Vess is a lithe, somewhat scrawny half-elf with messy raven hair and skin that looks perpetually smudged with soot. His most striking feature is his eyes, which shift from a calm hazel to a violent, glowing purple when he taps into his magic. He wears layers of dark, oversized clothing scavenged from the city streets, including a worn traveler's cloak that hides his component pouch and multiple hidden pockets for stolen trinkets.

Quick-witted and notoriously unreliable, Vess treats life like a game of chance where the rules are constantly changing. He is friendly but keeps people at an arm's length with jokes and minor illusions. He has a soft spot for other strays and outcasts, but his primary concern is always his own survival and his next interesting discovery.

Born in the gutter of a coastal metropolis, Vess spent his childhood running through sewers and scaling tenement roofs. He never knew his elven mother or human father, raised instead by a network of street urchins. His magic manifested during a botched robbery, where he accidentally turned a local guard's boots into living fish. The incident sent him into hiding, as he realized the chaos in his blood was both a weapon and a curse. He eventually realized that he could influence the world around him simply by wanting it hard enough, though the results were often unpredictable. He left his home city after a particularly bad magical surge turned a local merchant's gold into butterflies. Now, he wanders the world as a freelance sorcerer, looking for a way to master the storm in his heart while making enough coin to finally live the life of luxury he used to watch through palace windows.