Thalassa bin-Oceus al-Karr is a towering Triton woman with deep marine-blue skin, broad shoulders, and a stance that makes every corridor seem narrower. Fine silver scales pattern her throat, cheekbones, forearms, and the backs of her hands, glowing faintly like moonlight trapped beneath seawater. Her amber eyes are sharp, unblinking, and unsettlingly dry, even after hours beneath the shrine. Thick seaweed-dark hair falls to her waist in heavy braids, each one threaded with small lead weights that knock softly against her armor when she walks. Her movements are deliberate and economical, with the rolling balance of someone accustomed to fighting in powerful currents. Her expression rarely changes, yet her face has a strangely gentle quality when she tends damaged machinery or speaks to frightened children. The unexpected contradiction is that her enormous hands are covered in tiny, careful ink drawings of tide charts, valve diagrams, and sleeping sea creatures.