I’m still posting #lore24 entries (almost) every day and experimenting with the blog format. I will try to post a weekly digest, see if it works better than daily entries.

Marta’s teeth

Why on earth did Marta keep this big chest full of human teeth? She left it behind when fleeing one of her previous lairs so it can’t have been that important, but I can’t imagine it had no purpose.

Doctor Hytarkos

Doctor Hytarkos is the physician of the nobility. He is old, frail-looking and an absolute asshole, but he is also a very competent physician. There are some things he cannot heal though, and when this is the case he says it bluntly.

He expects to get paid, though, even when he is powerless, and his rates are stiff. Oh, and he knows a few competent mercenaries, erm, debt collectors, whose rates are stiff as well.

The Debt collectors

The debt collectors Hytarkos uses are a mercenary group 15-20 people strong. Membership varies but there are a few core members:

• Captain Mepos, smart, polite, professional to a fault, doing his job without any kind of meanness.
• Brother Alyos, a devout priest of Bacchus. Most often drunk but astonishingly able to walk, fight and even drink some more.
• Tacu, the strong man of the team. Short, stocky, strong as an ox, and probably about as smart.
• Seffi, a short and slight teenage girl. She knows a bit of magic and has the perpetually nervous demeanor of somebody on the run.

Halav’s Sword

King Halav defeated the beastmen and slew their leader a thousand years ago, more or less.

There is a prophecy announcing that when the beastmen come back, the King will be here to fight them. He will need his sword then.

Or maybe the sword will be here and it will need its king? The prophecy has been told and retold for a long time and not everybody agrees on its precise meaning.

Mellareus

Mellareus the Magnificent, also known as Mellareus the Great, or Mellareus the Inscrutable, or Mellareus the Incomparable, or sometimes “this old weirdo down there” when he is out of earshot, is a wizard.

He lives in the Underworld, not far from the ruins of Halavos. He is a very busy wizard, so his secretary the goblin Brukh makes sure he is not disturbed needlessly.

Brukh is also tasked with telling visitors how his master looks today; he may be gray-skinned, or he may have three arms or only one green-red eye, or he may be as tall as a tree but more mobile, this varies a lot. Not that this is terribly important, as meeting Mellareus usually does not involve seeing him: he is always surrounded by illusions and it is never obvious which part of the illusion he is.

Mellareus’ Menagerie

Mellareus keeps a magical menagerie. He owns such marvels as a caged imp whose magical cage prevents it from shapechanging or turning invisible (yeah, you bet), or a dust mephit imprisoned in a glass globe.

He also owns a young kobold, which is very unusual as kobolds, being faeries, do not grow up; they just appear into the world fully formed.

Nobody ever asked Brukh what he thinks of all this.

Amsel Bollwerk

Amsel Bollwerk was an adventurer and a paladin, operating in and around Penca.

He died under the ruins of Halavos, digested by a gelatinous cube. His companions buried what little was left of him and used the treasure he had collected to build a small monument to his memory in a small square in Penca.

After a few months, when rumours grew of beastmen warbands in the north, people began praying to Amsel, some for him to give them strength, some for him to come back and save them. There is no reason to believe he heard those prayers, nor that he has answered any of them, but the cult has been growing nonetheless.