Chihr looks as if he has been assembled from careful habits and workshop dust. His body is covered in light brown scales, and his elongated maw is typical of his Satarre species. Brown eyes track hands, hinges, and exits with the same quick attention. Spines run along the back of his head and down his spine. He keeps his dark hair slicked into a precise side part, though tiny curls escape around his ears as the day grows hot. He moves in short, measured steps, then turns abruptly at the waist like a person accustomed to working in cramped aisles. The unexpected detail is his immaculate vanity: every few minutes he checks the alignment of a small brass comb pinned above his left ear, even while negotiating over a dangerous weapon.

Chihr is hospitable but appraising: he wants every visitor to feel welcome, yet mentally inventories their tools and motives before offering a chair. He is patient with a difficult mechanism and impatient with a person who refuses to explain what they broke. In a crisis his courtesy gives way to blunt commands; afterward he becomes self-conscious and tries to make amends with practical help.

Chihr learned repair work in the canal-side yards of Varket, where Satarre families salvaged broken pumps and siege fittings for the city. His mother, Dursati, taught him that a tool was only as honest as the person who chose what to mend. At nineteen, Chihr was apprenticed to a military artificer, a woman named Gutele, and helped fit a signal engine with a hidden failsafe. During a night evacuation, his employer ordered the engine activated to hold a bridge against retreating civilians. Chihr sabotaged it instead, saving the trapped crowd but destroying the engine and leaving Gutele with a permanent grudge and a ruined contract. He opened Second Edge with the compensation he earned by repairing the bridge machinery afterward. Now he buys damaged arms, tools, and enchanted curios, refurbishing them for people who cannot afford new ones. His closest regular is Torbjørn, a courier who brings him odd mechanisms and insists he stop sending him home with unpaid repairs. His old mentor has recently returned to town seeking a small component Chihr has kept hidden.