Role: Tavernkeeper, the Crayfish Tavern
Description
A cantankerous old woman who has run the Crayfish Tavern for as long as anyone in Marin’s Hold can remember. Equal parts publican and enforcer, she keeps a common room and a handful of private rooms for travelers, and doesn’t suffer regulars — dwarven sea captains included — who overstay their welcome or help themselves to her shelves.
The Gloaming
Shooed Captain Gor out of the tavern late one night after one too many whiskeys, threatening him with her bed if he didn’t leave on his own. It was the last ordinary thing to happen to him before he wandered down to the docks and was lured off toward Castle Ravenloft.
Session 4
The Crayfish is strangely full with the village under strain. Ysolde threw the party a feast on their coin, sending her kitchen hand \“https://app.notion.com/p/3d21f65dc6c481d2908ec176fab5d8c6\\” to the Castellan’s cellar and the huntsman, and let them sleep by her common-room fire before they left for the forest, with eel stew in the morning.
She knows Randoah is a witch. “I know what you are, lass.” Her daughter moved to Orlaine a few months ago with her husband and child, and has disappeared; the son-in-law brought the granddaughter back, and they are in the refugee camp. The girl has always been sickly, and Ysolde used to get tinctures for her from Mathilda, made from a flower that only blooms under moonlight — the only thing that gave her strength. She asked Randoah to find out what it was. (A pressed moon lily turned up in Mathilda’s folk-tale book; the recipe did not.)
She went to Mathilda’s door and found no one home, and did not go in.
At Ulfgar’s request, and for a coin, she agreed to look for Valos among the refugees when the bar is slow — she’d been meaning to donate food anyway — but told them not to get used to her charity.
Also recorded as “Isolde Black” in the Session 4 transcript, and briefly as “Verna” in earlier notes (a retired alternate name) — same woman. Ysolde Brack is canonical.