Vane Oreld

NPC overview

Vane Oreld is a middle-aged Taldan man with light brown skin, amber eyes, dark hair, and a neatly trimmed goatee. His shirt cuffs are permanently stained with substances he declines to identify, and he works in a thick leather apron that has seen enough accidents to tell its own story. He is the owner of Oreld's Fine Shop, the third in a line of healers and herbalists in his family to run the place, and the first to have pushed the operation significantly into alchemical territory. The shop's stone walls bear multicolored scorch marks from past experiments — fading from black to dark blue to a faint glimmering violet — that he has never fully explained and apparently sees no reason to. He is also, by reluctant default, the closest thing Phaendar has to a doctor. This is a role he did not seek, does not enjoy, and is too much of a perfectionist to abandon. When his healing skills are called upon, he swears at considerable length, treats the patient with meticulous care, and then swears some more about the inconvenience. The town has learned to accept the complaints as part of the service and thank him afterward. The years since losing his family's shop to the chaos of the invasion have shaken him more than he shows — he throws himself into work to keep from thinking about it, becoming increasingly obsessive, working late into the night long after others have rested.
As the refugees restructured their lives, Vane Oreld became known as Oreld The Alchemist and established his alchemy shop beside the smithy in the cleared caverns. This workspace developed after the party secured the smithy, leading to the refugees moving into the Upper Caverns. Oreld took on a role among the settlers tending work areas near the smithy. He has become a storyteller at the refugee camp, sharing tales during communal meals and recounting stories about Gundugar, praising his alchemical work and expressing awe at how he handled his ingredients.