The dying patriarch of the Vestrit family and captain of the liveship Vivacia. A respected Bingtown Trader, he spends his final days at sea so his death will quicken Vivacia, as tradition demands. He is warm toward his daughters and Brashen but at odds with his son-in-law Kyle.

The younger daughter of the Vestrit family whose passionate connection to the liveship Vivacia and refusal to accept her exclusion from seafaring drives much of the Liveship Traders Trilogy. Althea's arc is one of the sequence's most satisfying - a woman who earns her place through genuine competence in a world that would prefer she stay ashore - and her relationship with Vivacia is one of the trilogy's emotional anchors. Her path crosses with the wider Elderlings sequence in ways that reward the full reading of the universe.

The elder Vestrit daughter and wife of Kyle Haven. She is caught between loyalty to her family and deference to her domineering husband, often unable to stand up to either.

Keffria and Kyle's daughter, about twelve years old. Willful and precocious, she tests boundaries and is beginning to chafe against her grandmother's authority.

Keffria and Kyle Haven's youngest, changed by his prolonged contact with the dragon Tintaglia into an Elderling; serves as a diplomatic figure between Bingtown and the dragons by the time of the Rain Wild Chronicles.

Kyle Haven's son and Althea's nephew, pulled from his priestly training and forced aboard Vivacia against his will. Wintrow's arc examines what happens when a person of genuine spiritual conviction is placed in circumstances that demand compromises his faith cannot accommodate, and his relationship with Vivacia - who quickens partly through him - is one of the trilogy's most affecting. His eventual accommodation with Kennit is one of the sequence's more morally complex developments.

Keffria Vestrit's husband whose assumption of control over the Vestrit family's liveship and trading interests sets the Liveship Traders Trilogy in motion. Kyle is not a subtle antagonist - his arrogance, his treatment of his crew, and his fundamental misunderstanding of what a liveship is and requires make him a consistent source of damage across the trilogy. His role in Wintrow's story is the most directly harmful expression of his character.