Tall and composed, Father Elros moves like a slow tide: deliberate, inevitable. His robes sweep with the hush of paper pages; the fabric is embroidered with tiny sigils borrowed from many faiths. His gray beard is trimmed into three narrow braids tied with simple brass rings inscribed with holy phrases in different tongues. A long scar, pale and puckered, runs from behind his left ear and vanishes beneath his collar—an old wound from a missionary caravan raid. When he walks he favors his right hip slightly, where a battered leather satchel always rests. Up close, his skin smells faintly of sandalwood and old parchment. Contradiction: though outwardly austere and clerical, he wears a single gaudy glass bead—bright blue—threaded into his beard, a keepsake from a childhood friend who became a sailor.