Mother Pick

Owner of a brutal farm, Mother Pick is a True Fae who holds Ogres as her captive workers and occasional meals.

Description
There’s a shortcut through the farm, but never take it. Take the long road, the hard road, the tired road. Take no rest in the farmer’s fields. And never, never stop for a sausage and a drink.

The fruit and fodder of Arcadia do not come from this land. Here, Mother Pick harvests nightmares and tears. Her rolling fields are beautiful to look at, from the far side of her fences; workmen tend the red-eared pigs, labor in the slaughterhouse or plow the fields. The farmhouse with its red-painted shutters looks inviting and warm. There’s always ale and sausage set aside for guests and weary travelers.

Mother Pick has a crown of braided hair as red as hearth fire, twinkling blue eyes and a silent, sunken-cheeked husband. Her hands are calloused from work and brutality, and her smile is everything a weary traveler looks for in a friendly hostess.

The slaughterhouse is most active at night. Pigs are driven, screaming, to the wicked knives of Pick’s lumpshouldered servants. They work hard, knives rising and falling all night long because Mother Pick hates laziness. Lazy folk end up heels-high and dangling from hooks beside the pigs. Foolish folk end up on the griddle, and the blood of those who try fleeing is sticky on the floor of the slaughterhouse.

Her Changelings
Ogres here are hardworking, dutiful folks, with nothing but kind words for their Keeper. She’ll have it no other way. Gristlegrinders work in the slaughterhouse, wearing high rubber boots and with throat-cutting knives in their hands. Sometimes the beasts beg for their lives, sometimes a fellow worker ends up on the butcher’s line. Knives flash bright, and blood coats the floor like wine. Cyclopeans herd and farm, and keep watch for stragglers along the road to add to the supper pot while Stonebones stand as sentinels at the edges of Mother Pick’s lands, watching for trespassers and fleeing prisoners.