COLLECTOR: OLD SCRIMSHAW

The heavy, ornate doors close behind you, and the ruckus of the tavern below at once grows distant. Her Serene Tidings was once the pride of a royal armada. Today, like the crown she served, she’s broken. Since your grandfather’s youth, she’s lain, scuttled, in the harbor, her listing decks and berths now hosting city’s most infamous and beloved alehouse. 

Yet here, for the first time, you can see the ghosts of her past glory--in the faded frescos above, the peeling gilt along the mantle. It makes the ghoulish collection around you all the more macabre.

Shrunken heads leer down, hanging from the rafters like strings of garlic. The floor is a collage of exotic pelts of every size, and every flat surface of the grand cabin is occupied with some manner of trophy—eyes and organs floating in jars, wizened hands pinned to boards, and—overwhelmingly—everywhere, bones. Jawbones, ivory, teeth, skulls; all shapes and sizes. Carved into them, you see intricate and swirling designs—too fine to make out at a distance. 

Behind the ivory forest, a persistent rasp. Steel on stone. Gingerly, you circle a large skull—is that a dragon?--and behold the desk at the center. Atop it, cross legged, a wizened figure sits sharpening a harpoon. Their skin, taught over bones, is a dizzying network of tattoo and scar tissue, from the soles of their feet to the crown of the bald head. When they look, you see that one eye is missing—an empty, polished ivory socket remains. And when they smile, you see a deranged mosaic of teeth—shark, crocodile, tiger, things you can’t name— How do they even fit in that head?

So, the scrimshawed scarecrow speaks. You’re the young hero, eh? Come here. Let’s get a good look at each other.

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Inspired by Glass Candles--not wishing to be collected, I have thrown together a collector of my own! Players are always sawing off bits and bobs of the monsters they kill and asking if anyone wants to buy a barrel of troll grease. (It's me, I'm players.) Let's give them that someone.

OLD SKRIMSHAW

Location: the most cartoonishly nautical hive-of-scum-and-villainy regionally available. 

Area of Interest: Trophies. Rare, exotic, dangerous; the mementos mori of powerful aberrations throughout the ages. 

Keys: Acquire a reputation as a doughty monster hunter; alternatively, make yourself known as that drunken lout always swearing vengeance on some monster or another for whatever contrived slight. Old Scrimshaw's got a soft spot for the next generation of prospective Ahabs. Likes to get in on the ground floor.

That's the spirit!

Add to his collection, and he’ll open it back to you. Many of his trophies contain some echo of power, a memory of their living might. A unicorn's horn, panacea to disease. A dragons' blood, boiling still, to grant knowledge of the speech of birds. The twitching claw of the Lich King will, with the right incantations, serve you as its new master.

And they hold something more—information. Scrimshaw is perhaps the greatest single repository of monster knowledge around. They’ll play coy, but for the right price they can tell you a great deal about monsters—their habitats, histories, strategies and banes. If the information proves bad, they have a 100% money-back guarantee, of course! So long as you survive to update their records, heh heh heh...

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Golly, is this the first post in two months? Threw this together too quick to second-guess. I’ve got a couple more projects coming to fruition soon (™), but I had fun following the wind on this one. Thank you to Glass Candles for the inspiration!