Mr. Clapton

The relentlessly sad, well-meaning innkeeper of the Clapton's Hammer, a doomed near-empty tavern in Gwyndinas's Brown district — unknowingly built on an ancient burial ground above a grief demon's crevice. Balding and forever waiting on customers who never come, he was never firmly named in play (the GM ad-libbed "Rufio/Rufius"; the table settled on Mr. Clapton after the tavern).

His father came out of the Veilwood and "died of depression." His son fought in the Gwyndinas arena and died there; an attempted resurrection failed because — in what the party later understood as the demon's pall — "he lacked the will to come back," reportedly the first time anyone had ever lacked the will to return.

Session 13

• Hosted the party for the night of the 6th of Spring's End, serving deliberately grim fare and bottling Lash's bathwater as "axolotlan water."
• Had been "serving" the weeks-dead halfling Dorian Montagu in the corner, never noticing he'd died, and recalled an earlier guest who'd also died asleep — the threads that cracked the haunted-inn mystery.
• Freed from the grief demon's draining pall when the party destroyed it in the basement. His will to live — and his tavern — restored, with the ancient dead beneath still to be re-laid.