Location: South of the Haunt (1)
Services: Patronage
Key NPCs: Honoria Soldorak (female dwarf investor)
Soldorak Manor is the largest and grandest home in Quickstone—a mansion that is luxurious even by the standards of Sharn and Wroat. When Count ir’Blis decided to expand Quickstone, he sought outside investors who might take an interest in the town. He found his partner in Honoria Soldorak, a Mror lord whose deep platinum mines provide her with a lot of disposable income. Her investments helped build much of the infrastructure of the Square and the expansion of Oldtown; she owns a number of buildings in the square and a few tenements in Oldtown that she’s renting to Grizzlies and Mourners. It’s no secret that Honoria is unhappy about the imminent arrival of House Kundarak; she’s enjoyed her role as the richest woman in Quickstone, and once the enclave is fully operational she’s likely to be eclipsed by Kundarak. However, she still has a card left to play; Honoria Soldorak has purchased the old mines adjacent to Quickstone from ir’Blis. This is an uncertain investment as currently the mines are unusable, infested with cockatrices and other threats. Because of this, there’s no actual way of knowing what they hold. Ir’Blis imagines that they were tapped out thousands of years ago. But Honoria Soldorak has heard stories of byeshk, and she hopes that her investment will pay off—that once she has time to clear and restore the mine, she may find wonders in its depths. Honoria has experience with mining, and a working byeshk mine would be a boon for the town.
While she is old even for a dwarf, Honoria Soldorak is one of the cleverest people in Quickstone. She enjoys intelligent conversation and has a bitterly sharp wit. More than anything, she loves to play games—whether with cards, investments, or people.
She’s not an evil woman, but she is concerned first and foremost with her own entertainment and bottom line, and will abandon an investment the moment it becomes boring or surely unprofitable. However, she does have a soft spot for both family and children; she built Quickstone’s schoolhouse both to care for the children and to give her nephew Ink a job.
Honoria is proud of her manor and enjoys showing it off. She maintains a rooftop garden with a host of blooms that would never survive without mystical sustenance, and occasionally throws garden parties for the town’s children. She’s always looking for a good excuse to host a ball or a feast, so as to show off her wealth and largesse; she might honor a heroic deed, a new arrival, or simply throw a party because there’s someone she wishes to publicly snub. She can be a valuable patron for adventurers. She might hire people to clear out or explore her mines, to eliminate something that poses a threat to the children of Quickstone, or to otherwise pursue an investment or an opportunity for profit.