Petunia

**Petunia** is a player character in Campaign 2 played by Grace. She is a lightfoot halfling cleric of Yondalla.

## Early Life

Petunia has lived in Waterdeep for as long as she can remember, but given that she’s nearly 201 how can she be expected to remember exactly when that was? She knows she was still quite young when her family first came to Waterdeep and settled down - she remembers learning the healing magic of her people from behind the skirts of her mother, Frona, who handled the healing spells at Flynfer and Frona’s Apothecary while her father, the aforementioned Flynfer, handled the brewing. At her mother’s feet and her father’s altar Petunia also learned a deep but quiet devotion for the goddess Yondalla, the mother of halflings, whose healing gift flowed through Petunia’s own veins.

Petunia’s parents were too busy to prevent Petunia from running wild as a youngling, even once she was past her 20th year and really beyond such shenanigans.  As a result, Petunia made a variety of friends all across the city, exercising her tireless good humor, her ability to keep any secret (often by simply forgetting to remember them), and the occasional healing spell performed for cheap after a tavern brawl. As she got older, and more skilled, her rambles around town became more intentional. She had a nose for trouble: both avoiding it, and coming across it at just the right time to provide a much needed Cure Wounds, or to talk sense into two drunken combatants. Slowly, Petunia became a well-known neutral party, and it wouldn’t be uncommon to find two men from rival organizations who had been punching the lights out of each other earlier waiting patiently shoulder-to-shoulder for Petunia’s healing attention.

## Running the Shop

When Petunia eventually took over running the apothecary after her father passed and when her mother became too worn down, she found that her contacts had become quite useful. Given the homespun nature of her magic, and her general desire to avoid the appearance of favoritism after cultivating contacts across Waterdeep, Petunia resisted joining the Guild of Apothecaries and Physicians. A bedridden Frona was deeply concerned about this breach of apothecary protocol, having been a loyal dues-paying member for more than a century, but Petunia wasn’t concerned. After all, she’d healed half the members of the Guild at one time or another, filled in for apothecaries around the city when a proprietor was laid up with illness or pregnancy, and even assisted in the delivery of the current second-in-command, Faerghus Gautier. Petunia highly doubted anyone would give her any trouble.

And she was right. Protected by her reputation, Petunia was able to operate in a fine middle ground between criminal and commoner, guild and grifter. It was a moderately tricky dance, but as she got older, it almost became easier - when she said she forgot a secret, she usually meant it at this point.  Her skin was leathery from long afternoons spent making small talk with passerby from her chair in front of the apothecary while potions brewed, and her knees ached from marching around the city come dark, administering potions to those who could pay, and slipping Cure Wounds to those who maybe could not.  On the rare occasion an out-of-towner marked the unassuming old woman as a target for some thievery, they would quickly find that her odd-looking cane was actually a rusted mace, and Petunia was not afraid to use it. (But she’d cure their wounds after. She wasn’t a monster!)

## Departure for Adventure

Petunia was happy. Content.  She knew there was more to the world beyond her small acts of charity and her bustling little apothecary, but what did she care? So what if the horn of plenty amulet she wore, passed down from foremother to foremother, sometimes burned against her breastbone, an untapped power whispering in her ear and shivering through her fingers? So what if she sometimes woke up in a cold sweat, hearing an ancient voice whisper, “I still have work for you, my daughter’s daughter’s daughter.”

So what?

...until one day, a familiar face in the shape of Ladro Lamora came knocking, with a last-ditch plea for a reliable healer to join him heading for the Yawning Portal. Petunia packed her hardiest healing potions, grabbed her handy mace, and blew out the candle lit for her parents on the altar. It was time.