Daggerford's notable people

Excerpts from an interview done by the end of 1366 by Hunter Simar Thomasson, the on-scene journalist, and Guido Smallaxe, the dwarven playboy and highly skilled assistant of the Poor Wizard's Almanac:

It is obvious that the Queen and the King draw lots of attention towards themselves: in many kingdoms it is the king who rules, but in Illefarn and Daggerford, it is the Queen Talehthiea — or, Talefia to her friends — Morlayana. Her husband, Midazolam Alpharma Evereska, seems to be happy with this arrangement. Both of them are of moon elf race. Together, they have had two children, Mél Silena Morlayana, who is her first-born daughter, and Élinar Faenelinea Morlayana, her second-born daughter. When interviewed whether or not they plan to have more children, she threatened to do some highly entertaining and anatomically impossible things to the interviewer. I found it puzzling that the King was apologizing all of the time.

Another person in position of power is Merlinda — and that's all she has agreed to reveal of her name in public — and she, too, is of moon elven line. At the moment she holds the seat of Prime Minister in kingdom, which, according to her words, "means that she must take care of dull work, while the Queen focuses on waving, shaking hands, romping around in the woods, and scaring off evildoers, but that's all right, really. I like it." She's also in charge of the House of Magic, and city planning, architecture being her specialty. At the moment she's single, but when questioned whether or not she has a suitor, or even plans to marry, she blushed and excused herself due to work and unattended business.

It seems that the House of Magic houses not only magic, but other eccentric personae as well: Fraen, a winged half-fey, is said to teach neccessary adventuring skills to all who attend her lessons. Her fellow house members described her as "mercurial", "sharp", and "completely bonkers, but in a good way, honestly". Much like Merlinda, she is also single, but the question about her availability drew a laugh and snigger, but no comments. Gentlemen, this is your opportunity to woo the fair ladies of House of Magic!

To find Lia Galanodel, we had to leave the safety of the city walls, and enter the unfinished temple of Sharess — curiously unmarked in the maps, although even buildings-to-be are marked down — but we were able to find it by following the well-beaten path. At the temple we met both Lia and Afeef bin Nazeeh, the high priest of the temple. Most of the interview can't be printed for public consumption, but it is available for private viewing along with exclusive woodcuts, at our Waterdeep's office for 50 gp apiece. Summa summarum, what we can print, we found both of them very warm and welcoming people, and we spent an entire evening discussing their views about religion and its importance in life until the wee hours of the morn'. I still have marks on my back, and my assistant gets a stupid glassy-eyed grin whenever the name of Lia is uttered aloud.

On our travels we discovered a patch of brambleberries curiously close by the gates, and investigated them — right until someone pointed a rather nasty-looking short sword at our nose from it. We had met Fenton, a ghostwise halfling barbarian, who, unfortunately refused to give an interview, but his riding dog bit us. But Fenton is not the only halfling in this city, and we headed to interview Keiso, the priestess of Chauntea's temple. Unfortunately, we don't have the room to print everything she said, but she gave us a piece of her mind, and we wonder how many pieces she has left by now. Apparently she likes the city, not enough people heed the call of Chauntea and perhaps we could write down that people should visit her temple more often.

We also met the "witch-halflings" — a group of young halflings who dress in all black and they told us about the importance of crystals, the balance of nature, and drawing the power of the moon. During our interview we got blessed, cursed, and then blessed again as cursing would bring three-fold bad luck to them, and to counter that, they had to bless us again. Despite the mushroom- and absinthe-induced incoherency in them, we found Bam, Maribou and Frido rather sociable, especially after they had offered their wares for us to sample.

After our head had cleared enough, we headed towards the Bardello, one of the local landmarks of culture. We were greeted by cacophony, as the young students practiced with recorders (apparently playing Sweet Home Illefarn), but a backstage trip introduced us to Gwenda Jefryn, who was altogether too busy giving us an interview, as she was practicing with her violin with a passion rarely seen outside of maniacs. A peek into another room brought us face to face with Torwan Benezamon, who wasn't as occupied, but the interview took a sour turn after we asked about his arm, which was extremely unusual for a human being, being covered with rather monstrous scales. We were, gently put, ushered out with extreme hurry.

We staggered towards the cheap entertainment at the other side of the river, and found ourselves from Barbequing Barbarian, a local tavern of entertaining repute. There, we met four students from the House of Magic: Atropa, Calia T'arnar, Mufur and Drodoc; a charming gnome-lady, enchanting half-elfess, witty dwarf-lad and cheery halfling guy, respectively. We discussed with them, and it turned out that one of the students was not with them, Silendûr Belarion, a moon elven chap, "because his mother is an uptight <censored>, but don't tell her who said so". The food and drink of the tavern envigorated our souls, although it was not as good as the meal cooked by the charming elven lady Teada in the Illefarn Inn, and we moved on to our next place: the Dragonspear Castle.

On our way to this waypoint, we met two humans clad in somber green and brown, and a quick chat revealed that they are druidic students (who were mentioned by the witch-halflings). Not only that, but both Freya and Stor Vanhir are the students of the Queen herself, and we spent a moment trying to find more about Her Rulership and especially Her Relationship. Unfortunately, they were rather tight-lipped, and the humongous wolf, Ashála, Her Majesty's pet wolf, grew impatient and growling, threatening to remove some rather vital parts of myself and my assistant.

We took this as our cue to move on to Dragonspear Castle as fast as possible.