@ArmouredWizard Hmm, perhaps this is an issue with Room, after all.
In that case, it is often useful to keep your model classes and your database entity classes separate. Among other things, makes both of them easier to understand.
For example, your model Scoundrel might have an attribute crew:Crew?, while your database ScoundrelEntity would just have a crewId:String?
You would store and load your entities separately from each other, then build your model representation from that.