Haddon’s slate-gray skin is ridged like weathered rock, with pale lichen tracing its creases and collecting at his temples. Short, curved horns carry dried spore-caps and narrow silver bands etched with planting marks. He moves with a measured, sure-footed tilt, testing the ground before he commits his weight. His broad jaw works slowly when he eats, and his blunt, uneven teeth show whenever a laugh escapes him. Unexpectedly, he keeps a tiny bright-yellow clay bird tucked in his collar, a child’s market trinket he handles with grave care.

Haddon is patient with confused growers but brisk with people who knowingly waste water. He values procedure because he has seen what happens without it, yet distrusts procedure when it excuses cruelty. In public he is measured and hard to hurry; around children or battered harvesters, his sternness gives way to dry humor and unasked-for help.

Haddon was raised among terrace farmers above First Rain Market, where he learned to read runoff by the smell of wet stone and the grit left in a streambed. In his youth, he trusted every settlement to guard its own crops. Roughly sixty years ago, an upper basin diverted meltwater to save its grain, sending a surge down through the lower terraces. Haddon helped dig survivors out of mud and broken retaining walls. The disaster changed his view of stewardship: water, he decided, was a shared obligation, not a private advantage. He joined the Valley Stewards and rose through practical work, settling disputes and coordinating repairs rather than claiming ownership. Now he oversees market yields and the fragile watershed, while arguments over rationing grow sharper and signs of unusual fungal spread trouble him. He is appointed through the High Council of Masons, but answers first to the people who depend on the terraces.