GAZETTEER · THE VALE

Tallow and Nail

aka Tobb's

Valenfeld's general store — rope, nails, lamp oil, salt, thread, and Tobb Fallwick behind the counter with a tally-stick memory better than any ledger.

It smells like tallow, tar, and the good kind of dust. Tobb keeps one of everything a farm, a boat, or a household actually breaks: spare hinges, cart-pins, needle packets, a barrel of nails sorted by hand into sizes he invented himself and refuses to rename. He extends credit the way the season demands it and calls in debts the way the season allows it, which means half the town owes him something small and nobody worries about it, because Tobb doesn't. The good tools are up on the wall where children can look and not touch; the bad tools are in the bin by the door, priced to match. If you want to know who's fighting with whom, who's expecting, or whose roof leaked in the last storm, Tobb heard about it first, because everyone comes through his door eventually for the nail that fixes it.

This world ships in Valenfeld. Play the game →