Liaison

The Arctic Ocean was the only place on Earth that became more biodiverse during the 22nd century. More than a century of warming oceans had driven Atlantic and Pacific species ever further north; while the devastation of the Blight partly reversed this, by the time Boat/bumper was born there in 2172 it had, by cetacean standards, the best eating on the planet.

Dropped object/catcher (she didn't stay Boat/bumper for long) was a vision/singer's baby. She grew up being taught the cosmic songs of history, and is still thankful her mother taught her to sing them just as Prime Speaker handed them down from the great whales. (A depressing number of vision/singers don't teach their calves that!) By the time she matriculated, Taxonomist had been taught unshakeably to never forget the truth and to pursue it in all things. And pursue it she did, both into a promising career in Arctic ecology and a fateful elective about whales in human religion that spun off into a term paper about Leviathan in the Western occult tradition and a dive into some very interesting subcultures.

Then, in 2190, sperm whales came back from the dead, speaking only Beluga. Squidcounter (still officially Taxonomist, but grad school takes its toll) was shocked by the news, then curious, then obsessed. She paid good money to arrange for full transmissions of the Pod 21 interviews to be sent back to Earth, and hearing the sperm whales speaking in her mother tongue, Squidcounter realized with horror that something unthinkable was happening: the dream that had defined her as a cetacean being was crumbling away like a sand castle, and Pod 21 was the nucleus of a new dream that would grow around it. The next morning, barely even knowing who she was anymore, she began applying for travel permits to Poseidon, putting her affairs in order, and planning her final trip to Hudson Bay.

The customs and immigration officer was the last person who ever addressed her by one of her Earth names. As soon as someone asked her name on Poseidon, she introduced herself by a new name: Interviewer. Interviewer's story unexpectedly ended two sperm whales later, after it became clear that simply making pilgrimages to meet the heirs of Great Livyatan would be insufficient. Her stay in Haven ended around the same time, when she got assigned to the new Oceanographic Station in what she suspects but can't prove had something to do with her extracurricular opinions. (To this day, she's not sure what happened. Academics are allowed to have fringe opinions, and hers weren't even that fringe by HIST standards.)

At HISTOS, Liaison earned her name for her work handling both HIST and LavOrg administrivia. Her unofficial duties at the Station involve occasionally helping with rescue and salvage work for the city, or simply recovering stuff that the humans lose overboard. If nobody else does Liaison occasionally leads Whalesong services too, and has earned a reputation as an intractable traditionalist.

In her spare time, Liaison is a creature of desires she hesitates to fully explain. Like many belugas on Poseidon, she hopes to one day come back from Nuliajuk and have to shed her polar blubber layer. She dreams of studying leviathans up close, and will throw herself hard at any chance to do so as part of a research team. She loves diving, especially if it pushes the limits of how deep belugas can go or how long they can stay down, and will happily tag along for any research in the mesopelagic zone. She's far too small to eat a polypod herself, but she would like to join a hunt for one someday. There are a few friends she promised to help bring over, to build up the community in the Serpentis system.

Most of all, however, she dreams of great whales who were raised from the dead speaking only her mother tongue. From her brief time as Interviewer, she knows that pilgrimages to meet them will not be enough, and her VI is primed to alert her of any news involving them. Whatever their place in Poseidon may be, she's sure that in some capacity they will one day need a Liaison. Perhaps even a Mediatrix...