Marigold Westberry

Official image of Marigold, drawn by @grace.pptx on Instagram.

* Circle of the Shepherd Druid (4), Gunslinger Fighter (3), Warlock (1) (Ranch Sweet Ranch)

### Level in Arc

* 7 (Arc 10)
* 8 (Ranch Sweet Ranch)

## Connections

### Affiliation

* Bishop Batters-Westberry (ex-wife)
* Westberry Ranch (owner)
* Arc 10 party (partymember)

### Family

* Bishop Batters-Westberry (ex-husband)
* Pork, Beans, and other owlbears (pets)
* Porridge (pet, deceased)

## In Podcast

### Episodes

Arc 10

Marigold Westberry is a Player Character from Arc 10 played by Madison.

## Description

Marigold is a middle-aged Forest Gnome, and a Circle of the Shepherd Druid / Gunslinger Fighter multiclass that uses her self-made hand crossbow as a gunslinging weapon instead of an actual gun, since guns are not yet invented during Arc 10. The crossbow is made from branches of the forest she owns. She has leathery skin, wild auburn hair that is contained by a hat, and dark green eyes. Usually, she wears a poncho and a tighholster containing her hand crossbow, and no shoes. Despite being divorced, she still wears her wedding ring on a necklace below her poncho.

She is a bit of a loner, living on a ranch in the middle of nowhere, but really into her animals. She owns a ranch where she raises owlbears, which at the time of Arc 10 are her passion and reason for living. For her, the land, the ranch, and her owlbears are her, and she sees the owlbears as her babies. During the arc, she is accompanied by her two recent owlbear cubs, the twins Pork and Beans. To feed them, she usually has rats hanging from her belt, which, depending on the time of day, are sometimes alive and sometimes already dead.

She has two magic patron items: The Speaking Stone of Wonderous Boom, and the Handbag of Holding.

## Backstory

From a young age, Marigold is very into the gods, and into her druidic background; specifically, she is a follower of the deity Silvanus. She marries her highschool sweetheart, Bishop Batters-Westberry, whom she loves very much, while they are still very young, 23 years before Arc 10. After that, mysterious things start happening in her town. Dark rifts in space start appearing, swallowing the land and killing her owlbears. While she desperately tries to save the ranch and land, Bishop does not see any hope for it, and ultimately leaves both the ranch and her eight years before Arc 10, during which they do not see each other, and during which Marigold spends a lot of time being mad at him before letting go of that anger.

Marigold picks up gunslinging after she stops believing in Silvanus when they did not listen to her anymore. Since then, she is not on good terms with anything divine.

## Character Arc

### Arc 10

Marigold joins the meeting of the necromancer's guild, having no idea why she was invited. She hopes to find answers there, and maybe some help, so she goes anyways. Later, it turns out that she was not sent an invitation either, however she is allowed to stay as Tiffany finds her interesting. The invitation she received was meant for someone else, but the letter was tampered with and thus landed at her place.

On her way there, she always has an eye out, and does not trust her new environment. As she arrives at the mansion, she doesn't trust anything inside the house, either, and makes sure to always stay vigilant for herself and her owlbear cubs. Nonetheless, she decides to trust Thorgash, and warms up to the people, even though she remembers that all of them are potentially powerful and dangerous.

At the party, she meets her ex-husband again, which throws her off at first. She does her best to totally avoid him, and he does the same, until they all are stuck in the mansion after the show and tell. As they confront each other, Bishop tells her that he did not mean for them to meet again, and that he will try his best to fix this situation, do his job, and then vanish out of her life so that she will never have to see him again. However, Marigold never wanted to not see him again, and presents him with the wedding ring she still wears on a necklace. Seeing how upset she is, and how she still tries to cling to her hope to be able to save the ranch, Bishop actually considers coming back with her, also because they both still have feelings for each other, and never stopped having feelings. Their slow and careful tries to fix what they once had are cheerfully supported by Queen Luminessa and Count Dion, who are very invested and plan to use parts of it for their fanfiction, to an extend that is a bit too much for Marigold sometimes.

During the party and their efforts to try and figure out what is happening in the mansion, Marigold is also always still researching what is happening to her land and ranch. At first, she is unsuccessful, but Sharon finds an interest in her, reads her mind to figure out what she is looking for, and then presents her with a book about the leylines, just floating in front of her. Later, in Tiffany's conservatory observatory, Marigold compares the book with some notes there, and notices a map on the ceiling that seems to depict the leylines as well as some rifts in space exactly where the darkness also swallows her land. Since Tiffany is killed by Luminessa, Marigold does not get a chance to speak to her about it, but can only hope that either, the rifts are gone, or that together with her new friends she might be able to close them.

While they are at the conservatory observatory, Dion finds a ravens feather on Marigold, which they take as a symbol from the Raven Queen. Since Sharon gave Marigold the book, they first assume that she is the Raven Queen. As Theo gets killed in the room in the basement, Marigold and Bishop ask her to bring him back, and she does, in exchange for two favours. Bishop wants to give her both, but before he can do so, Marigold already agrees to one from each of them, not letting him take hers. She brings Theo back, and they are no longer so sure about her identity, and ultimately find out that she is in fact the deity Shar. Later, as they all leave the mansion, there is a raven sitting on Marigold's window sill.

Since Marigold survived the night in the mansion, at the end of Arc 10 she officially became a member of the necromancer's guild.

### Ranch Sweet Ranch

In the week between Arc 10 and Ranch Sweet Ranch, Marigold has taken a level in Warlock with the Raven Queen as her patron.

During the oneshot, she, Bishop, and their newfound friends all travel to the Westberry Ranch. There, Marigold immediately realises that the rifts have changed, they are no longer just endlessly black, but rather portals to somewhere else, and there is finally some hope in the air again that the land might heal. Together, they manage to close some of the portals, some through a puzzle, some through the power of love between Bishop and her, and their efforts to try and fix their relationship. However, just as their relationship will need time to heal, so will the land, and some of the portals cannot be closed right away. Bishop and Marigold consider just fencing them in for the time being to protect the owlbears.

Apart from the rifts, however, something else has changed as well: Out of one of the portals fell an entire tree including a person living inside it, right into the centre of the house. Draen'd, as the person is called, immediately claims the house as theirs, since they have always lived inside a house with their tree, and even as Dion explains the situation, there is not much they can do, since they do not know how to move their tree. Marigold finally agrees that she and Bishop, since they wanted to start anew anyways, will build a new house, and Draen'd can stay on their ranch, as long as they help with the work.

## Trivia

* Marigold is a bit of a hommage to Madison's first character, a Gnome Sorcerer.
* Despite being a rancher and a druid, Marigold is not good with plants, that is Bishop's thing. After he leaves, she ruins his precious plants, not out of anger or spite, but just because she doesn't have a green thumb.
* Bishop and Marigold used to try out how far he could throw her when they had a bit too much alcohol.