Jor looks like the young Norse noble presumed drowned, but the likeness has a subtly wrong polish. He is taller than remembered and still growing, with pale hair that catches the light almost white and blue eyes that hold an unnerving, level calm. His clothes are noble and carefully cleaned, yet the hems sit poorly on his lengthening frame; he keeps smoothing one immaculate cuff as if it could make the rest of him fit. He occupies space cautiously, turning sideways through doorways and keeping his back near a wall. A faint sea smell follows him, and his voice sometimes scrapes into a low, wet growl. At a glance, he seems respectable; after a minute, the stillness and the way his gaze tracks throats and exits linger in the mind.

Jor wants to be treated as a grown man with a future of his own, but still craves the approval of the family he claims he meant to leave. He can be sociable and eager to impress when discussing ships or service, then unnervingly composed when someone asks about the wreck. In danger, his old impulse to fight returns; when ashamed, he turns formal and hides behind manners.

Jor Heimskrsson is Heimskr's fifth son, raised among the obligations and rivalries of a powerful Norse household. Before the wreck, he was excitable and quick to answer an insult with a brawl. He hoped to join the guard until the succession crisis made every oath feel like a choice of which brother to endanger. He sailed north toward Iceland to win land, wealth, and a name of his own, but the ship went down in the North Sea. Presumed dead by his family, Jor was taken by trolls and kept captive while they trained him as a spy and taught him trollcraft. The turning point came when his captors made him wear a human face and speak to them as though he were already one of their agents; he realized that survival might require becoming the lie. He now presents himself as a miracle survivor, using troll magic in small domestic ways while hiding what he has become. He knows Peer Ludvik as kin through his transformation, not as the Heimskr family's old friend, and that recognition unsettles him. Jor's current problems are practical and immediate: maintain his disguise, learn what his captors expect him to report, decide whether to return to a family whose political crisis helped send him away, and keep his hunger and temper from exposing him.