Valin is a wiry, skeletal gnome whose movements are sharp and bird-like. His skin is the color of damp slate and permanently stained with the fine, grey glitter of stone dust. His most jarring feature is his left eye, replaced by a smooth, mirror-polished orb of pure silver that sits motionless while his organic right eye twitches frantically. He moves with a low, hunched posture as if expecting the ceiling to drop at any second. Despite his ragged state, he keeps his silver eye obsessively clean, reflecting his surroundings in a distorted, metallic sheen.

Valin is a man possessed by a clinical, cold-hearted anxiety. He views the horrific collapse of the Shattered Vein not as a loss of life, but as an unfortunate liquidation of assets. He is profoundly generous with advice on how to survive the dark because he wants others to do the heavy lifting, yet he is pathologically miserly when it comes to sharing physical resources. He speaks about gold and gems with a hushed, religious reverence but treats his own well-being with a reckless disregard if there is a 'dividend' to be found in a dangerous crevice.

Valin was once a high-ranking inventory clerk for the Glimmervein Mining Consortium. He spent his life counting ore and calculating yields until the Great Tremor caused the Shattered Vein to collapse. While others fled, Valin stayed, driven by the realization that a mountain of rubble is simply a disorganized vault. Over the last decade, he has mapped the shifting cracks of the ruins. He has survived by eating cave moss and scavenging the belongings of his former colleagues, convincing himself that he is merely 'managing the estate' of the deceased.