Golden Orchard Apothecary

The Golden Orchard Apothecary is a medical dispensary located in Demonbreu, it is named after the main orchard which dominates a considerable portion of the governing family's farming estate. The business is owned and operated by Amarika 'Amy' Umbridge, the wife of Hector Umbridge the Village Chief. Amy is a seasoned apothecary and alchemist, as well as a minor mage, and thus those who wish to study under her have been able to score some amounts of apprenticeships.

The Golden Orchard has been in operation since 1056AE, and is the key medical facility in the area, Amy is the head apothecary and alchemist on hand, but she does maintain a staff of four apprentices who handle menial and less than enthusiastic work while she typically prepares the actual treatments for clients. These apprentices are two novice alchemists who have worked in the shop for three years, an apothecary's assistant who has been under Amy's wing for a decade now, and a young burgeoning mage intent on learning how to use healing magic to infuse into medical treatments but who cannot afford schooling who only joined in the past six months. Some question the viability of such young staffers, most of which aren't even eighteen years of age yet, but none will voice this critique to Amarika, as it is known her golden eyes can make a man feel as though they're dying from sheer terror when she's agitated.

The apothecary has done good work in the area and for those in actual dire need of medical attention, they offer a carriage to take them to The Boneknitter's Sanctum at any time of day or night, a proper hospital that sits in the region of Shade's Rest to the west that is fully staffed with trained doctors and other professionals. Otherwise most people are content to keep coming in for their medicine, including the local physician who generally buys from Amy's shop because it's cheaper than sending out for much more expensive pharmaceuticals one can get back in Bastion or Surial. Amarika is known to be quite well versed in botanical treatments for all sorts of ills, and has a small study filled with old tomes donated to her by family members, or crafted herself during her times as Griff Holdenhome's squire and medic during the war. Though she may not look it, with her youthful skin and charming smile, this woman has a sharp wit to her when it comes to the treatment of illnesses.

## Staff

### Lady Amarika Umbridge

First and foremost is the proprietor of this small village dispensary, as well as one half of the local nobility. A sweet woman of dark skin, seafoam hair, and golden eyes that shine like saucers. She is more than a pretty face and arm candy for her husband, she's also a child of Holdenhome and a well traveled practitioner in the medical sciences. Amy, as she prefers her loved ones call her, is the head of the storefront and produces medications that are given out to her patients, she also runs a profitable business in the processing of raw materials to be shipped out for pharmacies to use in medications, but most of that type of work gets done by her two young alchemist students.

Amarika has a good standing relationship with the village's only other medical practitioner, a physician by the name of Samuel Stiller, while he does have his own supply of pharmaceuticals delivered to him from up on the Surial region, he defers to her treatments when simply drugging up a patient isn't as suitable to treating a condition. Generally speaking since the only two professionals of any note are rather minor actors, they only handle minor to moderate issues, and leave anything major for the much better staffed hospital over in Shade's Rest.

### Elise Appleblossom

The Apothecary's Assistant, and native of Demonbreu, her family works for Lord and Lady Umbridge on their massive orchards and apiaries and are one of the several families who earn their living working on the lands controlled by the Village Head and his wife. Elise wanted more, and so she petitioned to be trained under Lady Amarika to make medicine, to which Amy obliged, and they have been friendly ever since, though their relationship remains as master and apprentice. Elise is good, but she's got nothing on Amarika's intuitive drive on making medicines, and there's talks of sending her over to Braka Sorkai to learn from some proper professionals that Amy once had the pleasure of meeting through her grandmother, Maria Dul-Sansiska. Elise feels like she has to become a mage in order to truly be as good as Amarika, though the Lady Umbridge disputes this heavily by telling her that she only utilizes her magic for ease of work and for directly treating conditions through magic, it has nothing to do with her skills in herbalism and chemistry, that was all years of work and study.

