Hey all, Sam here.
Hello and welcome back to another installment in the Weekend Writer series. I’ve mentioned it before, but this 2024 edition has been streamlined a little bit. While I love the previous incarnation of Weekend Writer, the posts took me a long time to prep up and write, which left me feeling very drained. I needed to think about my mental health, as well as giving myself more time to actually work on my own creative writing.
So the first weekend of the month, I will have a creativity prompt post up, and the final weekend of the month, I will share some of my writing: sometimes based on these prompts, sometimes based on whatever novel I’m writing, and sometimes both.
For the other weekends of the month, I will be talking about the writing craft, whether that is sharing writing craft books I’ve read and giving a general review for them, or having a writing related topic to discuss. I’m not strictly planning any of these other weekends. Some of them might even end up being extra prompt shares. So who knows what will happen…I’m just trying to figure out my new process and enjoy myself as I do it.
Roll & Play
Prompt: This merchant is selling…bubbling potions are being brewed live and sold. Their components are also on sale. The first thing that hits you as you enter the shop is the strong smell of herbs and incense, a faint smoke lingers in the air. The floor is varnished, but ruined in places by dark stains. The stock is carefully arranged, and everything has a hand-written label.
This month I decided to roll the dice on the Markets and Shops/Shop Descriptions pages in the Roll & Play book. You can use the dice I rolled, or if you have your own dice, you can roll on the chart yourself. Or heck, if you want to then you can just choose whichever option sparks your interest.
The town of Wystgren was home to several unique shops, and now many of them were receiving much needed stock. But the journey had been a lengthy one and everyone needed to resupply themselves, which meant it was time for another shopping trip.
While Reed, Veeta, Ander, and Ren all headed towards the smithy, Karrakh and Mistwyn made their way towards a shop that seemed likely to supply potions and magical trinkets. Entering the shop, it was clear they had chosen the right place as a faint smoke lingered throughout the space, carrying the scent of herbs and incense. Many bottles of varying sizes were littered across shelves and tables, each with a hand written label on them.
In the center of the shop was a large cauldron with a fire underneath it. Amazingly enough, the smoke rose upward in a column as if into a chimney, although there was no such structure there. Whatever was in the cauldron was heated to a rolling boil, and Karrakh’s nose crinkled at the smell. Mistwyn resisted the urge to do the same and was about to call out a warning to whoever was in the shop when a small gnomish woman with her hair pulled up into two haphazard buns on the top of her head rushed over, hopping up onto a step stool and peering into the cauldron.
“Ah yes, just in time. Don’t want this to boil over. That would ruin it all.” She didn’t even look up towards the adventurers standing nearby, but she addressed them all the same. “Feel free to browse the offerings. I will be available to assist you in just a few minutes.”
Karrakh stepped away and began to look over the bottles on the back wall, Mistwyn right behind him. “While I am fairly well learned in components that can be used for arcane spellcraft, but you are the one most trained in medicinal components. What do you think of their quality?”
Looking over the various herbs, Mistwyn shrugged. “What we just brought to town is better quality, but these would work well enough and might sell for a lower price. The problem is that unless we plan on sticking around for a few days, I wouldn’t have the time to brew up some healing potions, so we’d be better off just buying the already made potions for now.”
Karrakh nodded. “Very well. I wonder if there are just herbs and potions here, or if the shopkeeper also has spell scrolls and the like. It might be nice to have extra magical capabilities on our trip back home.”
“At least we don’t have to go the long way back to Marsh Hollow. I don’t think any of us want to be on the road for another three weeks…and Reed seems like he would rather avoid another trip near the Greywood.” Their companion had been a little more withdrawn and reserved than usual since their time passing the blighted forest, and none of them wanted to push him into talking about it more.
The gnomish woman had apparently finished bottling up the potion being crafted in the center of the shop and waved her hand to end the flame beneath the cauldron. Then she stepped over to the duo. “All righty then…what can I do for you fine folk today?”
I ended up using this month’s prompt to write a little on my current project, Roll for Romance, which I’ve talked about a little bit on here before. It is a D&D romance story, following the out-of-game relationship that develops between the game master and one of the players, as well as the in-game fantasy adventure. Obviously what I wrote for this is based on the in-game portion of the story.
I need to buckle down and focus on getting more written for this story, but I imagine I will talk about it more in future Weekend Writer posts, especially as I get closer to the finish line.
Well that is all from me for today, and if you’ve written anything based on these prompts, please tag me in your post because I’d love to read it.
Thank you for stopping by, and I’ll be back soon with more geeky content.
Free State of Geek 