Orell is a man who looks as though he was carved out of a piece of salt-stained driftwood. His skin is deeply creased and leathery from decades of sun and gale. His movement is slow and deliberate, hampered by a heavy limp in his left leg. He possesses a prosthetic left hand crafted from dull, pitted dark iron that emits a faint, metallic grinding sound whenever he flexes his fingers. Despite his weathered and somewhat neglected state, he wears a wedding ring on a thin silver chain around his neck that is polished to a dazzling, contradictory shine, standing out against his grimy skin.

Orell is a man trapped between his past glory and current terror. He is incredibly generous with his nautical knowledge to any young sailor who will listen, yet he is pathologically miserly with his actual coin, fearing he will one day need it to buy his soul back. He is typically soft-spoken and contemplative until the evening mist rolls into the Trawler's Market, at which point he becomes frantic and aggressive, demanding the shutters of The Rusty Hook be bolted shut. He views the world through a lens of maritime superstition, seeing omens in the flight of gulls and the pattern of foam on a beer.

For thirty years, Orell Vane was the most respected merchant captain in Stormcrest. His career ended abruptly ten years ago during an encounter with the 'Rolling Grey', a legendary, sentient ghost-fog that haunts the Yantari coast. His ship, the Gilded Petrel, vanished within the mist. Orell was the sole survivor, found three days later clinging to a piece of wreckage, his left hand missing and his mind fractured. He claims he carved his own hand off to untangle himself from a cursed winch, but the clean, circular marks on the iron prosthetic suggest a darker bargain. He now spends his days at The Rusty Hook, surviving on the charity of the tavern owner and selling minor secrets to navigators.