The Keepers of the Deep

The Hessk salvors-and-divers brotherhood and harbor council that governs Sresh-Dar as a free-port, holds the salvage-rights of the drowned valley, and keeps the water-trade out of any crown's or House's hand. They run the wharves, license the dives, and arbitrate who may strip which wreck.

Where the Silt Hands smuggle and the Divers rob the dead, the Keepers of the Deep simply own the water — by long custom, not by charter. They are the old-blood harbor council of Sresh-Dar: dive-masters, wreck-wardens, and pearl-factors who set the lanes, weigh the take at the public scale, and collect the deep's tithe on everything raised from the drowned valley. Their one law is that the free-port stays free; they will deal with House Vandahl, the Gaunt Ledger, or any dry-land buyer, but the day a crown tries to license the salvage-rights is the day the Keepers close the harbor and let it silt up. Patient and literal, they outlast every panic that washes through the coast — debts are paid in their time, on their tide, in their coin.