Eber is five feet ten inches tall, startlingly large beside his stout halfling parents and most of his village. Olive-green scales, small and smooth as overlapping leaves, cover his neck, shoulders, forearms, and the planes of his face; they grow denser and darker along his spine and tail. His fair, freckled skin shows between them, especially across his nose and cheeks. His auburn hair turned an unusually vivid, rusty red during adolescence, and he ties it away from his face with a strip of workshop linen. Deep amber eyes, once dark brown, have narrow vertical pupils that catch light like polished resin. His pointed ears have small, movable crests behind them; a low finlike ridge runs from his brow down the back of his head, flattening when he ducks under branches. A long, flexible tail helps him balance among workbenches, though it gives away his irritation by tapping the floor. His jaw changed painfully during adolescence. It opens wide enough to tear food, but its bite cannot grind; Eber must swallow manageable pieces whole. His teeth are green-dragon-like, strong and sharply angled, useful for ripping but awkward for the meals he grew up sharing. He moves with quiet, careful economy, yet continually misjudges how much room his shoulders and tail need in a crowded kitchen. An unexpected detail: despite his solitary manner, Eber collects tiny, ridiculous wooden animals carved by his nieces and nephews, and keeps them arranged on his workbench like a household audience.

Eber is clever and cautious, but caution does not make him passive. He notices the weak point in a mechanism, a story, or a person's confidence, and can be startlingly cunning when he thinks someone is cornering him. Yet he dislikes cruelty and is embarrassed by how easily he can imagine using the same manipulations he condemns. With strangers, he is watchful and spare with words. With his nieces and nephews, he becomes patient and unexpectedly playful, letting them hand him scraps to turn into toys. At work, he is focused and exacting; when a repair fails, he curses the mechanism rather than the person who brought it. When family worries about him, he may become sharp and insist he is fine, then later leave a repaired tool or a carefully prepared snack where they will find it. He wants to be independent, but resents being left alone. He dislikes the high-blood instinct toward solitude, yet finds the noise and warmth of a crowded family kitchen painful because he can no longer eat as they do. His love of shiny things is not simply greed: bright objects are beautiful, useful samples, and reassuringly still. He can be generous with his tools and possessive of his tiny collection. He admires Ignatz's steady support and misses their childhood adventures. He resents Rodrick's jokes while holding on to memories of Rodrick's gentleness. When angry, he becomes direct and startlingly honest rather than meek. When afraid, he becomes busier. When ashamed, he withdraws and tells himself he is giving everyone space. When genuinely happy, he shares a discovery immediately, often forgetting that he had planned to keep it secret. He does not believe blood makes anyone good or bad, but fears that the village's new factions are making that belief harder to defend.

Eber grew up as the youngest of eight children in Trogi and Wilma's crowded household, a family of stout-halfling descent whose timber workshop stood close enough to the kitchen that the smell of sawdust followed everyone to supper. Their village, one of roughly 447 Greenwake Kin, was founded by refugees who survived a massacre, a dangerous crossing, hunger, and a volcanic eruption. Three generations later, the descendants still share labor and food, but the old bargain that saved their ancestors has become a fault line. Some descendants show little outward change and are called low-blood. Others inherit stronger draconic traits and are called high-blood. Eber grew up hearing adults use those terms as if they were tidy categories. He learned that they were not tidy when his own body changed. As a child, Eber had brown eyes, ordinary auburn hair, and the familiar sturdy shape of his family. He was the baby, passed between older siblings and cousins, and was most at home with Ignatz in the woods or by the river. They made boats from bark, guessed at animal tracks, and dared each other to cross slick stones. Ignatz was the brother who waited for Eber to catch up. Rodrick, already forceful and competitive, could be kind then, too; Eber remembers him holding a lantern so the younger boys could finish a crooked little footbridge before dark. The memory matters because the brothers they became are not, to Eber, simply the people they were always meant to be. Adolescence did not arrive gently. Eber's height surged, his skin roughened into green scales, his ears sharpened, and his eyes changed from brown to amber. His hair went from auburn to a brighter, strange red. His jaw altered until he could no longer chew. The first time he tried to eat a familiar piece of bread, his mouth failed him in front of his family. Pain, fear, and embarrassment fused in that kitchen. He began to understand the difference between being loved and being able to participate in the ordinary gestures of love. He could sit with his parents, but not eat as they did. He could embrace his mother, but his new strength made her tense before she remembered he was still her son. The family adapted through practical care, not grand speeches. Trogi built a deep, stable stool and adjusted the kitchen furniture. Wilma learned which foods Eber could tear and swallow safely, then quietly set aside broths, soft fruit, and suitable morsels. His family helped him find smooth pebbles for his stone-gizzard. The high-blood brothers, Rodrick and Ignatz, began sleeping in the kitchen with him soon after the changes. There was not enough room in the old bedrooms for their new size, and no spare beds or proper cloth for everyone. They laid blankets between the table and the hearth. At first the arrangement was an attempt to keep Eber from waking alone, and to make sure his breathing and eating stayed safe. It also became a daily reminder that their family home had been built for smaller bodies and older expectations. Ignatz took the nearest place to Eber, often leaving a hand within reach without touching him. He was uncertain, but he showed up. He tried to learn how the new jaw worked, helped Eber test foods, and remained the companion who could share silence without demanding an explanation. Rodrick was less gentle. He is taller and broader, with auburn hair, yellow eyes, fair skin, reddish-tipped green scales, and a predator's build. He teases Eber about his food and calls his careful habits