I had to just jot these down as bullet points because that's about what I had time for tonight if I want to keep pace with the other guys here. I'm still thinking about other elements to work in. I'll be filling out what is here with names and more details as I go.
-mother and grandmother were midwives / hospice workers / herbalists. Despina is her mothers assistant, collects herbs, and is beginning to work her own jobs.
-grandmother accepted a pact to become the conduit to some force watching over the city of Carrion Hill.
-recently her grandmother told Despina about the pact she had made and told her that her time was ending. Convinced her to take up the same pact.
-2 weeks after taking on the bond during a meeting with some kind of spirit in the swamp her grandmother died. The gift of healing comes at a price and is partly fueled by the bearer's own life force and partly by sapping from other life in proximity. Each bearer inevitably dies before their time though the terms of the pact never make this explicitly clear. As a pure fluff element her use of the healing touch hex or the patron spells may do various witch like things- kill plants, sour milk, have to make sure never to use it around infants, etc.
-there are three such spirits tied to carrion hill throughout history. One is bonded to a swamp hag recluse, one to an elf, and the third bonds to shorter lived humans. They are tied together by fate, but also repelled by the sometimes antagonistic agendas of their patron spirits.
-The three pact bound witches could potentially form a coven if they saw the need, but the need would have to be extremely dire to get them to seek each other out and create such a bond.
-Despina's father is cook at a popular tavern. Her younger brother recently joined the Crows during the murder spree.
-Part of accepting the pact of life and healing left her unable to create new life of her own. Despina is barren now, though she has not realized it yet. (That leaves a question as to whether her grandmother had her only child before making the pact or if Despina's mother was really adopted. Also toying with the idea that she was able to have one child by some kind of union or as a side effect of her bond with the spirit patron- meaning Despina and her mother are not 100% human.)
-Her best friend is a young halfling woman who runs a pottery studio.
-Despina and her family live on a hillside neighborhood in The Tangles. She knows most of the people in her little neighborhood and was fiercely protective of them during the killing spree. She organized neighborhood watches, street lights, and volunteer militia patrols.
-She doesn't know much about it, but her grandmother was involved in some crazy events in her youth long before Despina or even her mother was born. Battling cultists, hunting down aberrations- things that she wouldn't associate with the matronly woman of her memory but remembered by some of the elderly of the Tangles. For whatever reason she didn't like talking about those days and people mostly respected her wishes on the matter. Now that she is gone however... things may change.