Kealra is a compact gnome with the dense, springy build of someone shaped by currents rather than roads. Fine silver-blue scales overlap his cheeks, collarbones, forearms, and the backs of his hands, but his face remains unmistakably gnomish, with a broad nose, expressive mouth, and a constantly calculating brow. His skin has a damp pearl sheen even in dry air. He moves with a curious contradiction: on land he walks in quick, bobbing half-steps, while underwater he becomes eerily graceful and still, drifting like a leaf that knows exactly where it is going. His beard is narrow and carefully braided with fishbone beads, yet the rest of his grooming is neglected enough that salt crystals regularly gather in his eyebrows. He continually checks the silver ring on his left thumb, rubbing it against his teeth whenever he is frightened. The first impression he leaves is of a cheerful little scholar who seems one breath away from becoming something cold, ancient, and enormous.