Trinkets
⚠️ Content Warning
This article may contain mature themes, including homoerotic content, complex power dynamics, sexual encounters with vampires and anthropomorphic beings, as well as other adult material.
Reader discretion is advised.
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A narrow, dim-lamped shop in Witch's Hollow whose very name is a lie. Trinkets is styled to suggest nothing more than bric-a-brac and curios, a place to rummage for cheap gewgaws. In truth it is an illicit apothecary, owned and operated by the unregistered alchemist Aaron Blight, serving those who prefer their potions quick, quiet, and off the books.
Stock & Services
Aaron specialises in fast, functional draughts rather than artful masterworks—priced to move and cut-rate by design.
- Common sellers: vigour tonics, night-eyes, fever breaks, blood-stop, ward-salt, hangover philters.
- Commission work: simple bespoke effects with clear instructions; he hedges on anything needlessly cruel.
- No questions asked: within reason—and within the limits of his conscience.
Clientele
The door turns for shady regulars, dockside labourers who prefer cash to questions, and the occasional gentlefolk with a problem that must not reach a licensed counter.
Quiet Protection
Trinkets sits—more or less—under the unofficial protection of several OFB constables who shop here themselves. Off duty and out of uniform, they purchase booster philters to stiffen their modest magical gifts or bolster resilience before difficult work. In return they discourage casual raids and ensure that warnings travel faster than warrants. It is not a formal arrangement, but everyone understands it.
Reputation
Among the Hollow’s underbelly, Trinkets is valued for speed, discretion, and price. Among Guild folk it is an embarrassment that will not quite go away. Aaron’s bitterness is an open secret; so is the fact he still knows exactly what he’s doing.
Architecture
Façade & Deception
The misdirection begins with the signboard itself: “Trinkets.” The name is deliberate camouflage, meant to lower the eye and the suspicion alike.
- Glamour Window: The street-facing window is bound with a glamour that displays only harmless knick-knacks—tin soldiers, cracked china dogs, tarnished lockets, a stack of year-old penny dreadfuls. Passers-by see quaint clutter and keep walking.
- Behind the Glamour: The physical window is boarded up from within, cross-braced and tar-sealed to light-proof the workroom. Without the glamour, the front would look shuttered and dead.
A hand-lettered placard reads “Closed” more often than not; regulars know to knock twice, wait, then twice again.
Interior
The public room is small, with hand-cut labels on jars, drawers of dried roots, and the sharp reek of alcohol and bruised mint. Most of it is theatre. The real trade happens in the back: a cramped bench, stained alembics, cooling racks, and a notebook kept under lock.
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