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Juna's Breadbasket

by AntiVehicleRocket

"Few may have suspected that the peasant breadmaking traditions could have given rise to art -- but art it is! When one samples one's first purchase from Juna's, one suspects quite rationally that the softness and bouquet must be some unlikely twist of fate, a suspicion not entirely swept away until the second purchase."
-- Filos Nerrem, addressing a table of fellow gourmands

"Come to schedule another delivery, ma'am? It's always a pleasure. Will it be more of the same?"
-- Juna Maroshe

Located towards the east end of Daydreamer's Row, Juna's Breadbasket is a small bakery and eatery owned by Juna Maroshe and her husband Arkos. Plump, middle-aged Nexus natives, Juna and Arkos are a classic Nexus success story, rising from the lower classes to a place of success and prestige among the well-to-do of Nexus. The Maroshe family themselves are comfortable if not wealthy (they live in a better-class section of Cinnabar, well clear of flooding), and the quality of their bread has made them a staple on the tables of Bastion and other high-class neighborhoods.

The success of Juna's Breadbasket is deceptively simple: bread (and a few other staple foods, like vegetable soup) made to simple recipes but exquisitely well. Those who look for particularly exotic ingredients or novel culinary experiments will not find them there, but they will find a wide variety of excellent bread at relatively affordable prices. The high quality of the Breadbasket's bread and soup have made it a popular lunch location for the merchants of Nexus, and the reasonable prices have given it a broad appeal to all but the poorest in Nexus. It may be possible to get a finer loaf of bread in Nexus, but it is effectively impossible to get a finer bread supply for a household at non-usurious prices. Thus, Juna's Breadbasket has become the regular bread supplier to many households in Baston and Sentinel's Hill, aided in no small part by the loyalty of a few very trend-setting customers -- not least among them the inexplicably-popular Bastion socialite Delos Ferrano. Business among the richest parts of Nexus have soared in the last ten years, thanks to positive word of mouth and consistently exceptional products and service.

There has been some speculation on the nature of the Maroshes' success, but none can pinpoint how precisely the humbly-born Nexus family managed to do it, aside from astounding baking skill and hard work. Juna and Arkos have been in business for nearly forty years, working their way from a bread-stall in Nighthammer to the relative comfort of a fine Nexus storefront. The Maroshes are aging but are still able to keep up with their business, especially with the ample aid of their son Dalvis, a clever young man in his early 20s responsible for most of the bakery's deliveries. (The Maroshes have two other children in Nexus; their older son, Arkos the Younger, has a family of his own and is a chef and sommelier at the prestigious River's Edge Restaurant in Cinnabar, and their teenage daughter Maryam is studying under the well-regarded Cinnabar thaumaturge Black Lark's Song.) However they have managed to do it, the Maroshes have established Juna's Breadbasket as a thriving fixture of the Nexus bread market.

Rumors

• Long-term customers of Juna's Breadbasket still remember Sarria, the Maroshes' eldest daughter, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances nearly twenty years ago. Juna and Arkos rarely speak of her, and some have speculated that someone or something may have bought their silence about their daughter's fate.
• The Maroshes are relatively well known as quiet proponents of the Hundred Gods Heresy, and suspicious followers of the Immaculate Philosophy speculate that their success was the result of an unwholesome pact with a local spirit court.

Secret

• While the success of Juna's Breadbasket is not supernatural in origin, recent events have had some supernatural roots -- Sarria Maroshe, Juna and Arkos's long-missing daughter, actually Exalted as a Chosen of Serenity nineteen years ago. She has yet to return to Nexus, fearing for her family's safety if she becomes revealed as Anathema, but she has used her influence over the Loom of Fate to aid her family and their business in small ways.