Borik Snowmantle — Harbormaster of the Frozen Quay

Name: Borik Snowmantle
Race: Mountain Dwarf
Role: : Harbormaster, veteran mariner & dockwarden
Appearance: Borik is thick-shouldered and compact, with a frost-white beard thickly braided into brass clasp at its base. His iron-gray hair is cropped beneath a sealskin cap. His nose is broad and veined from windburn, his cheeks ruddy as kiln brick. He wears a salt-stained, fur-lined greatcoat thrown over a dwarven breastplate that shows years of careful maintenance. A brass harbormaster’s whistle hangs from his neck beside a tally-charm of bone beads. A ten-foot boathook (fitted with a pike head), a coil of tarred rope at his belt, and a ring of color-coded quay tags mark him at a glance as the authority on the docks.

Backstory

Born to quarry-clans in the lower Tempest Peaks, Borik apprenticed early as a line-hand aboard icebreakers that serviced the trade route between the mountains and the northern rim of the Whispering Tundra. When Frosthold’s watershed shifted and a seasonal pier—dubbed the Frozen Quay—was cut into the lake’s thick winter ice to receive sled caravans and shallow-draft barges in the thaw, Borik took the job nobody else wanted: making it safe. He mapped current-shear under the ice, standardized signal flags for whiteout conditions, and taught townsfolk how to read the lake’s singsong crackle. Years ago, he lost his partner to a sudden pressure ridge; since then he has treated every docking as a ledger of risks paid down by preparation. He considers Frosthold’s quay an artery that feeds the whole frontier—and he guards it with the stubborn love dwarves usually reserve for stone.