Eber is tall and long-limbed, with pale skin stippled in olive-green scales that overlap like tiny roof tiles at his temples, knuckles, and collarbones. His vivid red hair is thick and spring-curled, usually tied back with a leather thong; loose strands catch on the points of his ears. Serpent-yellow eyes rarely settle on a speaker's face: he tracks hands, doorways, and the movement of everyone in a room, as if mapping how they might help or harm one another. He moves with a careful, slightly rolling gait, placing each foot as though testing a workshop floor. His unexpected keepsake is a little wooden toy cart, polished bare along one wheel from years of anxious thumb-rubbing; it is a child's plaything, incongruous beside his neat notebooks and hard-wearing tools. The first impression he leaves is of a watchful craftsperson trying very hard not to make anyone worry.

Eber is methodical but not cold: he notices discomfort quickly and offers practical help, yet can make kindness feel like an interview by asking too many precise questions. He is proud of his work and embarrassed by public attention. In the workshop he is decisive and quick with a solution; among strangers he watches first and speaks once he has found a useful point of entry. Under stress, his consideration hardens into stubborn self-reliance.

Eber was born into the Waldner family, a close-knit line of stout-family craftspeople known for making sturdy hinges, latches, and small household mechanisms. As a child he spent more time fitting gears than playing at swords, and he once built a wooden cart for his younger cousin, who insisted it was the finest toy in the district. In adolescence, a High-Blood change altered his body: scales spread across his skin, his teeth and jaw changed, and chewing became impossible. At first he hid the problem, swallowing food in painful haste and pretending his strange meals were a private preference. A frightening bout of sickness finally forced him to tell his family. His aunt, an experienced midwife, helped him work out that smooth, carefully chosen stones eased his unusual digestion. The discovery was practical, not magical, and Eber began keeping careful records of what helped and what harmed him. The experience changed his idea of craft: a good tool, he decided, should make life possible for someone whose body does not follow ordinary rules. Now he is locally famous among Verdant-Blooded families for his patient notes and practical adaptations, though fame makes him uneasy. He works from a cramped room above the family workshop, balancing experiments with orders for repairs. He hopes to develop safe utensils and food-preparation tools for people with similar changes. His cousin, now grown, wants him to stop treating every meal like a laboratory trial; his aunt worries that his notes expose private family matters; and a prosperous apothecary has offered to fund his work in exchange for exclusive rights to his findings.