Elise has been told time and time again there are no shortcuts in medicine, and anyone who thinks so are snake oil salesmen, and that even when someone is skilled in medicine, they make mistakes, she typically would cite Lord Divankul's disastrous Nerve Tonic or her own accidental usage of poison oak that nearly killed a patient when she had been reaching for mountain ash leaves instead. Elise seems to understand, but also, due to being young, also seems to think she can still prove her teacher wrong. Elise, being only twenty, is still well deep into training and has not yet mastered the craft, she's hungry for success and wishes to be seen as more than 'just a kid'. Despite this, she has no ill will towards her teacher and friend, she still reveres Lady Amarika as a powerhouse of medicine and business with how Demonbreu went from a tiny no name spot to this giant outpost of productivity in just a few decades under her and Lord Hector.

Elise's duties mostly revolve around talking to patients, an helping get materials ready, while Amy makes the product itself, it's up to Elise to package it up, keep the shop orderly, sort the ingredients, make sure that everything is running smoothly, and ensuring that nothing is distracting Amarika from doing her work. Were she not here, Amarika could not multi-task on so much and everything would become a backlog, Elise also works on lower key, mass use ingredients that can be sold freely without preparations, things that are around her skill level as an apprentice apothecary, such as dosing out clove oil and parcels of dwarf holly salves. Elise is just as busy as her master, and though she's still grappling with her insecurities, it can sometimes be hard to think about them because work is always so busy ever day.

### Derrick Mackleson

Derrick Mackleson comes form Homefast, and he's here to be taught everything he needs to know to go back home and become a renowned alchemist, at least that's how it started, and then that whole idea got slowly ground down into nothing but a dream turned to dust when he realized the workload of true alchemists and how he'd be starting out. The bright life of the work was snuffed out and he was given his lessons and taught the fundamentals. This was not the glory he was told about, and it irritated him, but this was also Amarika Umbridge herself, she was one of the Holdenhomes so it meant she probably knew some weird mystical shortcut to do with bees or maybe she had some weird familial magicks. No, not really, it turned out Lady Amarika Umbridge was some boring old lady who sat in her shop all day while her husband ran an entire village by himself, all she did was grind up herbs and seeds and never talk, just sat in a workshop for ten hours a day at a mortar and pestel.

She was bossy, she was boring, and she set up Derrick with such a lame task and a job to do, he was supposed to be learning, not making some rich noble even more money. But he was also scared of the giant orc that sat all day in the front of the store. He had to be at least six feet six and three hundred pounds with arms as big as his head, he probably kept any of Lady Amarika's other workers in line, this whole situation sucked and this was what was mean tot be his education until he was an adult? Then one day Derrick happened to find some box with old war antiques, there were some as old as 1045AE, which mean they were Pirate War era things, in this dusty old shop! So cool, and so he dug around in it and found a small portrait, it was odd to see such a small canvas someone could paint on, and the portrait was what appeared to be a much younger Lady Amarika in a white uniform with the symbol for medicine on her shoulder patch, even then she had such a stern expression like she could never have any fun at all. But then, she lived through the war? Even fought in it? no way, this had to be for something else so he kept digging.

He found correspondences, thought he cursive was so tightly laced he could barely made it out from the age, he found war medallions for wounded in combat, imperial awards for outstanding service, and a medic's ribbon. He found a whole fucking gun, it was some old flintlock that hadn't been touched in ages. There was some old knife in a cracked leather sheath, letters from Lady Clair, or at least he figured they were because they had her signature at the bottom and they were on really nice paper that didn't age too badly. Then he found another old portrait of a really young Amarika being held by some blonde guy with wild hair. That was when his investigations stopped as Elise had caught him and forced him to put everything away or she would tattle to Lady Amarika that he was snooping, but Derrick was too curious so he asked about the portrait and while it was hidden away.

