something extra: brunch goss
General Summary
Before the adventure kicked in, the PCs (minus Orian) had brunch with Junah, Brea, and Madhu. All the 20-somethings traded their childhood traumas. The things that came to light:
Virik never knew his dad. His mother’s family used to be thralls, until the House they served became destitute; the Maveren abandoned their thralls to their fate. 1
Oska said that she just has a vague childhood memory of reading a big, strange, old book, and then she woke up in a nunnery. What this means for her backstory has yet to be determined. Is this how she arrived at the nunnery? Does she remember her previous, pre-book childhood at all?
Lorenzo was stolen from his home and enslaved, early enough that he doesn’t really remember it. Later on he escaped, and was rescued from the streets and taken under the wing of his patron in the Vaceni navy, to whom he's very loyal.
Madhu also grew up in the nunnery; he and Oska are “cousins, kind of.” He’s actually a beekeeper, but he was told off by the nuns to accompany Oska, so now he’s here, beeless in Malfa, and that’s fine. It’s fine.
Junah is the child of thralls in Erling household. When she was born, her parents decided that she would be freed, meaning that at age 14 she was kicked out of Erling House and left to her own devices. Seeing she was pretty lost, Saturday (then in his mid-twenties) offered to take her into his own service, and she agreed. That was eight or nine years ago, and Junah has been acting as the practical part of Saturday’s brain ever since. She has big-sister energy towards practically everybody except Brea.2
According to Brea, “poor Saturday” does his best not to be like his (biological) father, but we don’t control what we inherit, do we? His father was in Grimvatten, and was archetypal Grimvatten: full-blooded human, bluff, hearty, a bit of a bully, self-involved, unreliable. He died years ago. Saturday barely knew him, but still wants nothing to do with him or his memory. This is part of the reason he’s kind towards the Grimvatten kids. Maveren aren’t terribly nice towards their children—they have a kind of free-range attitude towards childrearing—and Saturday didn’t have a great childhood himself in Erling, being looked down upon as mostly human.
The Grimvatten kids are named Cestjiane and Rothvik, but everybody calls them Cece and Rod. Despite their age, they’re entry-level adventurers: Cece (age 19) is a 2nd-level fighter, and Rod (age 16) is a 1st-level wizard. Cece is pure human; Rod is part-elf, but only a very small part, and he doesn’t like to make a big deal about it.
1Sudden worldbuilding: This was a House named Vattn, not one of the founding houses. Some Vattn Maveren came to Malfa, set up a household, tried to get rich, failed, and left town again, leaving their thralls behind. Their shoddy treatment of their thralls was a Maveren scandal at the time, 50-odd years ago, not that the other Maveren did anything about it. (Here's a bit about what the Maveren are like. If Nykomin, the most old-school Maver the PCs know, learns about the Vatn House scandal, she will be contemptuous of the other Houses in Malfa for not pursuing the Vatn overseas and holding them accountable for their treatment of their vassals. If asked whether this would be worth starting a war over, she would say, "of course;" if asked whether she'd have taken the abandoned vassals into her own household and looked after them, she won't have an answer, because it would never have occurred to her.)
2 Junah thinks about buying her freedom sometimes, and Saturday has said he’ll agree to it, but she says that she “needs a plan” to become free; she needs to know what she’s going to do afterward. As it is, she and Saturday haven’t agreed on a body-price, the price a thrall needs to pay for their freedom. Any PC with a passive Insight of 12 or higher will have gotten the impression that she has a plan, and it’s already underway, but she doesn’t want to talk about it yet.
1Sudden worldbuilding: This was a House named Vattn, not one of the founding houses. Some Vattn Maveren came to Malfa, set up a household, tried to get rich, failed, and left town again, leaving their thralls behind. Their shoddy treatment of their thralls was a Maveren scandal at the time, 50-odd years ago, not that the other Maveren did anything about it. (Here's a bit about what the Maveren are like. If Nykomin, the most old-school Maver the PCs know, learns about the Vatn House scandal, she will be contemptuous of the other Houses in Malfa for not pursuing the Vatn overseas and holding them accountable for their treatment of their vassals. If asked whether this would be worth starting a war over, she would say, "of course;" if asked whether she'd have taken the abandoned vassals into her own household and looked after them, she won't have an answer, because it would never have occurred to her.)
2 Junah thinks about buying her freedom sometimes, and Saturday has said he’ll agree to it, but she says that she “needs a plan” to become free; she needs to know what she’s going to do afterward. As it is, she and Saturday haven’t agreed on a body-price, the price a thrall needs to pay for their freedom. Any PC with a passive Insight of 12 or higher will have gotten the impression that she has a plan, and it’s already underway, but she doesn’t want to talk about it yet.
Report Date
09 Oct 2023