ridiculous, insisting he is only being honest. When Eber's anger becomes unmistakable, Rodrick stops. That restraint does not erase the sting, but it complicates Eber's resentment: he remembers Rodrick's earlier kindness and still wants to believe it can return. Ignatz's own change frightened him. After a sudden hunting urge led him to kill a chicken with his bare hands, he became ashamed and retreated into workshop tasks where his hands could make things instead of taking life. Eber's parents remain the heart of the household. Trogi, 68, is a calm, black-haired craftsman whose hair is turning gray, a practical patriarch who says he wants to retire while continuing to work. He secretly covets a beard after seeing one on another man. Wilma, with whitening blond hair and hazel eyes, tends the garden and chickens, is warm and perceptive, and can faint at the sight or fear of violence. She can butcher fish or poultry when necessary, though she prefers Trogi to do it. The two still fish together at a local stream. Their tenderness does not stop them worrying: the high-blood children need more food, larger clothes, safer beds, and a future that their modest workshop may not be able to provide. Eber's oldest brother, Windle, is 42, a low-blood craftsman with balding brown hair and hazel eyes. He works in the shop and is expected to take it over. He married later in life and is grateful for his two young children: Otto, his brown-haired, hazel-eyed son, and baby Anika, whose cheerful smile lights up brown eyes. Windle rarely admits it, but he fears his children might change as Eber did. He watches their growth with a care that can feel like a measurement. Eber knows this is fear dressed as responsibility, but sometimes it still feels like being treated as an omen. Karl, 40, is a low-blood son with balding black hair and warm brown eyes, happiest among tools and gears. His marriage to Leanora is rocky; she is a sailor and often away. She descends from the famed dragon hunters Wilks and Nailia, a lightfoot and a strongheart heroine who refused the green dragon's blood in the old days of the castaways. Their son Hansel has black hair and black eyes. Ragni, Leanora's pale-skinned, white-haired child with milky blue eyes, is also in the household, a fact that creates delicate silences and questions Eber has learned not to force. Karl's affection is often expressed through a repaired hinge or a tool left where someone needs it. Yonda, 38, is Eber's only sister, a beautiful low-blood woman with blond hair and hazel eyes. Sociable, sweet, and kind, she has many friends and five children. She is generous with Eber but gently insists he should make more of an effort to join people. Her sons Hans, with blond hair and vivid green eyes, and Birke, with light brown hair and hazel eyes that appear yellow in bright light, show signs of high-blood traits. Her daughters are Willow, whose dark hair frames startling blue eyes; Trude, with auburn hair and soft doe-brown eyes; and Liesel, dark blond with hazel eyes. Yonda's urging to socialize can feel like welcome or pressure depending on Eber's mood. Alder, a low-blood brother with cropped black hair and green eyes, works part time as a town guard and is often occupied with merriment. His clever, high-blood son is called Black Alder. At 22, Black Alder has black hair, amber serpent eyes, and green scales on pale skin. He visits often and tells Eber stories of adventures beyond the village. Eber listens closely, partly because he likes his nephew and partly because Black Alder makes leaving sound possible without making it sound easy. Kasper, 35, is a brown-haired, brown-eyed low-blood brother who keeps accounts, repairs the rare watches that reach the island, and can usually be found tending chickens or the family garden. He and his wife are content with two daughters rather than a large family. Wonda, the older, has light auburn hair and loves the garden and chickens; dark-auburn-haired Ilse follows her everywhere. Their ordinary routines remind Eber that not every family decision has to become a public argument about blood, duty, or the future. Eber learned craft from the whole household. Trogi taught him to measure twice. Karl showed him gears. Kasper made him pay attention to the small failures hidden inside a working mechanism. The shop has no formal artificer tradition, but Eber has made himself one through patient experiments. At level two, he can produce small magical effects, kindle a controlled flame, and use simple protective magic. He approaches magic as another tool: useful, dangerous when misused, and worth understanding before anyone trusts it. The wider village is changing. Low-blood elders preserve household gratitude, shared meals, and remembrance for the dead. High-blood youths are increasingly numerous and do not share one outlook. Some are generous; others prize hierarchy, hunting prestige, dragon identity, and strict gender roles. A few have begun venerating a fivefold dragon goddess in secret rites. The old green dragon benefactor once loved a halfling and tried to save the refugees, but her absent father, a green dragon patriarch, now treats the community as a useful instrument in his revenge. Some elders blame the dragon whose blood altered them. Others suspect one of her daughters, or a ritual that was never completed. The Greenwake Kin avoid the island's golden serpentine beings, uncertain whether they are protectors, rivals, or something stranger. Eber's current problem is both domestic and political. The workshop cannot simply grow larger, and the household is already short of food, cloth, and beds for its high-blood members. He is trying to design a practical sleeping platform and eating vessels that make his own needs less conspicuous, while also studying whether his changing body can be kept healthy. At the same time, he has noticed unfamiliar marks and carefully hidden requests for metal fittings that do not belong to ordinary craftwork. He suspects someone is preparing for a rite, but has not yet decided whether telling his family would protect them or draw danger to the door. He wants to remain the baby brother who can be fussed over, and resents that his body has made him look like a threat or a symbol. He wants independence, yet keeps the carved animals his nieces and nephews leave on his bench. He is drawn to shiny things because they are beautiful, because their surfaces preserve light, and because a small hoard can be arranged, counted, and defended. He is wary of the solitude his draconic instincts seem to invite. His life beyond the party's arrival is full of work: repairs to finish, family meals to negotiate, a secret circle to understand, and brothers who may yet become allies again.