Edda Conchsong – Storm-Listener
“The sea tells you what it’s about to do. Most people only learn the language after it hurts them.”
Name: Edda Conchsong
Race: Human
Role/Class: Storm-Listener
Appearance: Edda Conchsong is tall and spare, with the long-limbed look of someone who walks cliffs more than roads. Her skin is sun-touched but pale around the eyes and mouth from constant wind exposure, and her hair—straw-blond and salt-frizzed—hangs in loose cords threaded with bits of seaweed twine. Her eyes are a clear blue-gray that rarely blink when she’s watching the water, as if blinking might cause her to miss a syllable.
She wears a layered wrap of storm-wool and oilskin that moves like a cloak when the wind pulls at it. A conch shell hangs at her throat on braided cord, polished smooth by years of use, and another smaller shell is tied to her wrist, clicking softly when she gestures. Her staff is driftwood—salt-bleached and bent—marked with shallow notches that resemble wave crests rather than runes.
Backstory
Whitecap and Cliffwatch both have people who “know the weather.” Edda is different. She doesn’t predict it like a fisher guesses. She listens to it like a priest listens to a confession.
As a child, she survived a squall that killed her father’s boat in sight of shore. The village called it bad luck. Edda called it a warning nobody heard. She began spending hours at the waterline, not watching for fish, but watching for patterns: the angle of surf against reef teeth, the timing of seabirds lifting before a gust, the way foam “walks” differently when a fogbank is coming in from the wrong direction.
Years later, she could name a storm by its voice.
She became a quiet fixture in Whitecap: the woman who taps a conch once against her palm and says, “Not today,” and somehow everyone listens. Cliffwatch patrols began consulting her before running supply caravans along exposed ledges. She doesn’t charge coin, only respect—because the sea doesn’t bargain.
Lately, Edda’s “readings” have been wrong in a way that frightens her. Not completely wrong—just skewed, like the water is speaking with a second mouth. Birds lift too late. Swells arrive out of rhythm. Fogbanks move against the wind.
Edda believes something out beyond the reefline is changing the rules.
