Laurel Gebre's page

"Of course I remember you," Laurel says pleasantly as you walk in. However, with talk of a favor, she offers a sigh, and she turns her eyes to the ground when you explain.

"I'm grateful for the help you folks offered me, but I'm still not in a position to be just giving anything away.

"How about this? I know more than a few of you are canny out in the wilds. While you're out hunting this wyrm, see if you can gather some harder to find herbs and roots for me. The more dangerous parts of the forest always hide the best ingredients. Bring something back for me, and we'll call it a trade."

Laurel begins busying herself with her cluttered workspace, pulling down bundles and jars to mix some medicine for Ben.

"I'm no more a wizard than I am a physician, so I can't make any real potions. However, I can give you something that will help a body fight off infection."

Laurel is momentarily taken aback by Sweet Pea's desperate outburst, but she quickly composes herself since it becomes clear that this is a business call.

"I wouldn't be much of an herbalist without such cures," she calmly boasts. "Hop down from my window box and step inside while I get them together."

...

"Apply this paste to the infected wound to keep it from spreading further," she instructs Sweet Pea. Laurel then hands a palm-sized. tightly bound bundle. "This sachet is for the fever. Mix it in water and bring it to a boil, then have him drink the infusion.

"Wait for the water to cool before feeding it to him!" she adds after a pause, realizing that such a clarification might be needed.

Laurel charges a single silver for each of the medicines.

Sweet Pea arrives back in town, running the rest of the way to rest her weary wings for a bit. She recognizes Laurel's shop from among all the buildings that, to her, look quite the same.

She hops onto the window box and knocks on the moss-crusted pane to get Laurel's attention.

The herbalist walks out from behind the shop counter, opens the door, and leans over to talk to the green girl she finds, again, squatting upon her planter box.

"Most customers just use the door," she groans. "Do you need some help, dear?"

Laurel grimaces for a moment, surveying the rush of customers, the halfling and half-orc offering their help, and the cherubic green face pressed against the window. Finally, she offers a resigned, exhausted sigh.

"I already have the ingredients arrayed here," she gestures to the overcrowded shelves and workspace behind her. With her other hand, she stabs a finger upon the aged hide-bound tome sitting open on the counter. "The recipe is here in my grandmother's old book. If you think you can help mix this cure, be my guest."

Laurel allows Randu and Krogge behind the shop counter to try their hands at mixing the ingredients as the herbalist focuses on selling the pouches she's already made. After hearing the ingredients repeated, Krogge easily recognizes them on the workspace.

Laurel groans at Randu's admonitions as she shambles back behind her shop counter, as much to continue her work as to escape the customers pushing their way inside.

It is hard to hear her over the growing clamor inside the cramped, mud-tracked shop.
Only those standing near her counter and workstation, beneath hanging pots and bundles of dried herbs, can distinguish her grumblings.

"Unless anyone else can decipher my grandmother's bizarre book and its hoodoo recipes, I don't see an alternative. Even spending all of yesterday mixing the Rat's Tail, Ironblooms, Elderwood Moss, and what-not, I don't have enough prepared yet to treat everyone."

The first beleaguered Valers crowd her counter, and she begins doling out pouches of medicine in exchange for a few silvers each.
Looming behind her are high shelves and tables that serve double duty as displays and workspaces, bowing under the weight of jars of colored glass, alchemical presses, and all manner of dried, preserved, and jellied animal parts.

Laurel looks sour for a moment, but with a tired blink of her eyes and a heavy sigh, her expression softens.

"Yes, thank you, Mr. Krogge," she says with downcast eyes. She raises her head again before continuing. "This may be the first time I've ever been able to afford an assistant or two, and it seems I've never needed the help more." Then, under her breath but just audible to Krogge, she adds "Or deserved the help more."

Several long, crowded hours are spent in the shop, aiding Laurel endure the onrush of customers.

The smell of burnt earth and spicy incense chokes the air of the cramped, mud-tracked shop.
Bunches of dried herbs hang from the ceiling, along with dangling pots, presses,alchemical apparatuses, and glassware of more arcane purposes. Pouches of rare plants, jars of colored glass, and all manner of dried, preserved, and jellied animal parts fill high shelves and tables doing double duty as displays and workspaces.

A slew of worn, weathered faces parade themselves through the shop. Some are impatient and stressed, but most are very grateful, and a rare glint of happiness appears in many eyes.

Without your help, Laurel might have been working well into the night, but instead, the line is finished by lunchtime.

With a heavy, relieved sigh, she passes five silver to each of you who stayed to help.

"Perhaps now I can finally get some..." her words are cut off by a mighty yawn, almost too big for such a rail-thin woman. She curses in Sylvan before continuing. "Anyhow, this may not be much to you folks, but it's not every day I can afford to hire on any kind of assistance."

The shop door cracks open, and Laurel's sleepless eyes peer out to scan the street. She grumbles to herself for a bit.

She sighs, then opens the door wider.

"Thank you," she says to Krogge before turning to the crowd. "Looks like we're open for business again, folks! Come on in and let's get you all fixed up."

She leaves the door open and returns to her shop counter, bracing herself for the onrush of customers.

"Well, you could ask the woman treating the disease," Laurel calls sarcastically before hissing and cursing in a strange language.

After shaking her burned fingertips, she grabs a thick, padded mitt to retrieve a boiling decanter on the stove and continues mixing medicine.

"At first I didn't guess that it was the damned Blackscour since I've never heard of that good-for-nothing fungus being found around here. Once more and more people began coming in with the same symptoms, though, it was hard to miss."

She interrupts her explanation with some more Sylvan grumbling as a dangling sachet of dried herbs bumps against her head.

"Even though I'm no doctor, everyone expects me to diagnose every little sniffle, that and treat every scabbed knee and stubbed toe. Anyhow, once I had my suspicion, I asked Sheriff Baleson to check Brookman's Well, and sure enough, the fungus was growing along the stones and getting into the water. We quarantined the well to prevent new infections, but much of the damage was done."

Laurel scarcely has time to offer her own thanks, as a number of locals push their way inside with you and queue up to purchase medicine.
She hurriedly bounces between her workstation, where she mixes and measures out doses, and the shop counter to exchange them for a couple silver.

"If you're offering help, I could use some assistants for the day to handle sales. That'll actually give me time enough to prepare the medicine itself."

Her words are curt, but you attribute that to the lack of respite between the stress of the standoff and the stress of managing an onslaught of desperate customers.