Vuzan has a broad, forward-leaning frame, with the compact strength of someone used to bracing against doors and people alike. His lower tusks show when he speaks, and his dark hair is clipped unevenly at the nape. He moves with measured economy, planting his feet before turning his shoulders, as though every room might become a narrow passage in a fight. Within a minute, most people notice his habit of pressing the same small brass button on his coat cuff, checking that it is still there. The button is polished far brighter than anything else he owns.

Vuzan is protective but not soft-spoken about danger: he will offer a frightened person his coat, then firmly tell them where to stand. He values rules when they keep people safe and breaks them when they shield the powerful. In a crisis, he becomes brisk and decisive; in private, he second-guesses every choice. He dislikes being thanked for the flood rescue, but quietly remembers every person who survived it.

Vuzan grew up hauling timber and flood debris in the riverside quarter of Dargu, where his mother, Sela, ran a communal kitchen and his father repaired barge fittings. At seventeen, he joined the watch after a spring surge trapped dozens of residents in a cellar. His squad's captain ordered them to guard the dry warehouse instead; Vuzan disobeyed, broke through a wall, and got the trapped people out. A child he carried to safety, Toma, died later from the cold. Vuzan never learned whether the rescue would have saved him with better planning, but the question changed him: he began training not just to hit hard, but to make decisions under pressure. He now serves as a road marshal and escort for the practical, stubborn River Compact, an uneasy civic arrangement between the ferrymen and the quarry haulers. He still writes to his mother, though his letters omit the arguments he has with his former commander, Brask, who now manages the Compact's security. Vuzan is trying to stop Brask from using a recent bandit scare to force displaced families out of a riverside block. He has evidence that the supposed bandits are actually hired thugs, but revealing it could ignite a feud between the Compact's two sides.