Ma Lillery, the Stewmaster

[GoD1x]

So! Ma died in glorious, if rather short, combat.
I'd meant for Ma to become a kind of innkeeper or working for an inn, and it was my first real attempt at the cooking system.
She was a bit of a mess, gullible and protective of her friends, supposed or not.

I never quite got around to being the crazed cook I was aiming for - mostly due to folks on the most part wanting/buying her meals. I'd meant for her to eventually turn hostile to those repeatedly refusing, however, most of those that did I only met very few times (Szul was on her naughty list, and then he died..). She had a need to feed folk and return a sort of imagery of a regular daily life with regular customers, and being called Ma was a big part of that, because:

[Hide=Background]
Ma Lillery. That was what she was known as before the Dread came to Lantan. She was a lone mother of thirteen, as she lost her husband to a kobold attack whilst she was pregnant with the thirteenth. Thankfully she had her vast family and her business to keep her mind busy and off the loss.
Her family was in charge of a line of cookeries on the isle, with each of her 13 sons being part of the industry. The cookery is so ingrained in her being, she now continues it and even wields her precious ladle, the only memento of her past, as a club when she fights. Made of sturdy iron-wood, it just keeps on swinging and stirring.[/Hide]

[Hide=AMB Seasons story, with some pictures (Not super great.. I was short on time when I began-- just couldn't get my head around anything seasony)]
Seasons

Life was good. Life was good. Ma Lillery Gobblestick, family head, business owner, blessed with thirteen children before her husband died.
Days came, were, and passed, each ticking away the ever ticking clock of time. Each day brought happiness.

'Hello Ma!', a voice called from the doorway to her inn, barely audible over a bout of raucous laughter from a table to the back. A waving, smiling gnome was entering, another regular sauntering in to enjoy a day off their own wife's cooking. Lillery motioned for one of her serving girls, Ferini, to go receive the new guest and take his order. Lillery peered outside the doorway, the lengthening shadows telling her the sun was about to set. She made a mental note begin changing the menu to a more autumnal theme, as summer was still over them, but it would soon be over.
Lillery turned about and moved back into her kitchen. It did not take long for Ferini to follow her into the kitchen. 'He'd like your special, Ma,' she meekly uttered. She was a young thing. Quite shy, but beautiful. She almost attracted as many looks as Lillery.
Lillery gave her a quick smile and ushered her back out, 'Then go get him a glass of milk, dear, and tell him it'll be a little while. I have to prepare a new batch.'
With practiced ease, Lillery began pulling away the necessary ingredients from her cupboards and larder; sage, garlic, salt, pepper, butter, wine, flours, eggs and a large cut of tenderloin. Her special, the Lillery's Legendary Salt-Baked Tenderloin, was a recipe she discovered during her many and regular experimentations, where she accidentally dropped a prime cut of tenderloin in her salt barrel. The result was staggering to all newcomers; meat so juicy and tender it was near like eating meat-flavoured butter. Each of her sons had been taught the recipe and it was the main attraction to each of the inns her family owned.
Happiness flowed through her mind as her hands worked the meat, her trusty ladle stirring the pot of roasted and spiced potatoes. She felt him watch over her.
Life was good.
Yet fate would not have it go on forever. The season of happiness would soon pass.

BOOM! Fire! She woke with a start, the smell of fire filling her nostrils, the roar of an explosion below her rattling her mind. Thoughts raced through her mind as she slipped into a pair of fur slippers and ran to investigate. Opening the door to the hallway, a billowing cloud of black acrid smoke rushed in to meet her. A season of pain was beginning.

Hurrying down the stairs to the main hall of her inn the heat of the fire slammed into her with a force that almost sent her reeling back. Her entire inn was aflame! Looking around, she started noticing small shapes among the flames. She noticed the dress of Ferini. She had been working the late shift, taking care of the customers wanting to stay for a late ale.
Screams started becoming audible as her ears began adjusting to the sudden roar of the fire. Well used to heat, Lillery pushed through the main hall, deciding to survive first and then give a thought to the dead when she had time. She worked her way into her kitchen. Of all the rooms in her inn, it was the safest against a fire, for it had a back entrance for deliveries and was mostly furnished with stone interior to keep fires from spreading. The heat was quickly intensifying, the fire burning away her livelihood, the memories of a life time. Smoke billowed about her head and the stark smell of soot snapped her from a brief moment of stunned sorrow.
She looked up at a hook on the wall where her ladle usually hang. 'Where is it?!', she thought, half-panicked, 'The explosion must have knocked it down'. She ran to grab a pot off the stove - not her best, but it'd do - and then she saw it. Her precious ironwood ladle, gifted to her by her husband at their wedding, was laying at the edge of the flames. She ran for it, pushing through the pulsing heat waves as the flames beyond roared, almost as if they were trying to repel her from her prize. With an scream of defiance, rage and sorrow, she fought through it, grabbed the ladle and ran for the exit.

