Balthor is a broad, weather-beaten human with skin tanned to the color and texture of dark leather by furnace winds, salt spray, and years beneath the Aethelgard sun. His thick salt-and-pepper beard is braided at the chin with three short iron rings, each ring stamped with the name of a dead dockworker. He has a heavy jaw and large square teeth, one of them capped in dull copper. He flashes that copper tooth whenever he laughs, which is often at the wrong moment and usually loud enough to turn heads across a crowded quay. His hands are enormous, the knuckles swollen from labor rather than ornament, and his left palm is permanently roughened into a pale salt-white patch from gripping wet rope treated with alchemical brine. He moves with the rolling balance of a sailor, even on solid ground, and carries himself as though every floor might suddenly tilt. The unexpected softness of his appearance comes from his careful eyes, which linger on frightened children, injured animals, and exhausted apprentices before they ever notice a noble's uniform.