“The Salted Anchor sits in a crooked row of timbered buildings at the harbor's lip. Sea spray stains the threshold and wind-bent pennants flap from a mast-beam above the door. Inside, the bar is a patched barrel long enough for a small boat to be lashed to one side. Nets and preserved fish hang from the rafters, and the air carries smoke, brine, and the tang of spiced rum. The tavern doubles as an informal message board for captains and a place where crew trade rumors for a mug. The owner, Mira Halvorsen, is a compact human woman with a faded captain's tattoo curling up her wrist and hair the color of rope-dried kelp. Mira is a level 3 bard who learned sea shanties and a few persuasive verses in port towns; she tends bar with the efficiency of a quartermaster and a story for every coin. She keeps a battered spyglass behind the register and a ledger full of IOUs chained beneath the counter. Regulars know to tap three times on the bar's underside if they need a private word; Mira will slide a sealed scrap across the floor and listen. She hates coin thieves, names lost cats after sailors, and will accept fish, trinkets, or a good yarn in partial payment on slow days.”