A very small, doll-faced fairy with the sturdy proportions and unmistakable braided beard-beads of her dwarven ancestry, though no beard grows on her chin. Her round face has a button nose, broad cheekbones, and a grin that seems to have just thought of a prank. Four translucent wings, veined like dragonflies and faintly iridescent at their edges, beat with a dry, papery buzz. She moves in sudden, exact darts, then hovers perfectly still while her eyes travel around a room: first to exits, then to hands, then to whoever is trying hardest not to be noticed. Her long golden hair hangs in two untidy low braids, each secured with a tiny brass nut. Despite being a powerful archdruid, she has a peculiar habit of carrying a chipped wooden spoon and using it to point at people.

Iltikka is playful and welcoming when she has room to maneuver, but stubbornly severe when someone treats the land as disposable. She likes being underestimated and will let an arrogant person keep doing so until the moment it becomes useful. With children and injured creatures she is patient; with officials hiding a decision behind jargon she becomes blunt and relentless. Her humor is genuine, but she sometimes uses it to dodge grief.

Iltikka was born in a dwarven mining settlement whose families had spent generations hollowing a mountain for iron. As a child, she was small even by dwarf standards, and her first wings appeared during a cave-in that trapped her below a collapsed flower garden. She survived for three days in the dark, following the roots that had broken through the stone and drinking from their collected dew. The experience changed her: she stopped believing that survival meant enduring the mountain and began asking what the mountain was enduring from them. She learned druidcraft from a wandering fey caretaker named Tavi, then returned home to stop a mining crew from opening a seam that carried an underground river. Her warning came too late. A flood killed several miners, including her older brother, and she has never forgiven herself for choosing the river over the people who trusted her. Years later, she helped rebuild the settlement's waterworks and made peace with her sister, Dorga, who runs the old mine. Now a new survey crew is secretly drilling toward the river again. Iltikka is trying to prevent another disaster without turning the miners into enemies, while Dorga insists the settlement needs the ore to survive.