Carlos is a medium-sized human man with warm brown skin, carefully groomed black hair, and a narrow, well-trimmed mustache. He dresses like a respectable traveling scholar, but every garment is chosen for concealment, comfort, and easy movement. His dark green coat has too many inner pockets, his gloves are spotless, and a silver signet ring hangs from a chain rather than sitting on his finger. He maintains an immaculate appearance with almost theatrical vanity, using polish, perfume, and perfect posture to make people underestimate how quickly he can disappear.

Carlos is charming, observant, and relentlessly practical. He treats every conversation as a negotiation and every room as a puzzle containing exits, witnesses, and opportunities. He is generous toward people who work for a living, contemptuous of pompous collectors, and genuinely enthusiastic when discussing magic, rare artifacts, or clever methods of deception.

Carlos Delgado learned early that a locked door was not a barrier, merely a puzzle that had not yet been solved. Raised in a crowded district where merchants guarded their ledgers more carefully than their children, he became a skilled pickpocket, lookout, and sometime confidence man. His talent for reading people eventually brought him to the attention of a hedge wizard who used him to retrieve rare components and stolen grimoires. Carlos did not become an apprentice through devotion to scholarship. He became one because he realized that magic could turn a modest burglary into a fortune. Now Carlos travels under a succession of respectable aliases, presenting himself as a discreet antiquities broker and collector of unusual curiosities. His stolen treasures are sold through carefully chosen fences, private auctions, and nobles who prefer not to ask where an item came from. His spellbook contains as many notes on provenance, valuation, and escape routes as it does arcane theory. Carlos insists that he is finished with petty crime, though he still steals whenever the prize is interesting enough, the owner is unpleasant enough, or the opportunity is simply too elegant to refuse.