"That's one of the few portraits Lady Amarika has with her father, Lord Richard Holdenhome, but she gets too sad if she has it out so she keeps it with all the other stuff that makes her upset int hat box until she can get around to looking at them again. I don't know why I'm telling you all this, but you're a fucking idiot, leave Lady Amarika alone, she's done so much for you and all you do is winge and complain"

"What about the military portrait, and the gun, and the awards? How could she not be proud if she actually served in the Pirate War? That seems a lot cooler than beign some musky old woman who runs a medicine shop in bumfuck whocaresville."

"First off my family has spent at least three generations here, mouthbreather, so don't you even insult Demonbreu again, second off, Lady Amarika and Lord Hector have worked hard for decades to make this place grow and it's only because they're such loving people do they let sniveling shits from the capital like you move out here, and Third off, not everyone is proud of what they do in wars genius, and maybe Lady Amarika just wants to have babies and make medicine and live a simple life with the bees and the flowers because maybe that reminds her of her father, who taught her to love nature more than anything. Use that space between your ears for more than just talking like a vrow, and get the fuck back to work, if you cost Lady Amarika more money than you earn her I'm going to personally shove a broom handle up your bunghole and kick you in the river"

From then on it was a little bit more off putting doing the work in the shop, as Derrick's curiosity was piqued, he tried to figure more out but he could never get close enough without Elise being able to keep an eye on him. Finally, he just broke one day and asked Lady Amarika why she never used the fact she serve dint he military or was a Holdenhome, or anything else to do more than just make medicine. The answer was quick as it was brutally down putting, as if she already saw right through him and could peer into his very soul with her golden eyes that seemed to glow from inside her head. "Would you be proud of taking part in a war that killed tens of thousands, resulted in the deaths of family members and people you'd known your entire life, and had to treat your own family to try and keep their intestines from spilling out? No? then there's your answer child, now never bother me on the subject matter again lest you be exiled back to your home."

"As for why I do not utilize my family, it is simple, I have all that I have here because I worked my fingers to the bone to gain it without their intervention, to prove the point that I could. It doesn't count when you use shortcuts, not in medicine, not in alchemy, not in life. Do not forget this lesson, shortcuts only result in tragedies, the mark of a person is how much effort they put into everything they do. Now get back to work, and stop pestering me, there's always more to be done around here..." she was so damned terrifying, not like her usual stern outlook either, but like she would light him on fire with her glare if she could. From then on Derrick kept his mouth shut, and over time she became her normal self again and even became a lot nicer in the shop. He still had to keep doing the same mundane tasks though, and that was arduous.

His task, unlike the grinding and distilling Zemek was made to do, was to chip away at weird rocks and burn off the crappy normal rocky layers that clung to them, they would always be in a bin full of the stuff and it never emptied out, there was always more of it every day so he could never clear the whole bin. The rocks were annoyingly clung to the much more colorful layers he was supposed to keep. The junk rocks got stuffed into a tray and put into the kiln to bake off for some reasons, then he'd have to take out the tray and pick out the pieces that wouldn't burn and put them in a box for Lady Amarika. The good rocks he was supposed to keep chipping at and put into a compound of acid that would keep melting them all down, eventually the compound would be nothing but the mixture of acid and the rocks, when he saw he could not melt anymore, he was to cork up the flash and pack it up. He had once asked what the solution was for and Lady Amarika had told him it was meant to be diluted at a pharmacy and then used as a treatment for, well she couldn't say but it was meant for men and women who were having trouble in private with one another. Weird, but whatever, he needed to make six flasks of the stuff a day, so he did. The weird unburned rocks he chipped off them were supposed to be sold off as a special ingredient for clothing dyes to make a particular shade of purple that was still a sought after color. All that mattered to him was that he made his weekly wages and could one day learn more alchemy to become a world famous alchemist.

