A lean, red-skinned tiefling with swept-back black horns, dark auburn hair cut close at the sides, and gold-flecked eyes that seem almost black in dim light. They stand with their weight balanced on the balls of their feet, as if prepared to move before anyone else notices danger. Their lower canines show slightly when they speak, and when they eat they use small, precise bites, revealing a habit of controlled restraint rather than appetite. Their tail is wrapped once around their ankle when they are seated and curls tightly against their leg when they are thinking.

Quiet, observant, and unfailingly courteous, Zaqir treats every conversation as an intelligence-gathering exercise. They are patient with incompetence if it is useful, but contemptuous of impulsiveness that creates avoidable risk. They genuinely enjoy helping frightened people, though they view gratitude as a form of leverage.

Zaqir Vost was raised in a respectable temple that taught the heavens were orderly because the gods demanded order. They believed it until they found an older prayer hidden behind a loose stone in the sanctuary wall, a hymn to Nyx, the ancient darkness between stars. The prayer did not ask for kindness or salvation. It promised that every empire eventually kneels beneath the quiet sky. Zaqir began copying the hymn by candlelight, first out of curiosity, then devotion, and finally obedience. Their first pact came during an eclipse, when a presence answered from the darkness beyond the temple roof. The entity offered no name, only a command to observe, record, and prepare. Soon afterward, an influential mercantile corporation recruited Zaqir as a chaplain and discreet investigator. The corporation's contracts, warehouses, and charitable foundations conceal a network devoted to controlling trade, information, and eventually government. Zaqir now travels with the party under the guise of a useful religious functionary, quietly reporting on their strengths, weaknesses, loyalties, and susceptibility to manipulation. They believe the corporation is merely the first instrument through which Nyx's greater order will be imposed.