Pavo's olive-green skin has a fine pebbled texture, like river stone rubbed smooth by years of handling. His long ears angle forward when he listens, and a fringe of coarse black hair sticks up in irregular bristles despite his careful grooming. He moves with a low, springy gait, feet placed as softly as a cat's even in armor. Before speaking, he always takes a crisp, audible breath through his nose, as if testing the air for weather. The unexpected detail is his immaculate grooming: even on muddy patrol, his nails are buffed and his moustache is combed into two tiny, precise points.

Pavo is watchful and quick to help, yet distrusts anyone who calls recklessness bravery. In calm company he is exacting, dryly funny, and almost vain about the condition of his gear. Under pressure he becomes decisive and physically protective, but afterward he replays every choice and can be prickly when praised for doing what he considers basic decency.

Pavo grew up among goblin scavengers who lived in the drained clay pits outside a human market town. His mother, Ruzka, taught him to mend straps and judge the worth of discarded metal; his older cousin, Dreg, taught him that a frightened person can be more dangerous than an armed one. At sixteen, Pavo joined a caravan guard detail because he wanted to learn how people beyond the pits lived. During his first season, a flood trapped a wagon train in a ravine. The captain ordered the guards to save the cargo, but Pavo disobeyed and cut open the wagons to free the trapped drivers. The rescued merchant later hired him as a watchman, while the captain branded him unreliable. That choice changed his idea of courage: he now believes a guard's first duty is to the living, even when the contract says otherwise. He currently works the road between the market town and the upland farms, trying to earn enough to bring his family out of the pits. He sends most of his wages home and keeps a wary friendship with the caravan driver who still thinks he owes her for saving her life.