Crisp, cold air filled her lungs and she coughed as if her lungs would explode. Looking around the village, she quickly realized that something more was going on. Every house she could see was burned or burning. Over the cacophony of screams and roaring fires, her coughing had not been heard. She praised Garl's for that one bout of luck in all this, for she suddenly noticed several groups of shadows moving between the flaming buildings. For several moments she stood breathless as she stared at the chaos and destruction and suddenly one of the shadows came into view. Dressed in strange gooey armor, the dark elf barely registered anything around itself. It lumbered on, staring into the distance with dead eyes as if focused on something in the far distance.
Horrified at it all, she turned on her heels and ran. Ran with all that she had in her towards the nearby forest, zipping through trees, over stumps and streams. She ran until she could no more. Exhausted, she sat down on the ground in a small clearing... and she wept. Slowly, snow began falling from the sky, gently pooling around the shaking gnome.

Each day was despair.
After the burning of her inn, Lillery had hurried to seek out her sons. Barely noticing that the sun had disappeared, the days began melting into one long arduous night. Desperately clinging to hope that they had survived, she hurried from town to town, but what she found devastated her each time.
Nothing was left. The towns torched to the ground. What surprised her however, was the lack of bodies. She found no sign of her sons' corpses.
Her mind raced at the possibilities, 'Perhaps they still live? Escaped like her? Have they been taken?'. She clung to the hope that they still lived. That they would be reunited somewhere and somehow would make things right again. Surely Lantan couldn't be completely taken.
She tried to look for tracks leading away from the inns, towards any areas of safety, but being no tracker she had little success.
There was only one place they might seek to go, she thought. Lillery steeled herself and turned about, trudging in the direction of her own inn.

Shortly after leaving town she felt as if something was following her. Picking up pace, she turned towards a nearby forest, hoping she could shake whoever it was there. Several minutes passed as she walked on, listening for signs of whatever it was, when all of a sudden a shriek bellowed through the forest and heavy thudding could be heard on her left. 'A gnome! A fellow gnome!', she thought at first her mind bubbling at the prospect, but then she saw his eyes. Bloodshot and feral, the gnome lunged towards her, wordlessly swinging the leg of a chair at her. Lillery brought up her pot to take the brunt of the swing before tossing it aside. The resounding impact caught the gnome off-balance, leaving Lillery enough time to bring up her ladle for a heavy overhead swing. The ladle struck true, connecting with the head of the gnome giving off a dull crack as it splintered his skull. Lillery stared dumbfounded at the gnome, blood seeping out from the meaty sack laying before her. She suddenly caught herself thinking of the gnome as a meaty sack. Could she? She had no other food. Her stomach rumbled in response. In fact she hadn't eaten for quite a while. She had found no mushrooms for a good while, and no fruits were growing in the snow and the only berries were already mostly fermenting. She said a quiet prayer to Garl, kneeled before the gnome and took a knife from her belt and began sawing at the meat. Meat for several days, she reasoned with herself. She had her cookpot, her ladle, and plenty of firewood. She would survive.
She turned and began trudging onwards, a large pool of red snow at her back.

Nothing but the ruins of her kitchen. That was all that was left of her old home, crumpled together like an ancient tomb.
She stood quietly staring over the ruins... and it was death and despair. Her sons were not there.
Yet despair can only last so long. In time it will give way to other emotions.

A season of desperation and madness began. A never-ending season of darkness.
Lillery roamed the dark nights. The sun was gone. She had no count of the days she had been alone. Animals started acting strange, she caught herself thinking strange thoughts, staring up at the sky. Life was not life. It was survival. A fight to stay alive, to forage for the next meal, to gather wood for a fire. For near a year, Lillery toiled on her own in the darkness, fighting to stay alive, hoping to find her sons.
The once mother of thirteen, once joyful and kind, she was anything but. A ghost of her former self, forced to live simple, live on the run, she had lost everything.

Then, one fateful day, a light shone in the darkness. A flicker of hope and dread raced through her mind. Salvation or an end? She crept closer, wary of tricks.
A sign stood outside what now appeared to be a fortified camp, light spilling out from a few poorly shut windows. 'Ilmateran Refugee camp'. She was not alone! She was finally saved!

Or so she thought.
[/Hide]

It was fun through most of it and I'd guess her biggest achievement would be to have kicked off RwG's death matches by being the first to take that plunge. ^^

I'll post some screens later!
 

[grumpy]

Very cool concept GoD1x.

[Bearic]

Shame she never learned how to make lollipops.

[efuincarnate]

I liked Ma, from the few interactions I had on her With Uz, would of liked to have kilt her myself, but so it goes in efu :) (Poncy light lover)

[Saturnalia]

I had a really fun time interacting with her.

[Apocryphal Misconceptions]

You really dropped the ball there, friendo! A stew chef could have competed with a mouth watering, killing AMB essay about types of seasoning for awesome stews.

That's all that I'll remember you for now.

[GoD1x]

Haha, that was one of my first thoughts. Then my pedantic logic came at me full scale reminding me it was 'seasons' and not 'seasonings' :(