A sturdy, compact woman with a purposeful, rolling stride, as if she is always crossing a crowded workshop. Her dark hair is braided close to the scalp and pinned with little copper clips; the ends have been singed blunt by years around burners. Her work coat hangs unevenly, one sleeve neatly patched three times and the other left frayed, while a spotless yellow silk scarf is tied around her throat with almost ceremonial care. Her hands are broad, soot-darkened at the creases, and perpetually smell faintly of sulfur, mint, and hot iron. She leaves behind the impression of a practical craftswoman who has decided that embarrassment is less useful than a good joke.

Ragna is cheerfully irreverent in public but privately exacting about her craft. She can laugh at her own bodily mishaps and use them to defuse tension, yet resents anyone who turns that openness into permission to demean her. Under pressure she gets brisk and inventive; when hurt, she becomes funnier, not kinder.

Ragna grew up helping her mother, a village brewer, coax temperamental fermentation vats through cold seasons. At sixteen, a pressure mishap blew the roof off their shed and covered the village reeve in a plume of sour mash. The reeve wanted a culprit; Ragna's mother took the blame to keep her daughter from being driven out. Years later, Ragna trained as a locksmith and trapmaker, learning that pressure, timing, and a little misdirection could solve problems more cleanly than force. She now repairs mechanisms for the canal wardens and quietly tests alchemical devices in a rented cellar. Her mother, Borka, still writes asking her to come home, while her former partner, Toma, insists that Ragna stole a recipe notebook that she claims was abandoned. A recent run of sabotage at the canal gates has made her suspect someone is copying her experimental pressure mixtures.