Cicero is a lean half-elf with weather-browned skin, shoulder-length dark hair bound with strips of red wool, and striking metallic-gold eyes. His pointed ears are decorated with small iron rings taken from abandoned roadside shrines. He wears a patched leather coat over travel-stained gray cloth, with a red prayer cord wrapped around his left wrist. His hands are calloused from bowstring, axe haft, and winter road work.

Cicero is observant, dryly humorous, and genuinely attentive to people who are usually ignored. He asks laborers about their tools, cooks about their ingredients, and children about the games they invent. He dislikes grand speeches but remembers small details with unsettling accuracy. Though skeptical of organized religion, he is not cynical about kindness and will cross dangerous ground to repay a minor favor.

Cicero Bloodwave was born in Keldrig, a remote village built around a stone shrine to a northern sun deity. His eyes opened gold, bright as polished brass, and the village elders declared him a divine sign. For years, every ordinary act became sacred in the eyes of others. When he sneezed, omens were recorded. When he stumbled, sermons were revised. His parents were proud, but Cicero gradually learned that holiness was often used to excuse hunger, cruelty, and neglect. The village praised the gods loudly while quietly abandoning the sick, the indebted, and anyone who could not contribute enough grain. At nineteen, Cicero left with a bow, a prayer cord, and a half-finished book of village doctrine. He joined a border warden who taught him to read tracks, follow weather, and distinguish a frightened animal from a dangerous one. His travels have taken him through logging camps, plague roads, battlefield settlements, and wealthy cities where poverty hides behind clean walls. He still knows the old prayers, but now he says them beside people rather than above them. Cicero wanders to learn what the faithful never taught him, what common people endure, what they need, and whether divinity has anything to do with gold in a person's eyes.