Tavi Korda is a small rock gnome with iron-gray hair cropped close at the sides and brushed forward in an untidy fringe. His skin is warm brown, his eyes are dark and alert, and his broad nose gives him a perpetually skeptical expression. He smells faintly of lamp oil, old paper, and the bitter herbs he uses to settle his stomach, a combination he assumes nobody notices. He wears a patched blue-gray coat with too many inner pockets, sturdy work trousers, and brass spectacles that are usually perched on his forehead instead of over his eyes. Tavi takes up more social space than his height suggests, leaning across tables, interrupting pauses, and standing on chairs without asking.

Tavi is curious, practical, and cheerfully intrusive. He treats conversation like a workshop, testing ideas aloud and tightening them through argument. He is quick to help someone solve a problem, but less quick to notice when the problem was emotional rather than mechanical. Tavi dislikes ceremony, inherited authority, and people who use large words to conceal small thoughts.

Tavi Korda grew up in a family of clockmakers and brass-fitters in a crowded gnome quarter where every wall carried the tick, hiss, or chime of some unfinished invention. He was a poor craftsman but an excellent questioner. Tavi wanted to know why a spring remembered tension, why certain inks faded under moonlight, and why a simple household charm worked better when engraved in three places instead of one. His curiosity eventually brought him to a provincial academy, where he served as a copyist, errand-runner, and unofficial repairman for scholars who were too proud to admit they had broken their own apparatus.