fallen officer, slaughtering the attackers with a combination of refined swordplay and mindless fury. Since then, Barristan found he could no longer fit into the rigid lines of the military. He abandoned his heavy mail and his duties, choosing to wander the world. He now believes that true strength comes from the balance of a sharp mind and a wild heart. He prefers his shield for safety and his rapier for its reach, but when the rage takes him, he fights with the ferocity of a caged beast, ignoring pain and common sense entirely.