Dark Sun NPC Thread

Setting
#1

So often when you’re running a campaign, your players want to talk to a random person in a tavern, or on the street, and it helps to have a handful of semi-statted NPC’s at the ready, that you can use off-hand. We’ve all made them for our campaigns, so let’s post them here to create a resource that we can all use when we need a random Dark Sun-specific NPC plucked out of thin air.

They don’t need to have stats, just enough of a description to use on the fly. And they don’t have to be super-heroic, or super-villainous, a down-on-their-luck; a starving street urchin is just as useful as a famous ex-gladiatorial star.

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#2

Old Maret

Maret is an 81 year old female half-elf woman. She has short, curled, brown hair and cyan eyes.

She is 6’1" tall, but stands a little shorter due to being stooped with old age. She has a plain, squarish face, covered in wrinkles and the lines of old age.

She has spent her life labouring in House Tyrtherni’s noble’s faro fields. She was a slave for most of her life. Following Tithian’s First Edict, she reveled in her freedom, but old as she was even then, faro was all she knew, so she returned to Tyrtherni’s fields, seeking paid employment. She is easily out of breath. She performs less labour-intense tasks now, such as sorting each harvest, and checking for vermin and yield volume and quality. She will never be an overseer, but that doesn’t bother her; she’s happy working to keep herself busy, doing what she knows; she no longer seeks more out of life.

She had a husband, but he died decades ago, and she never sought another. She is a hopeless romantic, seeing the good everywhere around her. While she has a modest apartment within the servants’ wings of the Tyrtherni estates, she likes to head into the city-state every now and then, accompanied by Loyal, her guard; rich, ostentatious settings make her uncomfortable, as do overly crowded areas, but she likes to see how the city has changed.

She venerates Ul-Athra, the Dust Kraken. In truth, she knows little about the primordial power, but she has heard whispers over the years, and her lonely life and romantic nature has formed it into an ancient hero of sorts within her head.

Str 5 (-3) Dex 7 (-2) Con 6 (-2)
Int 10 (0) Wis 14 (+2) Cha 12 (+1)

Loyal

When Maret heads into the city, she is accompanied by Loyal, her mul guard. A one-time gladiator, Loyal’s mind was largely destroyed in a gladiatorial match, and has never really recovered. He is slow and dim-witted, rarely talks beyond an instructive grunt, and is quite overweight; his days of being an effective combatant are behind him, but he is more than up to the task of accompanying Maret, who he dotes on like an old mother.

Str 19 (+4) Dex 11 (+0) Con 16 (+3)
Int 5 (-3) Wis 7 (-2) Cha 8 (-1)

#3

Jiras of Urik

Jiras, originally of Urik, is a non-descript human woman. She has long black hair, which she keeps up in a rough bun to keep out of her face, and has a thin, hawkish nose which gives the impression that she is always leering.

She was a gladiatorial slave in Urik, having been sold into slavery to pay off heavy gambling debts. Not suited to the rigours of combat, she never excelled, but was spared the fate of being canon fodder for fighters of greater renown in Urik’s arena; she was sold to a gladiatorial ludus in Tyr, and the caravan she and other slaves were being transported in was raided en route west. She became part of the raiding slave tribe for a while, but even there, she never really fit in; she didn’t have the looks for a concubine, and didn’t have the muscle to fight. Following the Rebellion in Tyr, she joined the influx to the Free City, free of the threat of a life of servitude.

Unfortunately, her fortunes did not improve. She managed to find work in odd jobs here and there, enough to make a simple life for herself, and even enough to save on top of that. But her old ways returned, and she was lured into Tyr’s gambling halls. She now owes the Crystal Spider a great deal of money, and has been forced to work poor, labour-intense jobs to repay it. She has escaped a life of forced servitude, only to find another, where her servitude is of her making.

Jiras is a dark cloud. She has no prospects, and little hope. She spends her life in toil for others, and manages to sneak away for a cheap drink to escape from it all when she can.

Str 10 (+0) Dex 12 (+1) Con 11 (+0)
Int 12 (+1) Wis 7 (-2) Cha 9 (-1)

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