Orekk's skin has the dry, cracked look of old river clay, with fine scales and shallow fissures across his cheeks, neck, and hands. The texture is strikingly rough, but he is healthy, strong, and untroubled by it. His short, backward-sweeping horns frame a broad forehead, and his dark eyes catch lamplight with a dull ember-red gleam. He moves with the deliberate economy of someone trained to keep his balance on muddy roads, yet he tends to square his shoulders as if entering a room were a small ceremony. His hair is kept in an exact, severe braid, an unexpectedly meticulous touch for a road priest who wears soot-stained armor. People often remember his stillness before they remember his horns.

Orekk is compassionate toward the abandoned and uncompromising with the dead, yet proud enough to mistake his own endurance for divine endorsement. In calm company he is a precise teacher who enjoys answering questions; among people who mock his appearance he turns brittle and cutting. A crisis strips away his performance: he becomes direct, brave, and attentive to whoever is most frightened. Afterwards, he often retells his courage with a little more polish than the truth requires.

A fetchling priest of Pharasma found an abandoned infant on a forest road near Korvosa. The child had rough, sickly-looking skin, and the priest, who had known prejudice for his own heritage, believed the baby had been discarded for being different. He named him Orekk and raised him among the rites of the Gray Lady, teaching him to honor the dead and treat each passing soul as deserving of dignity. Orekk grew up healthy but was mocked by other children for his skin and tiefling heritage. He retreated to temple libraries, where histories and funerary records offered company without judgment. As a young man, he joined his adoptive father on village rounds and trained with a quarterstaff so he could protect them both. During a house fire, he ran through flames wrapped in a blanket to reach his trapped father. The priest escaped with minor burns; Orekk emerged with ruined clothes and soot on his skin, apparently unharmed. The event made Orekk believe his unusual body was proof of divine favor. His temple sent him to Korvosa for advanced instruction, where praise and opportunity fed his pride. After a priest foresaw trouble in Sandpoint, Orekk was dispatched there to investigate and, his superiors hope, learn humility. His adoptive father now serves at Pharasma's temple in Korvosa. Orekk writes to him irregularly, always claiming the road has been too busy.