Ronwn's page

Breleth was old - even for a witch - and welcomed the young legs and hands to collect herbs and perform basic preparations of simples and remedies. Ronwn was also tasked to "run" errands along the Gulf Coast.

At fourteen, Breleth recommended to Ronwn's parents that Ronwn also take instruction from Faed, Ronwn's distant cousin and proprieter of an alchemy shop in the city. Breleth and Faed had done business in years past, which had diminished as Breleth's mobility decreased. With Ronwn as go-between, Breleth gained access to the broad array of herbal and alchemical items from town, and Faed gained access to Breleth's specialty potions, elixirs, and herbal items - and an additional pair of hands in the shop and laboratory several days a month.

This fresh arrangement dramatically expanded Ronwn's horizons. Her errands punting through the fens and in the near reaches of the bay had introduced her to a broad variety of local hunters, farmers, fishermen, and bargemen. In the city, Ronwn met the spectrum of human experience. Her naturally retiring disposition served her well inititally - she avoided troublesome run-ins with the city watch or any local street toughs.

Faed nurtured her alchemical inclinations. Breleth continued to develop her arcane capacities. And the city streets taught her lessons of cruelty and oppression that she found enlightening and appalling. She had not had a strongly articulated sense of morality before her time in town - just a basic level of religious observance at home and with Breleth. On the streets, that diffuse sense of 'rightness' was hammered against a growing sense of 'wrongness', galvanized in teenage absolutes and romanticism, and tempered by fear of the repressive authorities.

As an outlet for her growing sense of outraged injustice, Ronwn pursued legend and rumor of a resistance to the local regime. This was not at all her forte, and subverted by the backwoods impression she conveyed and her native shyness. These attributes also probably kept her from serious negative attention.

Almost unnoticably, in the last five years Ronwn has advanced from apprentice to journeyman. Her father passed away. Her mother lives with the family of one of Ronwn's older brothers. Though her brothers are not hostile, they are obviously uncomfortable with Ronwn's position of 'witch's girl', or increasingly, 'junior fen witch'. Breleth remains a mentor, and Ronwn still has call on the sleeping-nook near the old witch's hearth. But Breleth has settled into the late autumn of her years. Cousin Faed still values Ronwn as an occasional collaborator, and affords Ronwn a small room in the back of the shop and access to his compounding facility. But he does not command her time.

Cousin Faed occasionally attempts to introduce Ronwn to 'suitable young gentlemen'. He is a respectable shop owner, and he feels a vague filial guilt at her unattached status. Ronwn is interested enough - her playmates of youth are largely married, and most with several children. Ronwn feels the passing of marriagability with vague regret. None of Cousin Faed's well intentioned meetings was any great success - from either end. Cousin Faed's crop of 'suitable gentlemen' are consistently moderately successful merchants and were put off by Ronwn's gentility, rusticism, and lack of enthusiasm for commercial pursuits. For Ronwn's part, she has found them cold, arrogant, and gratuitously cruel. Perhaps more importantly, none of these 'dates' resulted in a major disaster. Ronwn has not considered this explicitly, but has been reticent to accept more of Cousin Faed's oblique suggestions.