Kiesel

A dwarf of at least a hundred years, Kiesel has a compact, solidly built, faintly heavy frame. His hair stands in a spiky, unkempt tangle, and a beard rises from just under his nose to swallow his mouth and run from his throat down to his upper chest. He wears a four-pocketed jacket with the sleeves pushed up to bare his thick forearms, a white shirt beneath it, and dark trousers held by a buckled belt, with gloves on his hands and a pale bandana knotted around his brow.

Kiesel can seem stubborn and set in his ways at first, a stickler for courtesy and good manners. He is grounded and skeptical by nature, preferring to verify things with his own eyes over trusting hearsay, yet open enough to share what he knows of the Goddess of Creation with Himmel's companions. He takes real pride in his craft; recognizing one of his own old blades in Himmel's hands, he offers to trade it for a finer one, keen to reclaim the replica he once made.

Early in his smithing career, a merchant from the Royal Capital hired Kiesel to forge a stand-in for the Sword of the Hero. That blade eventually reached Himmel, handed to him as a young boy by a peddler he had saved from a monster. Long after, when a Goddess's Monument flings Frieren back into the days of the Hero Party's journey, the group reaches the Kino Pass and hunts fruitlessly for writings about the Goddess and her monuments. A villager steers them to Kiesel, reasoning that a dwarf of his years might know something. He greets them warmly, ribs Himmel about the heroic rumors swirling around him, and admits he has no knowledge of the monuments himself, but recalls seeing books on the Goddess in a former village chief's home. He offers the location in trade for a look at Himmel's sword. Inspecting it stirs old memories of the day he forged it, and on learning how the hero came by the blade, he presses Himmel to accept a worthier replacement. Himmel refuses, set on carrying it until the Demon King falls, so Kiesel settles for honing the edge to a mirror shine before sending the party on toward his old village, now overrun by monsters.