Ricwan is a compact halfling standing just over three feet tall, with wiry strength, quick gray-green eyes, and sandy-brown hair kept short to prevent it from catching on dungeon mechanisms. His left eyebrow bears a thin scar from a spring-loaded dart trap. He wears well-maintained dark leather armor beneath a weathered burgundy travel coat, with a bandolier of tools, chalk, wire, wedges, and tiny mirrors crossing his chest. His hands are calloused from lockpicks and climbing, and he wears soft-soled boots reinforced with hidden metal plates.

Ricwan is alert, practical, and relentlessly curious. He treats every dungeon as a conversation between its builder and its intruders, and he enjoys deciphering that conversation more than he enjoys the treasure at the end. He is quick to make dry observations, slow to trust employers, and incapable of ignoring a poorly designed lock.

Ricwan Keenbeam grew up in a halfling neighborhood built beneath the rattling walkways of a crowded trade city. His family repaired locks, carts, and household mechanisms, but Ricwan was more interested in the devices people used to keep others out. As a teenager, he joined a burglary crew, not because he loved stealing, but because he was fascinated by the puzzles guarding wealthy merchants' vaults. He soon became the crew's trap specialist, learning to recognize the faintest scrape of a pressure plate, the unnatural dust around a hidden tripwire, and the telltale smell of alchemical poison. A disastrous job changed his life. The crew's leader knowingly sent them into a ruin filled with lethal mechanisms and abandoned Ricwan when a collapsing corridor separated him from the others. Ricwan survived by improvising a path through the ruin, but several friends did not. Since then, he has worked as a freelance mercenary, finding lost treasure, opening sealed passages, and disarming traps for adventuring companies that can afford his services. He still occasionally takes jobs from criminals, especially when the target is cruel or exploitative, but he refuses to abandon anyone to a trap he can safely dismantle. Ricwan claims he works for coin, though his conscience has a habit of spending it first.