Brena looks like a miner who accidentally wandered into a grand university and decided to stay. She is a stocky dwarf with weathered hands stained by graphite, lamp oil, and three shades of red ink. Her beard is split into two narrow braids bound with tiny brass map pins, but one braid is always slightly messy, as if it has been tugged by invisible wind. She wears a scholar's coat made from heavy green wool over a practical leather harness of rolled parchment tubes and surveying tools, yet the coat hem is embroidered with stars and river paths in silver thread. Her boots are caked with mud from places no sane person has walked, while her spectacles are pristine and expensive. She moves with the measured balance of someone used to unstable ledges, but when excited she paces in quick, eager little circles.