The Sarko family's title has the word "harbor" in it, which tells you almost everything you need to know about what the family is. They are not primarily nobles who happen to govern a port. They are harbor administrators who happen to hold a noble title, and the distinction matters to them — the title comes from the harbor's function, not the other way around. Ino Sarko would tell you this directly if you asked. He would probably tell you if you didn't ask.

House Sarko holds the Harbor-Baronship of Patok by hereditary claim under Gwajin Realm authority, with the specific combined governance and maritime commerce role that the "Harbor" designation indicates. The Sarko family has administered the Sarko River delta's timber and fishing operations for approximately two hundred years, and their authority is as much practical as formal — the family's knowledge of the delta, the timber grades, and the harbor's tidal dynamics is the operational foundation of the settlement.

Human, Male — mid-forties — the Sarko Harbor House, Patok

Ino has been Harbor-Baron for thirteen years and is a competent, practically oriented administrator who would prefer that problems come with solutions attached. They frequently do not. The problem currently on his desk is the old-growth timber sustainability situation — the half-elf timber brokers' projections, reviewed twice by independent assessors with the same result each time, indicate that the coastal forest's old-growth sections are being harvested at an unsustainable rate. A generation from now, the premium hull-planking timber that the eastern Shoing shipbuilding industry specifies will not be available in its current volumes.

He has not yet told the Gwajin Ministry of Commerce. He is deciding when and how to present a situation whose implications include a reduction in the court salt specification revenue and a renegotiation of the timber trade arrangements that Gwajin's shipyards depend on. He is also aware, from his harbor survey, of a possible sandbar shift in his harbor approach — minor, within normal variation, possibly the beginning of something larger — that he is watching with the specific attention of a man who has read about what is happening to Zazua's Third Finger.