Director Vespera Castor is a compact rock gnome with the poised stillness of a loaded spring. Her impeccably tailored obsidian-and-gold velvet robes fall in geometric planes, their surfaces soft as raven feathers but threaded with heat-resistant metallic fibers. Gossamer-thin filigree armor plates overlap beneath the fabric like the scales of a ceremonial serpent. Her polished coppery hair is swept into an asymmetric chignon held together by tiny brass needles, each one engraved with the seal of a different trade house. Her golden eyes are cool and calculating behind fine wire-rimmed glasses, yet one lens is always faintly fogged from the miniature furnace hidden inside the frame. She moves with economical precision, never wasting a gesture, though her small stature makes her formal entrances unexpectedly dramatic. The contradiction is striking: everything about her suggests an untouchable executive, but her hands are permanently stained with blue machine oil.