April 24, 2013

Shop: Uncle Ned’s Bakery

This is a fairly normal bakery. Breads get baked early so the morning crowd can get their day’s bread. There are additional baked goods such as pastries, cookies and cakes. At first glance, this appears to be your typical bakery. However, of late, the quality of the baked goods has gone up considerably. The bakery has been producing some of the best baked goods ever tasted; it is almost orgasmic. For the past few weeks the bakery has been running out of food on a daily basis as people have been buying everything the bakery produces. Other bakeries are at a loss to explain the sudden change in quality. Some suspect a new recipe or magics are involved. Thus far the owner of Uncle Ned’s Bakery, Tobias “Uncle Ned” Malone, has remained silent as to what secret ingredient or baking method he has changed.

The reason why Tobias Malone has remained silent is because he has no idea what has changed. He is baking his goods as he always has. Nothing has changed. In fact, he has tried his baked goods and they taste the same to him. The truth lies beneath the bakery. Before the current building was erected, there was a brothel at the same spot. One night, many years ago, it was burnt down to the ground by a disgruntled and obsessive customer. People quickly forgot about the former brothel and a new building was erected over it. However, the spirits of those slain in the fire did not pass on and lingered.

Recently a weakening in the veil between the mortal and the spirit world has allowed these spirits to reenter the mortal world. For some unknown reason they are tied to an exchange of some sort and go with whoever buys something in the bakery, i.e. the baked goods. Thereafter, they follow a driving force and they stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain. However, once the good that was exchanged is gone (eaten) the spirit is forced back to where it came from, the bakery. The spirits would still like to move on, but are trapped in this cycle. Unfortunately, there may come a time soon when they are able to overcome the force that is causing them to stimulate the pleasure centers and instead turn violent in rage for their confinement in this world.
 

Tobias Malone
Tobias never wanted to be more than he is, a man who does his job adequately and earns enough to live on. He never wanted to win any sort of baking contest or be the most popular person. However, all this new attention is making him unsettled. Some see him as a genius (or so they say), some find him ruggedly handsome (or so they say), some are impressed by his new prosperity (or so they say). Tobias suspects it is the new taste of his baked goods and that people either want his secret ingredient or to use him for their own ends. Of course the attention is still nice.
 

Adventure Ideas
-The characters are hired to uncover the secret ingredient of the bakery. The bakery is looking to hire some new employees to keep up with the demand and one of the characters can try and infiltrate the bakery this way. Or a brute force breaking-in could also work. But what do the characters do when they don’t find anything out of the ordinary?
-The spirit of the arsonist who initially burned down the brothel managed to escape the bakery. It begins to wreak havoc on the town and then just as suddenly disappears. After a few instances of this happening, the characters are hired to solve this problem and track the spirit back to its lair and expel it from the mortal world.

List of Bakery Items
You can use this list to augment the description of a meal.
 
1)      Biscotti
2)      Biscuit
3)      Bread
4)      Bread Pudding
5)      Cake
6)      Cinnamon Roll
7)      Cookies
8)      Croissant
9)      Cupcake
10)    Danish
11)    Éclair
12)    Fruitcake
13)    Fudge
14)    Quiche
15)    Pie
16)    Squares
17)    Strudel
18)    Tart
19)    Tiramisu
20)    Torte

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