“Saltglass Salvage is a narrow waterfront shop wedged immediately beside the Lantern Below, facing the same fog-choked lane. Its sign is a cracked blue bottle mounted above a door swollen from seawater. The interior smells of tar, mildew, wet rope, lamp oil, and brine. Nets hang from the ceiling, coils of rope fill the corners, and broken lanterns, hooks, ship fittings, driftwood, cracked bottles, and waterlogged crates create cramped lanes through the shop. The clutter provides places to hide, overhear conversations, or improvise tools, but careless movement can send a tower of salvage crashing down. Pellis Quay is a lean, sharp-faced shopkeeper with a silver-streaked beard, immaculate cuffs, and a voice that never seems to run out of gossip. He is outwardly respectable, calling every customer 'friend' and keeping careful receipts, but his eyes constantly flick toward the back room. Pellis maintains a tense business alliance with the keeper of the Lantern Below, supplying rope, lamps, and false-bottomed crates in exchange for protection and access to the shared crawlspace beneath the tavern. He also quietly supplies an unnamed dockside courier with specialized hooks, charts, and dry boxes. Pellis suspects a second local NPC is responsible for recent thefts, though he lacks proof and is afraid that accusing the wrong person will expose his own smuggling contacts. The shop's most dangerous secret is a barnacle-covered brass lockbox recovered from a wreck that Pellis refuses to discuss. He has hidden it beneath broken compass housings in the back room and becomes unusually talkative whenever anyone asks about the salvage. The lockbox may contain coded instructions, stolen correspondence, or a key to a larger cache, but Pellis himself may not know the full truth. Transactions at Saltglass Salvage always come with gossip. Sailors trade rumors for discounts, dockworkers ask about missing cargo, and smugglers use ordinary purchases to signal that a shipment is ready. A loose floorboard near the counter conceals a narrow listening gap toward the alley. The back room connects to the tavern's crawlspace through a warped trapdoor hidden under sailcloth. Saltwater drips through the ceiling during high tide, and every few hours something bumps against the outside wall below the waterline. Pellis insists it is floating wreckage. The tavern keeper knows better.”