List of Slayers Characters - Minor Characters - Ashford

Ashford

Ashford (アシュフォード, Ashufōdo?) is a powerfully built man with sandy-grey hair, as well as a cowboy mustache and short beard. He has blue-grey eyes. He wears blue jeans with a brown leather belt, which has a simple bronze square buckle. He also wears a light brown leather scabbard for his two butcher knives which he later uses to slay the lake dragon. He wears black cowboy boots with silver star spurs. He wears a white shirt with a neatly starched collar and sleeves that go all the way to the elbows and end in cuffs. He wears a red ascot around his neck, and wears what appears to be a cowboy hat with black trim, although above the black trim the stereotypical chef hat prevails instead.

The party run into Ashford when they order Dragon Cuisine at a restaurant that advertised that as one of the meals. Unfortunately, Ashford was not present and the cooking staff tried to fool their customers with some fresh orc and whale meat in the corner of the icehouse. Everyone (except Gourry) realized that this was not the meal that they had ordered, and Lina was understandably angry about this. After the deception was uncovered, Ashford took responsibility for his employees' mistakes, and set out to catch a real lake dragon so they could finally have dragon cuisine. Ashford is a very poor sailor and is generally incompetent in that area. After several failed attempts, they camped for the night. Amelia went to go give Ashford his dinner, and asked him if there was another reason he was trying so hard to get that Dragon Cuisine. Persuaded by Amelia, he begins to tell his story.

Years ago, Ashford had a granddaughter. His granddaughter had a weak constitution, and was sick almost all the time. As she became weaker, she wished that she could taste dragon cuisine, just once. So Ashford set out to fulfill his granddaughter's wish. After a great deal of searching, he finally found a teacher. After a time he mastered the technique, but by the time he made it back home his granddaughter had died. And his granddaughter looked just like Amelia. Amelia, in tears, went back of the rest of the group to tell them what she had learned, but she was met with a surprising amount of indifference. Lina had been told she looked just like his dead daughter, and Gourry looked like his dead adopted son-in-law. Worst of all, Zelgadis looked like his beautiful, gentle, delicate wife. They all decide he's just going senile or just was crazy from the beginning. However, when Xellos comes back to return the locket Ashford had dropped during the slaying of the lake dragon, it pops open to reveal that Ashford was telling the truth- each member of the group closely resembled family members in the picture contained. This seems to suggest that this is not the only lifetime that the party has spent together.