A Fruitful Endeavor
Type: (Vendor, fruit products, seeds, plants, mundane goods)
Description
This small stall is manned by a friendly maga wearing a purple robe, with ink stained fingers and messy hair organized in a practical bun. She wears lots of hermetic jewellery (pendants with symbols of her house, various arts, hermetic symbols etc). She is willing to engage anyone in conversation but is clearly rather awkward in the role as a vendor. Her garb identify her as a maga ex Bonisagus, and her appearance suggests that she is rather more of a lab rat than the adventurous type. Her name is Minerva ex Bonisagus, though she will not provide it unless asked for it. She is originally from the greek speaking territories of anatolia but can live anywhere convenient for the story.
Her stall is full of various fruity and plant products. On display in the stall are are dried fruits, potted plants bearing exotic fruit, jams, ciders, preserves, pickled fruit stored in a rickety assortment of jars, baskets and bags. There is very little apparent order in the stall and there is clearly space for more merchandise had it been better organized.
None of the fruits or fruit-products look like any known fruit, nor do the seeds look like they come from and recognizable plant, though on closer inspection many of them appear to slightly resemble the fruiting bodies of known plants.There are weirdly familiar but exotic looking potted plants: Stinging nettles bearing apple sized fuzzy looking fruits, Heather bearing stand of grape-like fruits, A small juniper with juicy looking berries etc.
Products
This list is not meant to be exhaustive and the storyguide should feel free to come up with crazy fruits or whatever they want.
None of the items have magical properties as the fruits are entirely mundane once the spell has ended.
Acorn-fruit jam:
This jam has the consistency of fig-jam and a sweet nutty aroma to it.
Fruit of stinging nettle:
This fruit is covered in a white sheen of stingers just like the rest of the stinging nettle, and thus requires gloves to handle without suffering its stinging burns. The fruit is a delicious mix of sweet and sour and leaves a tingling sensation on the tongue.
Heather-grape wine:
This wine has a flowery, almost meady or honey-like by taste to it, but otherwise resembles normal berry-wine.
Seeds:
The seeds are just that. Seeds harvested from various plants that she has first cast the spell upon, such that they will grow into fruit-bearing versions of their normal cousins.
She accepts payment in mundane currency or vis, though she has not put any sign or other indicator of price and she is not a particularly skilled haggler.
Background
If the players engage her in conversation she will explain that she is able to cause any plant to create fruits and she is willing to sell the seeds necessary to plant these supernatural plants. She is more than happy to talk about the ins-and-outs of the spell that creates these plants and explains that she creates the them with a spell that causes plants to grow to full maturity in the span of a single day or night (a rather standard Herbam effect) but that she created her version of the spell while experimenting in the lab. The plants targeted by the spell always create the same type of fruit if cast upon the same plant (e.g. oak trees always create the same acorn-fruit, heather always creates heather-grapes etc.). The offspring of these plants are fertile and also bear the new fruit.
For a bigger fee the maga will even travel to nearby covenants and cast the spell on plants that the covenant desires, in case she hasn't thought to create a fruit-bearing version of whatever is their favorite plant. Though she has no control over the appearance or flavor of the new fruit. This fee is always paid in vis and on this she is a much stronger haggler.
The backstory here is that the maga has recently invented a version of the CrHe spell that causes a plant to grow to full maturity in the span of a single day/night. However because she invented the spell using experimentation she ended up with an interesting side effect: The targeted plant will always bear an edible fruit once the spell has run its course, and the plant will be forever changed such that it bears these fruits instead of whatever fruit it normally bears. She invented this spell because her home covenant wanted to create an orchard and she drew the short straw on this duty.
The description of the booth may give the impression that the maga doesn't care terribly about the price, and that is absolutely correct. She is a dedicated lab rat and really doesn't want to stand here manning a stall. However she is hoping that this spell will be her chance to get published in the next Bonisagus folio and that developing such an interesting side effect may positively affect her reputation, which is why she has overcome her shyness and lack of interest in non-research endeavors. If the players seem impressed or are able to give interesting conversation about topics that she cares about she will happily neglect her booth to chat about the intricacies of magic theory, her specialty within magic (Creo) or the possibilities for expanding hermetic magic.
If the players try to talk to her about Herbam she will loose interest quite quickly and try to scare them off by raising her prices or only responding with single syllables words. This is because she really does not care particularly for Herbam and is quite annoyed with all the Herbam specialists who assume that she is one of their own for having a plant based stand.