Gat Varo is a compact, iron-solid dwarf with a square frame and the deliberate balance of someone who has spent a lifetime walking on loose ledges. Her skin is the color of weathered copper dust, roughened at the knuckles and permanently dark beneath the nails despite constant scrubbing. Her beard is cropped close along the jaw and braided into three narrow cords, each tipped with a tiny stamped assay tag. Her movements are economical and nearly silent, but when she stops she becomes utterly still, like a survey marker hammered into bedrock. She smells of lamp oil, bitter coffee, wet slate, and the faint metallic sweetness of the white filaments. Her eyes are hard and measuring, yet her hands shake whenever she believes nobody is watching. The contradiction is unsettling: she looks like a dwarf carved from a quarry wall, but her careful fingers tremble like those of an old seamstress threading a needle.