Meretha the Grain-Tender

Meretha was born in the lowlands of Medalia, a fertile region renowned for grain production but often devastated by speculative hoarding and famine pricing during lean seasons. The daughter of a barley broker and a mill-worker, Meretha witnessed firsthand how small manipulations in supply could starve entire villages while enriching the few. When a severe drought struck and grain prices soared, Meretha defied her guild’s mandate to hold back stock for higher value. Instead, she opened her granaries to the people, selling at honest cost, and distributing to those who could not pay in coin. She personally broke the locks on warehouses where merchants had hidden grain for later profit — acts considered both civil defiance and divine duty. Her most famous words, spoken before a tribunal of guild leaders who demanded she explain her actions, became canon within the Church of Minos: “The scale that starves a child is already broken. I do not weigh by greed. I weigh by hunger.” Though fined, exiled, and publicly shamed, Meretha’s actions sparked a citizen uprising that led to the formation of the Civic Market Charter, which bound local sellers to fair seasonal pricing under temple oversight. She died delivering grain by cart to a famine-struck hill village during a winter freeze, wrapped in her own cloak and buried with her grain-scoop.

Meretha is depicted as a stocky woman in a flour-dusted cloak, holding a bushel in one hand and a scale hanging from her belt. Her sigil is a grain-stalk crossing a set of balanced scales, representing sustenance weighed justly.