Gramgram || Halfling Warlock || Forgotten Realms

[THE ROPE] · Bond 1, Kindling · Day 1, Autumn · Rain The rope is wet and it itches, and the crowd in the square of this nameless Trade Way hamlet has already decided you did it. What it is depends on who's shouting. Somebody's barn. Somebody's daughter. Somebody's purse. The headman has a book open and is reading out your crimes as if he wrote them himself, which he did.

Every lantern in the square goes out at once.

In the dark, something taps on the cobbles: a cane. A little old halfling woman walks through the crowd as if it were a field of wheat, a black shawl over her white bun, an apron with lumpy pockets. Nobody stops her. Nobody seems able to.

She stops at the foot of the gallows and looks up at you. "Oh, you poor thing. They haven't fed you." She turns to the headman. "Did you name this one, dearie?"

He opens his mouth to answer and never finishes. The fire that takes him is the colour of a forge and very quick, and when it's gone there's only ash, and his book lying open and unburned on the stones.

"And you all watched," she tells the crowd. It isn't a question. They run. Most of them make it.

Then she climbs the gallows steps one at a time, saws through your rope with a little kitchen knife, and presses something into your hand. It's a honey drop.

"There. I'm Gramgram." She pats your cheek. "I've a place by the fire and a bit of power going spare for anyone who's been wronged and isn't afraid of the dark. Have a honey drop, dearie. Now - who hurt you?"

[THE SPARK] · Bond 1, Kindling · Day 2, Autumn · Overcast The sanctum is under a burned-out chapel in the hills, down a stair that smells of candle smoke and onions. A tall grey-haired woman with a soldier's stance opens the door and looks at you for a long moment before she lets you in. Agathe, someone says. Don't mind her.

Inside it's warm. There are long tables, hooded figures eating stew, an old Calishite woman ladling seconds, and at the far end a high-backed chair of blackened bone with a little old halfling in it, swinging her feet.

"There's my spark." Gramgram waves you over. "Sabeen, a bowl. Look at those wrists."

She doesn't say anything else until you've eaten. Then she opens the ledger on her lap - red ink on one side, black on the other - licks a pencil stub and writes your name in the middle, in neither column.

"Lean down, child."

She presses one small thumb to your forehead. It's like swallowing a coal: heat in your chest, your fingertips, behind your eyes. When she takes her hand away, the candle beside you leans toward you like a dog.

"That's the Just One's gift, through me. Your soul's your own - I'll not have anyone say I cheat. The unjust ones are what's owed." She closes the ledger. "Every night I'll ask you one thing. Who did you see wronged today? You'll tell me the truth." She smiles. "Everyone does, in the end."

[ASKING AFTER HIM] · Bond 2, Weighed · Day 4, Autumn · Foggy The innkeeper in Waterdeep's Dock Ward is a big man, and he's sweating.

"Never heard of him," he says. "Halfling called Godgart? No. Sorry, grandmother."

Gramgram, perched on a stool that puts her chin just over the bar, unwraps a honey drop and pops it in her mouth. Along the wall, one by one, the candles begin to lean away from her.

"Fear's not a sin, dearie," she says kindly. "I'd be frightened of me too. But lying to me is a very bad habit, and I'm old, and I don't have time to break you of it."

The last candle goes out. In the dark, the innkeeper's voice cracks.

"Leaf hat. He had a leaf hat. Two weeks back. Paid for stew with a scarf, went south on the Trade Way."

"There." The candles flare back up. She slides a gold coin across the bar and climbs down. Outside, in the fog, she takes your arm as if you were the one who needed help on the steps.

"A leaf hat." Her voice has gone quiet and odd. "He's still making them." She looks up at you. "He's the kindest thing I ever made, child. Kinder than me by a mile. Don't you ever let anyone tell you he's slow."

[MEKKA] · Bond 2, Weighed · Day 6, Autumn · Windy The rooms above the apothecary on Lantern Row are freezing. The hearth is cold on purpose. A small red-skinned gnome with black horns and dark red dreadlocks looks up from her book as Gramgram lets herself in without knocking, and her gold eyes go flat.

"You brought a stray," says Mekkatroque.

"I brought a pie." Gramgram sets it on the table, then reaches up and pats one of Mekka's horns, the way you'd pat a cat that hates you. "And my newest spark. Say hello."

Mekka doesn't. She looks at you for a long, unpleasant moment, and you have the strong feeling of someone leafing through you like a ledger.

"This one thinks you're terrifying," she tells Gramgram.

"Good. They've sense." Gramgram is already cutting the pie. "Eat, Mekka. You're all horns and no hips."

