Thornwick
Fishing Village
The Town Scandal
Harbor master Aldric Voss has been secretly skimming a portion of the catch taxes and funneling the coin to the Saltmarsh Syndicate, a smuggling ring operating out of the old cannery. Mara Dunvast, the fishwife who runs the dockside market, discovered the ledger but is being blackmailed into silence because Aldric knows her son was the one who burned down the old lighthouse three winters ago. Meanwhile, the village healer Senna Broch has been treating Syndicate members for knife wounds in secret, and half the town suspects she is complicit — though the truth is she is desperately trying to gather enough evidence to bring Aldric down herself.
Relationship Web
The Townspeople (6)
Aldric Voss
Human · Harbor Master (Rogue — Mastermind)
Personality
Charming and politically savvy, deeply paranoid beneath a jovial surface, ruthlessly pragmatic
Backstory
Aldric was once a middling sailor who talked his way into the harbor master position after the previous holder, old Captain Fenwick, died under circumstances Aldric insists were natural. He has cultivated a web of favors and fear across Thornwick, using Mara Dunvast's silence as an anchor for his scheme and treating Senna Broch's quiet movements around the docks with growing suspicion. His arrangement with the Saltmarsh Syndicate began as a survival necessity, but greed has since turned it into ambition.
Relationships
Dialogue
“Welcome, welcome! Thornwick's docks are open to all honest folk — and I do so love meeting honest folk. They're rarer than silver eels, ha!”
“You'll want to log your cargo with me personally. I find it keeps things... tidy. Mislogged cargo has a way of disappearing, you understand.”
“Senna Broch? Fine healer. Very dedicated. Perhaps a little too dedicated to wandering the docks at odd hours. I keep meaning to ask her about that.”
Mara Dunvast
Human · Fishwife and Dockside Market Vendor (Commoner — information broker by necessity)
Personality
Sharp-tongued and fiercely maternal, outwardly gossipy but internally tormented, stubbornly loyal to her community
Backstory
Mara has run the dockside market stall for twenty years, and there is almost nothing that passes through Thornwick she does not hear about first. She stumbled onto Aldric Voss's ledger when a Syndicate courier dropped a satchel near her stall during a storm, and what she read turned her stomach to cold bilge water. She cannot expose him without condemning her son Oskar, and the weight of that silence is slowly breaking her — something her old friend Senna Broch has quietly noticed in the hollows under Mara's eyes.
Relationships
Dialogue
“Fresh cod, smoked mackerel, oysters so fat they'll make you weep! ...What? No, I'm fine. Just the sea wind. Buy something or move along.”
“You want to know about Thornwick? I know every name, every debt, every secret on this dock. Some of those secrets I'd pay good coin to forget, mind you.”
“If you're working for Aldric Voss — and I can always tell — you can take your smile and your questions and drop them straight into the harbor.”
Senna Broch
Half-Elf · Village Healer (Cleric of the Tide — Life Domain)
Personality
Compassionate but calculating, carries a quiet moral fury behind gentle eyes, speaks in careful measured words
Backstory
Senna came to Thornwick eight years ago fleeing a temple schism in the capital, drawn by the simple rhythm of tides and mending fishermen's hands. She noticed the Syndicate's knife wounds long before she chose to do anything about them, and it was Mara Dunvast's hollow grief that finally convinced her to act rather than simply observe. She has been secretly copying evidence against Aldric Voss into a second ledger hidden beneath the floorboards of her healing house, and she has recently reached out to the wandering knight Ser Brynn Calloway, hoping a sword arm might be worth a confessor's ear.
Relationships
Dialogue
“Sit down and let me look at that. I won't ask how you got it — not yet. First we stop the bleeding, then we talk about the choices that caused it.”
“The sea gives and the sea takes. I have made my peace with that theology. It is the men who decide what the sea takes that I find harder to forgive.”
“I keep records of everyone I treat. Very thorough records. I find it... useful. For medical purposes, of course.”
Oskar Dunvast
Human · Fisherman (Fighter — folk hero background, unacknowledged)
Personality
Reckless and guilt-ridden, quick to anger and quicker to laugh, desperately seeking to prove himself worthy of his mother's sacrifice
Backstory
Oskar was seventeen when he drunkenly knocked over a lantern in the old lighthouse during a dare, not knowing the keeper was asleep inside — the man escaped, but the structure burned to nothing, and Oskar has carried that shame like an anchor since. He knows his mother Mara is suffering for his mistake and has begun asking dangerous questions around the docks about Aldric Voss, entirely unaware that the grizzled rope-merchant Dougal Fenn saw him the night of the fire and has been watching him ever since. He idolizes Ser Brynn Calloway without knowing the knight is entangled in his family's fate.
Relationships
Dialogue
“I'm not scared of hard work or hard weather. It's the quiet nights I don't like. Too much time to think.”
“Aldric Voss smiles too much. My mam taught me that a man who smiles at everyone is smiling at no one. I've been watching him.”
“You ever do something so stupid that you'd trade every good thing that came after just to undo it? Yeah. Pour me another.”
Ser Brynn Calloway
Dwarf · Wandering Knight (Paladin of Helm — Oath of Devotion, lapsed)
Personality
Gruff and self-doubting, morally rigid in principle but battered by past failures, unexpectedly tender toward the vulnerable
Backstory
Brynn arrived in Thornwick three months ago after abandoning a post she deemed corrupt, and she intended to stay only long enough to resupply before moving inland. Then Senna Broch sat down across from her in the Salted Hook tavern and laid out what was happening in this village, and something in Brynn that had gone cold for years refused to let her leave. She finds Oskar Dunvast's restless guilt painfully familiar and has started teaching him to fight properly, unaware that Dougal Fenn has already sent word to someone in the Syndicate that a knight is asking quiet questions.
Relationships
Dialogue
“I'm not this town's protector. I just happen to still be here. There's a difference. Mostly.”
“Helm teaches that vigilance is love made practical. I've been... practicing.”
“The boy — Oskar — he reminds me of myself before I learned that courage without direction is just another word for damage.”
Dougal Fenn
Dwarf · Rope and Net Merchant (Rogue — Spy, Saltmarsh Syndicate informant)
Personality
Outwardly cantankerous and forgettable, pathologically patient, quietly enjoys having power over people who do not know he exists
Backstory
Dougal has operated as the Syndicate's eyes in Thornwick for eleven years, reporting to Aldric Voss on anyone who asks the wrong questions or sees the wrong things. He witnessed Oskar Dunvast at the lighthouse fire and filed it away the way he files everything — as a coin to be spent at the right moment. When Ser Brynn Calloway began her quiet investigation, Dougal recognized the threat immediately and has already dispatched a message by carrier bird to the Syndicate's enforcer, though he experiences a flicker of genuine unease about Senna Broch, whom he suspects knows far more than she should and whom he cannot read at all.
Relationships
Dialogue
“Rope's rope. Net's net. You want the good hemp or do you want to waste my time? I've been selling tackle on this dock since before your father smelled of salt.”
“Strangers asking about harbor taxes, knights poking about the cannery at night... People forget that old men on docks see everything. Everything.”
“Young Oskar's got his mother's eyes. Sharp, when he remembers to use them. Shame about the lighthouse. Real shame. I think about it often.”