What you know about Emma

Emma's Godfather, Sir Eton Green -- at present, NPC -- is a great friend and visitor of Lightbridge, and is often seen in the best companies of lower royalty and middle powers.

He/she has arranged for the journey and placement of Goddaughter Emma Archer with the local seamstress (also currently NPC), an aging widow woman who does not travel easily (and whom, it has been agreed upon with the Lightbridge Admin, will die off if a viable PC tailor or seamstress arrives in the area).

Citizens of Lightbridge are likely to know a few things about Emma, if they care to listen to talk, as her Godparent has attempted to soften Emma's way as much as possible, leaning here and there on others to "keep an eye out" on the girl.

• Emma, at almost 15, is the eldest of three sisters.  Her parents appear to be middle-class merchants: her father, until recently, owner of Archer Fisheries, a small fishing enterprise, and her mother, the area's best seamstress.
• The family lives between Hythe and Dover.
• Her family has not been touched by disease, which can seem suspicious to uneducated outsiders at times.  Her mother has served as a midwife, and knows something about herbs and diseases, but don't tell anyone.
• Her mother just can't make it into the sewing guilds around Dover, which are protected from outsiders by the Royals own tailors circle.  (this is my paranoid imagination; I have no idea of such things existed. But this is gossip, y'know?)
• Her father's business has begun to suffer (silting of the areas he fishes?), and with three daughters, he is seeing less opportunity to expand his business in favorable ways, without arranged marriages.

Emma involved as always with her needlework.

If you know the family better, you will know that

• Emma had caught the eye of a young noble man whose mother is a client of Emma's mother.  The young man had started coming to every fitting, and he was finding more than a few opportunities to be alone with young Emma.  Her mother began to worry that her normally distracted daughter might begin paying attention to the handsome noble.  When Emma's godparent suggested that Emma might be sent to Lightbridge to continue to build her sewing skills, it seemed to her mother to be a good way to handle several challenges at once.
• An  additional challenge that the family is having concerns the fishing enterprise that Emma's father is involved in.  As a middle-class business owner, his shipyard has been tapped hard by the crown, and he's finding it difficult to do enough work to support his business and family.  The channel is silting up in some areas that he's been fishing for years, and the guilds have strict policies about the areas he can move into now.  Emma's father doesn't say it often out loud, but he's glad of his wife's contribution to the household income.
• It's getting more difficult to apprentice a daughter in the home, in sewing skills.  When the second daughter of the family, at 11, began to also show evidence of having a talent for needlework, Emma wanted to make way for her little sister to learn as much as possible at home.  She also recognized that she would never be taken seriously in any of the finer houses and homes if she had only apprenticed to her own mother, even though in Dover her mother's name is almost as well known as the queen's.  So Emma decided that Lightbridge would be a good move for her as well as for her family.