A towering gaunt figure whose tattered black robes seem to move even when there is no breeze. His skin is paper-thin and sallow, like old parchment stretched over a skeleton, and a lattice of pale scars web across his cheeks and scalp. A permanent, slow, uncanny grin tugs at the corners of his lips, as if his facial muscles remember joy he cannot feel. His fingers are long and jointed, tipped with darkened nails and ringed with jagged iron and dull garnet stones that pulse faintly when he speaks. The inside of his robes is lined with faint runes stitched in silver thread. When he walks he glides rather than strides, and the hem of his robes leaves a faint smear of cold on the ground. Contradiction: when he laughs his voice briefly bubbles with genuine mirth like a scholar delighted by discovery, then snaps back to brittle menace.