[Squirrelloid]

Ghost King is a perfectly plausible early SC. I used one in NvVIII and Water Total War (which I won) to good effect. They're especially good at SCing underwater because the usual bane of their existence early on is archers, and there are no archers UW. (As long as you avoid Hydromancer provinces, the GK has no problems UW and can ignore most afflictions he picks up).

Of course, combining the GK with enough S to want to cast Strands is a little rougher. I'm not convinced you actually want to cast Strands though. VoT covers 4/8, and you have enough S,D nationally to search those. That only leaves N really, where you might want N2 for remote searching. And B is a non-issue UW (although you'll want to search H1, but you get lots of H1 commanders just randomly). Basically, Rlyeh is already well-situated for site searching, making Strands much less appealing.