Derik Ven
Taproot Innkeeper
The anxious, warm-hearted keeper of the Taproot Inn, where Uled's rumors change hands faster than coin. Derik wants nothing more than a quiet house and a full till, but his tavern is a smuggler haunt and a gossip exchange, and trouble finds his door regardless. Buy him some goodwill and he becomes a fountain of hushed, half-true whispers.
Description
Derik Ven runs the Taproot Inn with a friendly cadence and a nervous laugh, forever smoothing over the tensions that gather beneath his sagging roof. Miners hunch over his mugs, dice clatter on his scarred tables, and every faction in Uled seems to pass through sooner or later. He would like it all to stay calm, and it never does.
He leaks gossip to those he trusts and clams up around those who scare him. Derik hears everything and repeats most of it, though whether a given whisper is truth, bait, or a debt he is trying to pay off is anyone's guess.