Varkesh Root-Sunder is a narrow, fox-faced man who looks half carved from river driftwood and half stitched together from swamp refuse. His skin is bark-brown with pale green veining that shows through at the wrists and throat like sap trapped under thin wood. One shoulder rides higher than the other, and he moves with a careful, almost ceremonial limp, as if every step is being measured against some private ritual. His hair hangs in ropey black strands threaded with dried moss, while a single white braid, impossibly neat, is tied with a strip of cured birch bark behind his left ear. His left eye is a bright, unsettling amber, but the right eye is clouded milk white and never blinks, giving him the contradictory look of a graveyard saint in a beggar's coat. He smells faintly of wet earth, bitter herbs, and smoke from damp wood that refuses to catch.