### Zemek Footpad

Zemek Footpad hails from the region surrounding Shade's Rest, as one of the immigrant families who recently arrived in the hold of the High Felines just a decade ago from Avamor in the Northern Kingdom. He was pressed into the study to not just live his life a laborer, his parents want him to be more than where he comes from, and without the funds to pay for official schooling, this seemed the next best endeavor. He was given a choice between learning to smith or learning to work in alchemy, he chose what felt like the easier of the two options, unawares of just the kind of working levels that would be expected of him when he arrived. His job is mostly processing wild foraged materials that traders bring in, he has quotas and purity requirements he's expected to follow lest he get an earful from Lady Amarika. It's all for his training supposedly, she took it easier on him when he was first starting out but now it's become a common thing that he's expect to fulfill a crate's worth of production, at at least seventy-five percent purity per day. He'd complain, if Lady Amarika didn't fulfill a two crates at ninety percent purity every day while also preparing medication for a whole village with only one assistant.

Rather he understands that the only way to learn is to keep working and practicing to get his capabilities up to par, Lady Amarika says she's only a journeyman in the sciences, and is only a master of apothecary. Zemek doens't get what she means, if she's mastered herbology and has all this knowledge on plants, why would she not be considered an organic alchemy master? Apparently it takes decades to become a true master of the craft, and it also takes loads of money to keep learning and invest in better tools and processing. That, and ever since the industrialization movement, alchemy has been on a downward trend and the guild that would have regulated licenses and education is a shadow of its former self and lacks authority it used to have.

All that means is he has to pay careful attention, and hope that he at some point will earn enough money to head to Braka Sorkai or back to Avamor to study under more teachers with more textbooks and disciplines. He's mostly tasked with grinding dried leaves, special seeds, and a few other weird plants that are abundant in certain parts of Silkwood and the Marshes, but are in danger due to the constant logging going on. Something about how he shouldn't have any allergic reactions to it. He really only does everything to turn it into super fine powders and weigh out each portion before mixing them all up together and putting them into a flask with special water and bringing it to a boil. If he did everything right, which is super hard to do because of how weirdly specific everything has to be, a lilac colored fluid fills a much smaller container, he corks the bottle, and places it in some straw in a crate, he does that all day and he fills up one small crate, it having space for thirty bottles in total. Each bottle equates to twelve ounces of distilled material.

Zemek once asked about the fluid and Lady Amarika brushed it off as saying it was and important ingredient for treating really sick people who catch something called cholera and dysentery, but she wouldn't describe what the conditions were and Doctor Samuel refused to elaborate either. Apparently it was however, something that hadn't been a problem until Queen Talia died, and now it was happening so much Lady Amarika couldn't keep up with demand on her own, and that's why Zemek had to keep producing at at least three quarters purity for her to ship to the pharmacies in New Bastion. The funny thing was he got himself a little commission of a whole plat if he could start up a new crate int he same day as finishing his quota, no matter how many bottles, so long as he had already completed one full crate first. Typically Zemek had a failure rate of around one in five bottles, that was junk and needed to be tossed in a 'recycling reservoir' and it was a dock of a full wane for each junk bottle, but if he's having a good day, Zemek makes a tidy profit over the course of an eight hour day, starting from the dawn break and settling down in the mid-afternoon most days, with one meal break just before noon.

### Karissa Mountainside

Karissa is a young woman from a no name farmstead out in the countryside up north, who left her family to become a healer, though she lacks the funding to ever attend a college of any sort, she sought out Amarika Umbridge for support. Amy, having a heart as big as her golden eyes, readily agreed to take on another charge and lets her earn money by working as a physician's assistant helping Dr. Stiller. She teaches he and sets her up with lessons on the fundamentals of magic that she was taught when she was young, and thus Karissa is either working to earn funds to eventually attend college, working for her room and board with Lady Amarika, or studying her ass off to learn magic. It has been a hard time to say the least, while Amy is no taskmaster, life in Demonbreu is busy as all get out, and when she's working as a physician's assistant she's lugging around a big ass medical bag and supplies for the doctor to go to random farmsteads.

