Editing Wyrd of the Wanderer - Player 1 (section)

==Background==
"Grandmother", they called her. It was a title of respect. In truth, Bracha was barely old enough to be a mother herself, and no one was offering to sire upon her. It would be taboo. It would be freaky. It might not be safe to propose.

When Bracha was very young, her parents thought she was cursed. Her great-aunt Erishel died holding her, and young Bracha only laughed merrily. When Erishel's ghost leapt out of her memorial amulet to drive off a mad dog the next year, everyone ''but'' Bracha's parents thought she was cursed. If her father's sister had not been the village midwife, had not vowed to turn her back on every birth in a fortinyear, had not been clever enough to make up some nonsense on the spot about a connection between the beginnings and endings of life, and how they run in a family, Bracha would have made a very nice offering to the Wendigo, in exchange for another year of safety.

When Bracha was a little less young, but still young indeed, she was every meaning of "sacred". She was unwelcome at the communal feasts that welcomed each new season. She had been embraced by the shaman and forsworn by both chiefs. Her blood had come for three years, and still she was not permitted the rites of passage. It meant she could be denied the protection of tribal custom, but also its punishments. The social contract did not apply to her. Bracha became very good at negotiating her own contracts, instead.

When Bracha stood astride the line between youth and adulthood, she had matured into a power within her clan that could challenge the peace chief, defy the war chief, and even call her midwife aunt's bluff. Everyone has someone they want a last word from, and only Bracha could speak in the voice of the departed. Everyone has a weakness somewhere in their hearts, and only Bracha's servants could not be tempted by the Poludnisa. Everyone hates to confront their own mortality, and a reputation for defying the call of the sky-father, for telling the buzzards where they may feed, can be more comforting than macabre, given the right approach. It helped that she was so generous. It helped that she was approachable. It helped that she sang riddles to the stones of a cairn, instead of gruesomely cutting and stitching decayed flesh. It helped that she never ate even the flesh of animals, much less babies. It helped that her great-aunt Erishel had been the peace chief in her time. It helped that Erishel still rose up from Bracha's amulet to argue on her behalf with the new one. Red Basin had never been a community of ancestor-worshipers, but such a cult was beginning to take shape, given all the new evidence to recommend it.