Dresha Deepwarden

Sresh-Dar's elected Wreck-Warden and head of the Keepers of the Deep, who has held the salvage-rights of the drowned valley longer than any living crew can remember. She speaks little, signs nothing she will not honor, and has refused three Houses to the same word: the water is free.

Dresha came up through Sresh-Dar's oldest flooded streets as every Hessk dive-master does, and she has sat at the public salvage scale weighing other crews' take for forty seasons. She is the elected Wreck-Warden, not a monarch: licensed crews gave her the sounding-stone, and five of the seven council stones can take it back. Until then the council moves at her unhurried pace, and when she names a lane closed or a wreck spoken-for, it stays closed. She deals coldly and exactly with the Gaunt Ledger and tolerates the Silt Hands as a tide tolerates a leak, but she will close every pressure-bell quay before she lets a crown buy the salvage-rights. Surface folk find her patience unnerving; her own people find it the only thing that has kept the Free Deep theirs.