Yarrow Ashpan - Salt-Walker of the Kindlestrand and Emberstrand Coasts

Introduction

Nobody on either coast can tell you exactly where Yarrow Ashpan is going to be tonight, and everybody on either coast can tell you exactly what she was doing the last time they saw her: crouched over a dented iron kettle, sleeves rolled to the elbow, skimming white crust off a rolling boil while something small and glowing picked its way toward her firelight out of the dark. She has no house, no stall, no settlement to her name, and there is not a soul working the Serrentide shoreline between Kindlestrand and Emberstrand who hasn't bought salt from her at least once. She isn't hiding. She's just already three tidepools ahead of wherever you last heard she was.

Profile

Name: Yarrow Ashpan
Race: Halfling
Gender: Female
Alignment: True Neutral
Role/Class: Salt-Walker of the Kindlestrand and Emberstrand Coasts
Challenge Rating: 1/2

"I don't sell secrets. I sell salt. What you do with the talk around my fire is your business."

Appearance: Yarrow is small even for a halfling, built low and wiry from a lifetime of hauling her own kettle up and down black sand. Years of steam and sun have left her skin a deep, even brown with a faint permanent shine at the knuckles, where dried salt has worked its way into every crease that will hold it. Her hair is cropped short and practical, more grey than not, tucked under a wide, salt-stiffened hat that has long since given up any pretense of shape. Her forearms carry a scatter of small round scars from splashed brine, and her hands are never quite still, worrying at a fold of cloth or the edge of her apron even when she's talking. She dresses for weather and work rather than company: a faded canvas overshirt gone pale at the shoulders, a heavy apron scorched along one side, thick-soled boots built for both hot sand and cold surf, and a coil of good rope worn diagonally across her back out of habit rather than current need. She smells, always and completely, of woodsmoke and brine.