Well, it looks like your comments about an alchemist made their way into my subconscious, because these past few days a cool little concept has evolved in my head.
A chubby female goblin has been working in the kitchen of a small tavern in the Puddles section of Absolom for who knows how long, and her skill with turning the most unpleasant ingredients available into a delectable meal has made the tavern far more popular than anything in that section ought to be. When it blew up in a large explosion, people mused that such was the way in the Puddles; it must've been a competitor or an escalated bar brawl gone bad.
But it was, in fact, a deliberate accident by the deceptively cunning goblin, meant to destabilize the local crime syndicate that had been using the tavern as a front for increasingly vile practices, including slave trafficking. The goblin, who would never admit to learning most of her cooking and alchemical craft from her time as a hag's servant, loathed slavery and with this move had the local authorities move in to apprehend the evildoers.
Meanwhile she had an excuse to join an adventuring party, both to earn her keep after losing her job (not many innkeepers are willing to let a goblin from the Puddles into their kitchen), and to continue fighting against slavers...