Long Suffering Wives Table (for Trey)

Long Suffering Wives of Interest (d10)

1. Madge has long been a secret admirer of one of the local would-be poets, a drunken scoundrel who has only recently noticed her as someone who'd attended several of his public readings. The poet has recently gone deeply into debt and has decided, in desperation, to try to woo Madge away from her husband of more than twenty winters. Her husband, so far, is oblivious to this new development, being a very busy and prosperous innkeeper with three buxom, free-spirited daughters who keep threatening to run away if they don't get their way in everything. Madge has just received a note from the poet. A syrupy love letter only a moonstruck fool could possibly take seriously. Unfortunately she just dropped it without realizing it had slipped from her bodice. There it lies, on the player character's table...
2. Ingrid has been keeping the old place going for the better part of a decade now. All on her own. She's a real force of nature in her own right. A big, bossy, brassy woman who doesn't put up with anyone's attitude but her own. Her husband has just returned to her after having disappeared for more than a dozen years. Not only did he run off with some floozy, he's undead now. Boy oh boy is she ever Not Amused. But then, she realizes that him being legally dead, she inherited everything--the Inn is hers now. She could use a little help, perhaps some of those big strong adventurers who like her beer might consider taking out the uh trash, so to speak?
3. Gertie used to be a dancer, before the plague got into her leg and her father-in-law had to whittle her a new one. She is a fabulous cook. All the local assassins pay her a retainer to help them eliminate the bodies of those they need to make 'disappear.' She and her husband are going to retire soon. Once she finds and trains-in a suitable replacement to take over her sordid culinary practice. Her husband, as most such over-worked and under-appreciated sorts, is completely oblivious to Gertie's little side-line. After all she runs the kitchen. It is her domain. He just manages the rest of the Inn. As best as he can with one eye and a surly goat-eyed stable-boy they've been raising as their own after finding the child left on their doorstep six years ago.
4. Rutheenya loves her pickled beets. She admires most pickled vegetables and is an accomplished pickler of some renown in her town and the local countryside. But it is her beets that she is most proud of over all else, even her family. Especially her problem child Seymour who wastes all his time day-dreaming and not really applying himself to learning the family trade or his mother's ultra-precious recipes and pickling-secrets. Recently Seymour has found himself a girlfriend. A pretty little thing from a family of foreigners who have just settled in town. Rutheenya is convinced that this despicable, sneaky little trollop is not only trying to steal her son, but that the girl is only using Seymour in order to get access to Rutheenya's secret recipes. Her paranoia is getting worse and worse. She's contemplating asking some of the less scrupulous sorts who congregate around the rickety bar in her inn to maybe try to dissuade the girl, drive her off, but not hurt her. At least that was the plan before her cookbook went missing...
5. Trudi was once a very pretty young girl. Now she's neither young nor pretty. Some former patron of her husband's seedy bar took exception to how he had been cheated a few years back, now she really is a bitch. The kind that walks around on four legs and packs a mean bite.
6. Heloise came from a rich family of warrior-accountants who held huge tracts of land for generations in her native land, far across the great sea. One freak storm wrecked her ship and stranded her here, penniless and unable to speak the local language. She has struggled against the odds and not only did she learn three new languages, she quickly was able to gather up a sizable cache of gold that allowed her to establish her own tavern. Her methods sometimes get whispered about, but never within her hearing. Sailors, both legitimate merchantmen and piratical scoundrels alike, cross her palm with silver in order to secure favorable winds. Heloise not only made the most of her situation in a new land, she came to terms with the storm elementals who dwell just off of the near-by reef. More than a few sorcerers and other spell-casters have wondered just how she managed that...but few have the courage to ask directly. There's something about her that just does not encourage such prying.
7. Elta was raised among nomadic tribesfolk. She was traded to her current husband as a pledge of good faith and to forge a strong, blood-backed bond between the nomad tribe and the grumpy old mountain man who ran the mostly forgotten trading post. Elta is usually very quiet, reserved, even taciturn, as her folk tend to be, but something is very wrong. Her husband is dead. Under suspicious circumstances. And what's worse is that Elta never bore a child from the union...which means that the bond is no more...unless she can find a new husband to take the dead one's place and conceive a child in the next two months. Should the tribe's outriders arrive at the post and there are no children, and thus no bond, there will be war all along the frontier again. Bloody war.
8. Aliss sits in her hand-made rocking chair, the one her grandfather carved for her as a wedding present, knitting socks and sweaters and scarves. She doesn't bother with much of the day-to-day details of running the inn any more. Her children and grandchildren run everything now. She just sits there, rocking gently back and forth, knitting and humming away to herself. A harmless old woman who patiently assembles small, soft constructs from wool and fiber and thread. Each plush little construct then scuttles off on one little chore or special task or mission all its own. The little constructs have managed to avoid being caught or seen by all but a few bar patrons who've so far chalked it all up to drunken hallucinations. It's amazing how effective the little things are at sneaking into locked bedrooms and administering poison to their intended victims. No one ever mistreats Aliss' wait staff. At least not a second time.
9. Velga bitterly regrets ever having married Gurm, or getting tied-down to a ramshackle joke of an inn along a road that sees less traffic and fewer travelers every year. She is a very unhappy woman who wishes she had done something, anything else other than settle for the first man to ask for her hand in marriage. But all that could change now. One of the ne'er do well adventurers who had booked rooms with Gurm and Velga only a few weeks ago was discovered torn limb from limb out in the old forest past the tumbled-down old Priory. That news was a welcome relief from the boring drudgery of her normal routine--it meant that she and her husband could seize the belongings that had left behind in lieu of the outstanding debt that would not now get paid. There, among the knives, mallets, wooden stakes and small mirrors Velga discovered a soiled and blood-stained grimoire wrapped in filthy velvet. At first she was frightened of the old book. Then it began to whisper to her. Over the course of the last few days she has begun to read it. There seems to be a ritual outlined in this grimoire that might just solve all her problems and give her back her freedom...all it will take are three severed human hands to make the pact...
10. Linnea ran away from her family. It was years ago. But the memory remained fresh. She had not wanted to to marry the toothless, scraggly-looking relative who'd offered her parents three gold coins for her. Instead she stabbed her would-be suitor in the heart with a paring knife, took the three coins and bought passage on a ship. She made her way down the coast, often working filthy, tedious jobs no one else would want, scrabbling and fighting her way up from the bottom. She changed her name with each new town or port until now she had to think about who she was supposed to be. In time she married an inn-keeper. He was kind. A good man. He treated her well. But now some relatives from out-of-town have just arrived on a visit. One of them is the spitting image of the loathsome suitor whom she thought she had killed.