The traditional duties of a wife in the City of Shuttered Windows are onerous indeed. Among these is the requirement to memorize the taboos set forth by the Matriarch and ensure that their households are in compliance with them. The larger a household a woman maintains the more difficult this becomes, which is perhaps part of the reason why the Doge has two wives.
As a result, some eligible women, when told that their parents seek to wed them to a rich man, blanch at thoughts of their harried future and seek out the Houses of Tenzerlin and Ghosta in order to buy seawig. This strange species of seaweed, when placed upon a human head, slowly grafts itself into the scalp so that one’s hair is replaced with a thick mane of fine green seaweed that grows back even if shaved off.
Men wisely avoid marrying seawigged women for anyone who does so is found the morning after drowned in their own marriage bed. Attempts to avoid this fate have consistently failed as it seems that the lungs of these men unfailingly fill with seawater as the first night of their marriage wears on.
At first attempts were made punish seawigged women for attempting to shirk their attempted duties but soon tales began to spread of spurned suitors forcing seawigs on innocent maidens. And so the trade in seawigs lives on in the quiet corners of Shuttered salons and the freshest seawig is avidly sought after. This is because, while all seawigs constantly drip seawater, all but the freshest of seawigs have an unpleasant odor that is difficult to mask.
Hooks
- Just what are these taboos? Is there any way to avoid them?
- Just what is seawig really? A parasite? A symbiote? Does it have any other interesting properties?
- Why do the men who marry seawigged women drown in their own beds?
- Some say that by donning a seawig a woman marries herself to the the jealous sea and that one day the sea will come to claim them. Is this true?
- Who are some seawigged women? Who has an especially pungent wig?
- Is there any way to remove a seawig?
- Any good tragedies involving seawig? Perhaps a man assassinated by being married to woman who he didn’t know bore a seawig or a woman being kept from marrying her lover by having a seawig forced upon her?