Cook

Cook hails from the pine forested mountains of central Teutonia. A foundling, she was raised by Nanny Ogg, the resident witch, in a forester’s village close to Dwarven mine workings. As well as bringing her up, Nanny Ogg took Cook on as her pupil, teaching her herb and potion lore, Magecraft, and how to cook everything from sustaining fare in the field with whatever is at hand, to sumptuous banquets for twenty. An unhealthy interest on the part of the Dwarves (the stumpy little buggers kept trying to nick fresh-baked bread) has made her lethal with a frying pan or ladle and the mistress of disabling poisons.

At her coming of age, Nanny Ogg took it upon herself to betroth Cook to a local blacksmith. Unwilling to be married off, Cook fled, determined to find out what the wider world offered. Making her way from the mountains of her youth to the rolling foothills, she discovered a wide river and followed it downstream to the plains. One evening, she made camp and prepared supper, before retiring to her shelter at twilight. The delicious smells wafting from her campfire attracted the attention of a passing ship, borne silently through the mists by the swift current alone.

The ship was the Gray Wolf, in the process of being victoriously brought seaward by Drox and his crew, having been sequestered from the Underdark two days earlier. The only fatality of that epic raid was Drox’s cook, killed by the Drow, so naturally he was curious. In short order, Cook found herself kidnapped.

Time mellows memory, and within six months both Cook and the Gray Wolf’s crew regarded her as one of the ship’s company. She exhilarated in the adventure that piratical life brought – so much more than an existence where the most excitement was dealing with thieving Dwarves.

Cook’s true name is Belladonna Foxglove, a name she was oathsworn to conceal as part of Nanny Ogg’s tutelage. Only the dead know her by this moniker, as those who utter it within her earshot have a strange habit of turning up dead not long after with not a mark on their bodies, their faces locked in a rictus of terror, agony and utter despair. To all others, she is simply Cook.