Maren Ashveil

Maren Ashveil is an Aristonian noblewoman, recently widowed. She is composed and stoic, difficult to read, and carries herself with the quiet bearing of someone accustomed to wealth.

Her husband, Dale Ashveil, died some months ago. His death was ruled the result of natural causes, but Maren does not accept that — he had been a healthy man, and in his final moments he scrawled the beginning of a word: "the Fix—". Following that single clue with her own resources, she came to believe he had been referring to a criminal known as the Fixer, and traced that person's trail as far as Little Pandemonium.

Unwilling to bring so delicate a matter to the Kingsguard, she has hired a band of capable strangers — those who destroyed a group of rampaging constructs before her eyes — to find the Fixer, offering 100 gold pieces in all, half of it paid up front.

The Grudge She Will Keep

When the party returned to report the Fixer taken alive and handed to the guard, and named House Betony as the ones who had ordered her husband's murder, a flash of betrayal crossed Maren's face before her composure closed over it. She had worked with House Betony before, she admitted, and now saw that Dale had gotten himself into some nasty business she had not understood. Judging herself — one widowed noblewoman — in no position to move openly against so powerful a house, she resolved instead to keep the grievance to herself.

She paid the party a further 50 gold on completion of the job, and offered them something beyond coin: standing passage aboard her late husband's canal-trade vessel, the Brass Heron, under Captain Voss, should they ever need to cross the sea.