Rorix looks like a man who has spent years bracing against sudden weather. He leans forward slightly even when standing still, then moves in quick, careful bursts, as if stepping around puddles only he can see. His face is broad and weather-creased, with a blunt nose and eyebrows that rise sharply when he is doing mental arithmetic. His dark hair is cut unevenly at the nape and usually damp from the mist that clings to his coat. His most unexpected detail is a tidy row of tiny, carefully painted yellow ducks along the hem of his battle-worn wizard's robe. He claims they are warding sigils; they look unmistakably like ducks.

Rorix is quick-witted and practically minded, yet stubbornly sentimental about the people and places he has chosen to protect. In a crisis he becomes direct and startlingly calm; afterward he fusses over repairs, complains about the mess, and uses jokes to dodge thanks. He respects competence but has little patience for authority that asks others to bear its risks.

Rorix Puddlefrost grew up in a flood-prone river district, where his mother repaired locks and his father kept a public bathhouse warm through winter. He learned early that water could be a comfort, a weapon, and a record of what a town had failed to protect. At twenty, while apprenticed to a municipal arcanist, he was ordered to hold a failing floodgate shut with magic while officials evacuated their own homes first. He disobeyed, redirected the gate's pressure into an empty canal, and saved a crowded tenement, but the surge destroyed the archive where he had been studying. The experience made him suspicious of authority and fiercely protective of people trapped beneath it. He now earns his living as a freelance spellcaster and occasional instructor, taking dangerous jobs that involve creatures, unstable magic, or civic disasters. He sends part of every fee to his mother, Nima, and writes regularly to his former apprentice, Tavi, who is studying at a distant academy and believes Rorix should stop taking suicidal contracts. He is currently trying to discover why patches of unnatural frost keep forming in warm wells beneath the river district. His investigation has put him at odds with the district's watermaster, who insists the problem is harmless.