Aster Halcyon Vale is a long-limbed human with the look of a man who has spent years listening to tides no one else can hear. His skin is wind-chapped and salt-streaked, with old pale scars that shine faintly when wet, like chalk lines under moonlight. He moves with a careful, rolling gait, as if the deck beneath his boots is always pitching, and his stillness is somehow more unnerving than motion. His left hand is elegant and ringless, but the right is perpetually stained dark at the fingertips, as though ink, algae, or brine has soaked into the skin. He wears a contradiction of rough fisherman's oilskins over a silk-lined traveling coat, and he keeps one sleeve immaculate while the other is salt-crusted and frayed. Even at rest he seems half-turned toward some distant, invisible surf.