Orak's seal-brown hide has the pebbled, salt-polished texture of a well-used mooring float, with pale whiskers beaded in condensation. He moves with a slow, wide-footed steadiness that makes the barge seem to settle around him. In a hearing, his eyes travel first to exits, hands, and load-bearing lines, then finally to the speaker. His broad jaw works visibly when he chews, and when he laughs, a pair of blunt lower teeth show beneath his lip. Unexpectedly, he keeps a tiny clay pot of flowering marsh-mint on the bench beside his docket, tending it between cases.

Orak is patient with frightened witnesses and impatient with people who use procedure as a shield from consequences. In routine hearings he is dryly courteous, even wry; under pressure he becomes exacting and blunt. He wants the law to protect ordinary crews, yet fears that bending it openly will let distant officials take the very authority he is trying to preserve.

Orak grew up among the working decks of the Old Claim Barge, where salvage crews argued over what the sea had taken and what the living could claim back. He became a rigging officer, then a hearing clerk after a pressure-line rupture killed two divers during a disputed recovery. The inquiry taught him that a technically correct ruling can still leave people freezing, so he began weighing survival alongside precedent. Years later, during a winter evacuation, he ordered a barge to cut loose from a customs patrol and carry trapped families to a vent shelter. The rescue saved lives but left a dangerous gap in the official records, one that outside assessors could use to challenge the barge's local jurisdiction. Now he presides over salvage hearings, trying to preserve peace without handing remote authorities a reason to impose punitive levies. He depends on pilot Sefu, who knows every safe channel, and clashes with customs assessor Brakka, who considers local discretion an invitation to fraud.