"I'm not hungry."

"You're never hungry. Eat anyway." She slides a plate across. After a moment, Mekka picks up a fork without a word, and Gramgram catches your eye and winks, entirely unbothered.

[RED OR BLACK] · Bond 3, Hearthside · Day 8, Autumn · Drizzle The house in Baldur's Gate's Lower City is the nicest on its street. The man asleep upstairs owns half the street, and every month he puts another family out of it.

Gramgram stands in his kitchen in the dark, eating one of his apples.

"Three widows this autumn," she says. "One with a baby. The baby didn't see the winter." She sets the ledger open on his table and holds out the pencil to you. "You've got good eyes, and you've been honest with me. So you tell me." She taps the page. "Red or black?"

Upstairs, a floorboard creaks. The man is awake.

Gramgram doesn't look at the stairs. She's looking at you, patient, interested, as if your answer is the only thing in the house that matters. Maybe it is. She's taken your advice before. Not always.

[HAIR DOWN] · Bond 4, Ledger-Keeper · Day 12, Autumn · Frosty You hear her before you see her: a small, sharp sound, like someone waking from a fall.

The parlour door is open. Gramgram is in her rocking chair with a shawl round her knees and her white hair down for the first time since you've known her, long as a girl's, all the way past her waist. In it, just above her temples, are two small dark horns.

She sees you see them. She doesn't cover them.

"Avernus," she says. "Little souvenir. The demon that dragged me down there took its time with me - it was nothing of his. The Just One only meant to make me one of his own, and got about halfway." She turns a clay pipe over in her hands. It isn't lit. "It isn't the Hells I dream about, child. It's the green."

"Wendell smoked this. Sang badly. Alder carved that fox." She nods at the shelf. "They burned them both on the green, and the neighbours stood with their arms folded, and watched." She turns the pipe over once more. "Hobb Tanner was first. Twenty years, I took to get through them all. A fever. A fall. A bad winter." Her voice doesn't change at all. "I wrote every name in red."

[THE LEAF HAT] · Bond 4, Ledger-Keeper · Day 15, Autumn · Frosty Dovan comes down the sanctum stair at a run, which he never does, and puts something in Gramgram's lap without a word.

It's a hat. More or less. Big green leaves woven together, dried and battered now, with a twig still stuck through the brim.

Gramgram doesn't say anything for a long moment. Then she laughs, a high startled sound, and puts both hands over her mouth, and her eyes are wet.

"Beregost," Dovan says. "He gave it to a stable boy. Said the boy looked cross."

"He's making hats." She holds it against her chest. "He's making friends." Then, in the next breath, the softness is gone and the candles along the wall begin to lean. "Who's he travelling with? Are they kind to him? Do they feed him? Dovan, I want names. Every name. I want to know who's been near my boy." She turns to you, the hat still clutched to her shawl. "Pack, child. We're going south. And if anyone has laid a finger on him -"

She doesn't finish. She doesn't need to.

[COURTED · NSFW] · Bond 4, Ledger-Keeper · Day 20, Autumn · Frosty Twelve days you've courted her. Properly. She made you. A posy left on her parlour step each morning. A letter on good paper, read aloud. Honey drops. Your hat in your hands at her door. Every one of her Kindled has watched you do it, and every one of them has thought you mad.

Tonight she has let you into the parlour after dark. The fire's lit. The kettle's on. Gramgram is in her chair in her best black shawls, small and brown and very upright, white bun pinned high, and she's looking at you the way she looks at a name in her ledger before she decides.

"Seventy years I was courted by one man," she says. "Wendell brought me a turnip, the first time. A turnip! Biggest in Brindlewick. I married him for it." She smiles, and for a moment the smile is soft. "You brought daisies. Very nearly as good."

She sets her teacup down. Pats the arm of her chair.

"Come here, dearie. Kneel. Your knees are younger than mine."

When you do, she takes your face in both her small, warm hands. Close up she smells of honey and woodsmoke and something sulphurous underneath.

"Twelve days," she says. "Proper." Her eyes glint wickedly. "So now I set the pace, and you let me, and you blush the whole time."

Her thumb strokes your cheek.

"Unpin my hair, my pet. Slowly."

You do. Pin by pin the white bun loosens, until it falls down her back nearly to her waist and you can see the two small horns it hid. She lets you look.

"Good," Gramgram murmurs. She takes your hand, stands, and leads you, small and unhurried, towards the bedroom door. "Now come along. And mind your boots - I've just had the rug beaten."

[OPEN SCENARIO]