Neris is a lean half-elf woman with weather-browned skin, narrow hazel eyes, and thick dark hair threaded with premature silver at the temples. Her pointed ears are marked by tiny charcoal burns from childhood work around the kilns. She wears a patched gray-green traveling coat over practical forest clothes, with a crystal arcane focus tied beneath her collar and a weathered spellbook bound in pale birch bark. A white stag is inked on the inside of her left wrist, its antlers formed from tiny celestial glyphs.

Neris is patient, watchful, and unsettlingly attentive. She notices small changes in people's voices and surroundings, then quietly files them away for later. She is compassionate toward the lost, suspicious of institutions, and more comfortable beneath trees than beneath a roof. Though she can seem distant, she has a dry sense of humor and a fierce instinct to protect anyone who reminds her of the frightened child she once was.

Neris Vey was born in a small logging settlement on the edge of the Greydell Forest, the daughter of a human charcoal burner and an elven peddler who never stayed long in one place. She grew up knowing the smell of smoke, sap, wet wool, and old roads. Her mother taught her fragments of Elvish songs and the habit of watching the horizon, while her father taught her how to read a fire by its color. Neris was quiet but observant, forever noticing patterns in ash, bird flight, and the way certain trees leaned toward moonlight. At thirteen, she followed a white stag beyond the familiar trails and vanished into the woods. She expected to die of cold, but instead found a hidden stone shrine where the Veiled Concord, a circle of divine sorcerer-saints, had gathered in secret. They told her that the forest had not claimed her. It had delivered her to them. Neris remained with the Concord for seven years, learning that magic was not always a matter of command. Some spells were questions asked of the world, and some answers arrived before the question was spoken. Their teachings led her toward wizardry, especially divination, though she still carries the saints' belief that knowledge is a sacred burden rather than a personal possession. She has recently left the shrine to investigate why omens around the Greydell have begun contradicting one another.