West Ranger Cabin
The rangers appear almost like brothers, all being long haired and heavily bearded and larger than normal.
Ranger Bob and Hiedi Eggs
Bob is the tallest and strongest longbowman in camp and brings in the most meat. With beef and swine not grown in Willow Hamlet, moose, elk and bison are highly valued. Bob avoids contact with Stonnish Giants and thinks Arn is insane for having parlayed these creatures. His wife, Hiedi collects the eggs of wild animals, most importantly the eggs of the Stote, Great Stote and feathered contrary. Bob does not use dogs on the hunt, but prefers a pack horse.
Central Ranger Cabin
Ranger Arn and Eda Berry
Arn, a stocky powerful man, specializes in hunting boar, using a spear and four great mastiffs, and keeping his longbow mostly as a ward against the Stonish Giants, upon whom he is an expert. His wife, Eda, studies the feathered Contrary and their relationship with the creeping Contrary Berry. Her best friend is Lisa Dream Catcher, to whom she provides contrary feathers.
Eastern Ranger Cabin
Ranger Jon and Bess Long
Jon is the senior, lead ranger, is the closest to normal size and is by far the most skilled tracker, shrewdest hunter and most feared man in Willow Hamlet. Jon has three mute scent hounds with whom he whispers. Jon has taken 6 runaway ears, which he wears on a rawhide chord about his neck. His hat is decorated with Great Stote plums and an ear of a Stonnish Giant he once slew. He cannot out do Bob in archery, but is such a good huntsmen that he has taken kills with his knife alone. Jon specializes in hunting: men, giants, wolves, lions and panthers.
Bess Long, Jon’s wife occupies herself curing meat and mushroom picking. She lives under an assumed name and is in fact the escaped bride of a merchant of Deep Sound. When she was recovered by Jon, she seduced him, naming his uncollected bounty as her bride price. Bess is the smartest woman in camp, by far and not easily outwitted.
Brewery
Brewer Bent is a far too scrawny to be a brewer, yet he is, silver bearded and bald, wearing a high bear fur hat. He is a cuss and operates a still, which he reserves mostly for his own use and for the members of the council and select visitors. He is a cuss who plays knucklebones, which he makes from Ranger Bob’s kills. The Breweress Megs, is the chief beer maker, her husband mostly concerned with distilling from her efforts, “the real drink.” Megs is a tall, fat woman with long black hair who is lusty in laughter and grows her own hops in her garden, as well as night ferns, which she gives to Lisa Dream catcher for her creations, in return for advice.
Maid Cabin
Lisa was a Sent Wife from Deep Sound whose husband died while she was in route. The husband was a taxidermist and scalp hoop dresser. She, along with her Lady Confessor, Nunny Glens moved into the taxidermy den where they do something similar, using the hair of Stonnish Giant, the feathers of Contraries and other such elements as night ferns, contrary vines and Raven feathers to construct dream catchers. A dream catcher must be made for a specific person, over the course of three nights, while Lisa consults her tarot cards and the catcher in the dream sleeps upon the couch maintained for that purpose. The effects of these dream catchers range from the storage of terrors in a blame well and the revelation of mysteries, to include especially the Crag Mouth Heap, the Silver Gate and the Well of Kells.
Moderator note: use the information in these destinations and place them in a dream through some anxiety to which the dreamer might be prone.
Nunny Glens, is a young petite bride of Faith. As a Lady Confessor she assists, listening to the mumbles of the dreamer and playing appropriate tunes on her mouth organ, an array of seven flute pipes, each as thick as the ring finger of: a lass, a lad, a lady, a factor, a monk, a knight, and a stone deacon or mason. Nunny Glens was conceived out of wedlock by the Elder Lord Bund, upon a hand maiden to his Lady Wife, and was given over to a nunnery. She was detailed to guide wives as penance for her crime of conception. In Lisa she found a more agreebal purpose.
Matron Cabin
Mamma Herb is a short round drum of a woman with a mob of thick white hair, who serves as the hamlet healer and herbalist.
Apple Spinster is a less robust and more reserved apprentice to her station, who was freed by Durst on completion of her service of 14 years served for picking apples off the ground in the Lord Bund’s orchard.
