A compact black goblin with skin like charcoal glazed with oil, a narrow face, and a jaw that seems permanently set against an argument. Her hands are broad, heavily callused, and stained with bow wax; the pads of her thumbs are flattened from years of drawing a powerful bow. She keeps her coarse hair meticulously braided into a dozen tight cords, each secured with a different arrowhead. She moves in quick, abrupt starts, as if every step is a decision she might revoke. At first meeting, the careful braids seem strangely fastidious for someone who looks ready to bite through a threat.

Ashri is furious at injustice but wary of anyone who claims to share her cause. She will risk herself to protect strangers from an unfair attack, then snap at them for making her do it. In a calm mood she is observant and unexpectedly patient with children; under pressure she becomes sharp-tongued, impatient, and liable to take the first dangerous option that gives her control.

Ashri was born among goblins who gathered edible roots and traded scrap iron beneath the old road markers of Survey Nine. When a human forester's crew drove them from their winter camp, she learned to shoot by guarding the retreat. Years later, she found that same forester, Terek, trapped under a fallen tree after a forest fire. Ashri cut him free instead of leaving him to die. He later testified that her people had not started the conflict, a choice that made her an enemy to goblins who wanted revenge and a suspect to the foresters who wanted a convenient culprit. Now she scouts the woodland border, trying to keep both sides from turning a chain of petty raids into a massacre. Her younger brother, Kett, still lives with the displaced camp and sends her messages by tying tiny knots in arrow fletching. She has recently discovered that someone is cutting fresh trails toward the goblin spring, and suspects the foresters are preparing another eviction.