The Orphanage of Salt & String

Motto: “If the sea took your past, build yourself a better deck.”
Location: Between Galleyard and Gibbety Square, Port Chimera

Overview

The Orphanage of Salt & String is equal parts sanctuary and shipyard—a sagging, salt-crusted longhouse built from mismatched hulls and anchored to the docks by weathered chain and faith in Old Harlan Reef. Its doors are never locked, its windows rarely close, and the smell of fish stew and lamp oil hangs perpetually in the air.

Harlan founded the home forty years ago after a storm claimed both his crew and his leg. Since then, he has raised hundreds of foundlings, teaching them knots, navigation, and decency in a city that rewards none of those things. The children sleep in hammocks strung like rigging, eat from shared tin bowls, and learn to tie twelve knots before they can read their own names.

The orphanage doubles as a workshop: half the floor is a classroom, half a repair bay for fishing boats and prosthetic limbs. Every departing child receives a small coin with a drilled hole—“so luck can breathe.”

Founder: Old Harlan Reef

Species: Human Pronouns: He/Him
Born / Origin: A farming village near Silverwake, conscripted into its navy as a youth.
Occupation: Retired sailor, shipwright, caretaker.
Personality: Gruff, endlessly patient, smells of tar and tobacco.
Faith: Practical atheist; says he “left Serendahl at sea.”
Notable Habit: Carves wooden toys from driftwood for new arrivals.
Legacy: Considered the moral compass of Port Chimera; even pirates respect “Captain Harlan” enough to spare his docks during raids.
Rumor: Some claim his missing leg was replaced by an Embervault-made prosthetic gifted by Doctor Patch, and that it sometimes twitches toward the horizon when storms approach.

Notable Former Orphans

1. Mira “Compass” Reef
Harlan’s first foster daughter; now captain of The Kindly Gale.
She trades food and medicine between Fenmarrow and Port Chimera, refusing to smuggle weapons. Known for her uncanny sense of direction—sailors say the tide itself corrects her course.
Current Status: Alive; sends half her profits back to the orphanage.

2. Kett of the Nine Knots
Half-merfolk salvage diver turned folk hero.
He freed a trapped Cleftwright submersible by hand, later vanished on a Heartroot expedition. His rope-craft lessons are still taught by Harlan.
Legacy: A statue made of barnacled rope stands outside the orphanage in his honor.

3. Lysa Thren
Ran away at twelve, joined the Corsair Wings.
Returned years later as quartermaster of The Last Laugh, bringing donations of sails and salted meat.
Rumor: Now spies for the Captain’s Assembly under the alias “Lady Ledger.”

4. Juniper Glass
Child of a Veinless refugee from Ironbraid.
Became an engineer in Embervault’s lower forges, specializing in clockwork prosthetics.
Legacy: Designed the jointed leg Harlan wears today. Writes letters monthly but never visits; says Canava’s stillness “chokes the lungs.”

5. Taro Bell
Found as a baby in a fish crate.
Now a stand-up comic in Harlequin Vale’s Big Top Plaza, performing under the stage name “The Punchline Orphan.”
Legacy: Funds scholarships for Vale students “with nowhere to go home to.”

6. Ress and Iko the Twins
Street pickpockets turned ferry captains.
Run the Hearthling Run, a discreet ferry connecting Fenmarrow’s swamps to Chimera’s trade chain.
Status: Active; notorious for charging pirates double fare “for the drama of it.”

7. Calda Morren
Drowned at sea during the Heartroot War while escorting Tranquilist refugees.
Harlan keeps her coin on a chain around his neck.

Cultural Role

The Orphanage of Salt & String represents one of the few institutions in Port Chimera guided by compassion rather than profit.
Captains often recruit from its graduates, calling them “Harlan’s Crew.” The Rational Coin guild sponsors food shipments in exchange for dock repairs, and even the Sanctifier embassy sends inspectors who always “forget” to collect taxes.

In a city that worships survival, the Orphanage teaches something rarer: care without contract.