Smithy
Black Bront is a big, broad, sooty handed iron maker who dreams of forging swords, if only war would be kind enough to come to the Scarlet Mountains.
Slag Boy, a youthful and somehow fat slave, is his apprentice.
Bellows Boy, a thin, blond fellow of wasted face and sunken eyes, looking older than his 20 years by double, hauls wood, works the bellows, banks coals and rakes ash. Black Bront is proud that he beats his own boys, despises Joe the Jailer, and often challenges him to arm wrestle. His boys are well behaved, with bellows bow secretly wishing to escape and be adopted by Stonnish Giants or Dreamed off by a Feathered contrary.
Jeweler
Teigler Finder is the cousin of Joel the silver smith and makes a modest living fashioning devices for Lisa’s creations from his cousin’s silver wire. He is quiet and tight lipped and does know the secret of Silver Gate, overheard from his cousin’s conclave with a pair of doomed prospectors.
Willow Inn
Innkeeper Durst is a tall, shaven headed larch of a man with proper trimmed and oiled chin beard and sweeping mustache. He dresses in silk shirts and pressed wool pants and adores broad belts with a silver buckle. He was a noted duelist and gambler in Deep Sound who took his winnings and his well-earned leave from that port town, just ahead of an angry Captains Five and married good wife Durst, even taking her name, her deceased husbands name. He is a shrewd judge of character and capacity in people, is a cold blooded killer, and maintains a cold business relationship with his wife.
Goodwife Durst, cook to the Plantation, is a lusty woman, with long red hair, broad features and well fed figure. She looks away as her husband of record beds her serving wenches, even as he pretends not to notice his wife’s adore for Captain Crane, who stays one night a week at the inn, in a room reserved for him. Goodwife Durst, the famous cook of the frontier, is in love with the captain, who is utterly controlled by her contracted husband, who she rightfully fears, not even knowing his given name, he was so eager to take hers.
Durst’s House Slaves
Within the Inn, no one is called a slave, not under Goodwife Durst’s roof. They are all honored servants, glad to be toiling in the fine house rather than in the forest or gardens.
Big Thump, doorman, is near seven feet, active, coordinated in the normal way and having huge hands. He carries a leather paddle to discipline unruly visitors and servants.
Toothless May, baker, is a wrinkled old wench.
Grist Gray, butcher, is a leathery old man with one glassed over eye, who adores toothless May.
Piss, crap house tender and garbage hauler is eprpetually discontented with his lot. He has a very bad case of pox scars and his curly brown hair does not want to grow below his cropped ears, where the hangman at Low Bund burned him with the thief brand.
Toothy May, barmaid, has a fair figure, a loud cackling laugh, big bucked teeth, plump lips, a plush head of curly red hair and dresses in a low cut blouse and short skirt, going barefoot on the boards. May is the property of the Dursts. As he mother a slut from low Bund, died in child birth under their roof, in their service.
Busty Britches, laundress of middle years, long hair still blond though streaked with gray, smiles little as she is missing some teeth. She is buxom and short and was expelled from Low Bund for sluttery, though she claims she was merely a slattern that refused to pleasure the mayor and was disposed of as a laundress to this “gloomy front tier, what drives from a girl many a lonely tear.” Busty keeps the entire Inn cleaned and is ever seeking a man who might buy her from the Dursts and take her away.
Goatherd Camp
Dan, is a tall dark skinned boy, a runaway from Raven Watch, with brown hair and said brown eyes who loves his dogs.
Clem, is a tall, freckle-faced redhead, a runaway from Raven Watch, who loves his dogs but is obsessed with his slinging ability, fancying himself something of a warrior goatherd.
Essaw is an old, tired goatherd who has adopted Dan and Clem as his freed sons, after paying their capture price. He can no longer run but can walk all day bent upon his stave. His slinging days are also long gone. He is perhaps the oldest member of the camp, as the people of the Plantation Willow Hamlet collectively call themselves. Next to Joel the silver smith and Jon the ranger, he is possibly the most informed about the wild lands.
