Ilse Marrow

"I don't hunt them. I collect what's left. There's a difference, and I'll explain it to you once I've been paid."

Ilse Marrow is one of perhaps a dozen humans living in Quillnib's Handle, and by far the most disliked. She rents a narrow stall at the edge of the Quill Market where she sells ordinary ink, ordinary paper and ordinary quills. Everyone knows that isn't what she really sells.

Appearance

Tall, stooped from years of living in rooms built for goblins, fifty or so, with grey hair cut short and practical. Her fingertips are stained permanently black. She wears a heavy leather apron over plain clothes from Mohinders and carries a set of lidded glass jars on her belt, which she never lets anyone look into.

Background

Ilse grew up in Mohinders, trained as an alchemist, and was good enough that a rising mage named Vorelith hired her in the early days of his work with the Dense. She spent four years in his workshops studying what the Dense left behind, and she was the one who first worked out how to render Densling remains into something stable.

She left Mohinders when Vorelith's projects stopped being studies and started being plans. She won't say more than that. She came to the Handle because it is inside the Dense, nobody from Mohinders visits, and the goblins don't ask questions about outsiders as long as they pay rent.

Personality

• Dry and patient. Nothing seems to frighten her. She argues with Rift-Sniffers the way other people discuss the weather.
• Honest about being dishonest. She doesn't pretend Blackweight is legal. She thinks the law is foolish and says so.
• Not cruel. She insists she only renders Denslings that are already dying or dead. She has a habit of talking gently to the jars.

Relations

• Hobb of Page Nine: Her enemy in public. He has had her stall raided four times. She sends him a birthday card every year, written in plain ink.
• Vorelith: Her former employer. She does not speak his name if she can avoid it.
• Dreamweavers: Several have tried to talk her out of her trade. One tried to burn the stall down.