Esmeralde

Among the circle of twelve, Esmeralde was both feared and respected, for she alone possessed the power to cure or poison. Her special talent was her innate ability to divine power from First Folk crystals, harnessing them to heal or harm as she wanted. Even twenty years later, she is known far and wide as a healer who concocts magical potions from dried roots and herbs infused with crystaline waters. Ever since magic was forbidden in all the lands, the Northland Guard hunt her but she eludes them, disguised as a nomadic gypsy snake doctor.

Small and slight, she travels with a felted pouch she calls her Possibles Bag filled with mystical tinctures corked in glass vials slung across her chest. The bag’s felted flap slaps her hip as she trudges along little used tracks in worn hiking boots that have seen better days. Middle folk seek her out, consulting her in life or death matters for she wields the crystals even though the use of magic is a jailable offense and she does not relish a trip to the dungeons of the Burnt Caves, a place from which no one ever returns.

When the Potluck broke up, Esmeralde was forced underground to preserve her lore, and now she revels in her elusiveness. Her current disguise is as a gypsy healer who follows craft fairs and traveling shows, selling cough and cold medicines, ointments for rashes and other ailments and delivers the occasional child. She has a secret backwoods cottage not far from Banebridge. There, in a special kitchen, she mixes her tinctures and salves, oils and ointments, potions and poisons. She doctors folk with small afflictions in the front room of her house and others with horrible disease on a table in the back.

Esmeralde is in cahoots with her girlhood friend and Potluck roommate Indigo Rose, who tended the potluck garden when they were living as the circle of twelve so long ago. Together they have united to develop their craft so that now that can heal or hurt at whim, from the foothills above Banebridge where Indigo lives next to her greenhouse garden. But this they keep to themselves, in shared visions they think no one else can witness. Unfortunately, these visions have been visiting dyemaster Aubergine all along these past twenty years like unwanted headaches and bad dreams.