Duarto Alverna has aged, and not gracefully. When the merman first took up the leadership of the Costa in his early twenties, he sported an impressively athletic physique and comely features. Not two full decades have passed, but the toll on the padrino of that time is clear. His hair is thinning and streaked with white. Skin hangs in wrinkles and once-lustrous scales are dull and flaking. Deep blue veins stand out around his gills and throat. Sunken dark eyes tell of sleepless weeks. He maintains a dignified posture despite this, with some apparent difficulty.

The padrino still makes an effort to be social. He applauds as Taman makes her welcoming announcement, giving a respectful curl of the tail to the hostess. He has no eyes for the spectacle of the lights above or around, but pays keen attention to the appearance and accoutrements of the Eternal Mistress. After the celebration is underway, he makes a slow circle of the chamber, greeting each of the other delegations and guests as he comes across them. Initially he keeps to pleasantries and small talk, his voice straining through ragged gills, with a promise that any deeper discussions of state matters will be given the time it is due once the event is under way.

The other sereia of note at the gathering, though thirty years Alverna's elder, has a far more majestic bearing. Rain Loura is a successful venture financier and the head of the second most prominent costa. Acclaimed as the mind (and money) behind the expeditions Gosto G'Cor and the pacification of the gharials there, he wears his prestige with the same effortless elegance with which he is dressed. He too makes the rounds, chatting amicably.