Mistress Vell — Confectioner of Bitter Truths
“My sweets don’t make people honest. They make dishonesty unbearable.”
Name: Mistress Vell
Race: Human
Role: : Apiarist, Confectioner, social arbiter, “truth-taster”
Appearance: Vell is a striking woman in her late thirties with severe cheekbones softened by a perpetual sugar-dust sheen. Ink-black hair is wrapped in a headscarf the color of candied citrus, and a half-apron of waxed linen bears a stitched moth sigil. Her fingers are burn-scarred and deft; she wears a chatelaine of tasting spoons and sugar thermometers, and she carries a hooked confectioner’s cane that doubles as a window-shutter lifter in the shop.
Backstory
Her father sold boiled sweets from a street cart; her mother was a court clerk who watched testimony sour under bribery. Vell learned early that truth is an acquired taste—easier to swallow with sugar. In her Brightcrown backstreet shop, Vell’s Bitter Truths, she crafts candies that dye tongues black and make deliberate lies taste of ash to the speaker. Magistrates “accidentally” serve her platters during depositions; guild captains sneak her lozenges into negotiations. The thieves’ guild wants her recipes. Vell keeps three ledgers: a public one for sales, a private one for favors owed, and a locked one listing secrets confessed under candy.