When she's back at the shop she's sorting herbs and treatments and tinctures, dusting and cleaning up everywhere, and getting teased by Derrick and Zemek, but at least Elise treats her nicely and Lady Amarika has come out more than a few times with a gnarled branch of silkwood and given the boys a few good smacks when she catches them being rude. Karissa is only in the first leg of her very long journey and she isn't quite sure she'll make it to the end. Still, it's better than living all her life on some Midlands farm only to marry some dumb bloke two farms over. At least here she's in a busting trading post village with plenty of news about the outside world to keep her sane.

### Nek

A big and simple fellow who has been the security guard and former porter for Amarika's shop over the past twenty years, Nek is a man of few words, and lives his life with few amenities. He's a bit slower than most and he was given the job by happenstance when he had noticed Amy was having issues moving some supplies around and he simply began carrying crates of ingredients in for her. She offered him work as a porter and he would come in each day, before dawn, to carry in deliveries, and then come back each day, after dusk, to move product out to the trading post. One day, he had noticed that Amy's shop front was being scoped out by some unsavory looking fellows who were supposedly hunters on their way to Silkwood stocking up on supplies for their canoe. They had smuggled in firearms, a big no no in Demobreu, and Nek kept an eye on them rather than leaving for the day like normal when they had begun brandishing said weapons, possibly in an effort to rob the apothecary in the early dawn hours, he had come up behind the men and calmly, but firmly, grabbed them by their shoulders, and squeezed.

They had enough brains to stop whatever they thought they would be doing and flee, but they were then apprehended by village constables and held for illegal possession of firearms in the boundaries of the village, attempted robbery, and counterfeit coinage found on their persons. They were given fifty lashings each in the square and banned form utilizing the small village again in the future. From this point on, Nek was given another job, more important than porter, which would simply be contracted to the trading post. Nek was given a study oak wood chair in the front corner of the store, a bell to get the attention of Amarika, and the simple job of keeping the shop safe and clear of criminals and to alert her if a patient was coming by.

Nek has dutifully fulfilled said job for years and years, he's been at it so long the old rough chair has turned smooth from use, and he's kept the same old bell, and the same position for his tenure. He is considered a part of the store by this point, but he barely says a word, just nods or grunts or shakes his head, he smiles at Amy, but that's about even all she gets out of him despite them being friends. Nek has a stoically simple routine, every day he awakes at dawn to wash his face and hands and go to the shop, he'll change his clothes about one in a few days, although they're all identical. Then he'll sit from dawn to dusk in the shop until it closes, at which point he leaves to go and get supper at the (insert tavern) and drink a bottle of wine per night alongside whatever meal he's having that evening. He'll sit in the tavern until it's time for bed in the later hours of the night, walk back to his shack in the dark, and turn in until the next morning where he fulfills the same routine again.

He's paid well for his station, and given a monthly 'pack' from Amy that includes oil for his lantern, cigarettes, and a bottle of pear cider. He barely spends any of his money, the suppers at the tavern are not too expensive, he owns his shack and his outhouse, he gets water freely from the river, and he is paid oil for his lantern and cigarettes that he can smoke in regularity. Thus the man turns over the rest of his wages back to Amy, who has kept his money safe in the village bank under one of many accounts. Should it ever come up, he has the means to simply go and get it or ask her for it, but he simply doesn't, and it continues to accrue interest and grow as he works, meaning should he ever have need, there's a sturdy little pocket of cash he can use to live comfortably if he should ever stop working.

Overall, despite being simple minded, Amy treats him well, pays him squarely, and ensures he's cared for. The respect is mutual, Nek doesn't *want* to stop working for Amy, he likes sitting in his chair all day and watching. He doesn't need much, and to simply sit still and wait in case he's needed is fine by him, on the resting days, Nek simply sits in the tavern all day long and drinks an extra bottle for the day and has an extra meal there, everyone knows him well as a big man who you shouldn't mess with, but also everyone also knows he's a perfectly gentle lug if things aren't getting violent. He's even been known to break up bar brawls and arguments because he doesn't want the tavern being broken or the barmaid to get hurt. Nek doesn't thrive for a chance to cave one's skull in, he just wants to sit and watch, and if a skull needs broken in, then he'll do so.