The shop is called The Gilded Kraken, a high-end general store catering to ship captains, privateers, adventurers, and discreet merchants. Its front windows display brass diving lamps, lacquered sea chests, folded sailcloth, navigational instruments, and expensive blades arranged like museum pieces. The floorboards are dark teak, the walls are painted deep navy, and every shelf is fitted with brass rails to keep merchandise from sliding during storms or dockside brawls. The air smells of cedar, lamp oil, citrus, and salt. A narrow indoor balcony overlooks the showroom, allowing the owner to watch customers from above. A concealed dumbwaiter connects the office to the counter, and a bell rope runs through the walls to the guards' quarters in the rear. Captain Ysara Vane is a sharp-eyed human woman in her late fifties, with iron-gray braids, a pearl set in one front tooth, and a weathered naval coat lined with red silk. She speaks warmly to honest sailors, coldly to braggarts, and with unsettling precision to anyone who lies. Ysara spent decades as a privateer and now uses the shop as a respectable front for discreet salvage contracts. She knows the value of nearly every nautical object in the region and offers a 10 percent discount to customers who bring her reliable maps, rare cargo, or information about wrecks. She never haggles over basic supplies, but for premium goods she may accept a favor, a recovered artifact, or a signed introduction from a reputable captain. Her trained mastiff, Brine, sleeps beneath the counter and reacts aggressively to anyone who touches the locked cabinets without permission.