Vaskku has weather-darkened skin roughened by salt wind, with pale, fine cracks around the knuckles where old brine has dried it again and again. A persistent smell of wet rope, kelp, and bitter clove follows them; they know about the clove and insist it masks the other two. Their short hair is usually flattened by a tarred cap, and their eyes track moving water even during conversation. They plant their feet wide as if a deck might pitch beneath them, then move with quick, economical steps. The unexpected detail: they keep a tiny paper theater folded inside their coat and can make its fish-shaped shadows dance with startling patience.

Vaskku is methodical about danger and reckless about evidence. They can be warm and teasing with the crew, yet become stubbornly exacting when anyone dismisses a small mistake. In a crisis they act quickly and give crisp orders; after the danger passes, they retreat into private rituals and second-guess every choice.

Vaskku grew up hauling sounding lines for the harbor surveyors, learning to read depth from the drag of lead and the change in a rope's wet weight. Years ago, their older sibling drowned after a survey crew trusted a chart marked with a false depth. Vaskku later discovered the mark had been copied incorrectly during a rushed naval survey, but the office blamed weather and closed the inquiry. That mistake gave the crew Ninth Sound its name: their chart's ninth mark was wrong, and nobody would correct it. Vaskku joined the crew to find the drowned shrine's resonant stones, which they believe can prove the old chart was falsified. Pahru once hid Vaskku from a harbor inspector and remains a trusted, complicated connection: Vaskku owes them a life-saving favor, but fears what Pahru might ask in return. Now a rival salvage captain is buying up local charts, while the shrine's sound has begun appearing in Vaskku's dreams as a sequence of knocks from beneath the tide.