NPCs
- Evayn – Young female Siar of the unknown voice
Summary
- At the depression circling the town, Bayeo was overcome by vertigo and fell to the ground. Heaven and earth seemed to change places, and he clung to the grass, howling, as figures of Vulfen grandfathers seemed to tower above him, and a trough of Builder make spanned the semi-circle around the village under the earth, running with something. He had the sense that the thick ribbon of stars in the sky were Vulfen ancestors, walking across time – except those who had remained buried in the earth, waiting to guide the ones who came after. When he emerged from the ‘episode’, Caerdwyn insisted it was some kind of trick of the black mist or the Builders. Quick digging revealed milk-blue builder stone under the grassy depression around the town. This seemed to confirm their decision to flee the unknowables of Dun Crys.
- Fodaan knew of a traveller’s cottage some miles from the village. They reached it in the hills by late evening, unfortunately finding it stove in by a stone rolled down from the close hills. They made their place as best they could in the small hut to spend the night.
- Come the grey mist of morning, Bayeo found a ghost or a woman in white in the path leading back to the Ribbon. Head bowed, she was garbed in a close, thin, white gown, hands out to her sides, like strangers, head down, tears dripping steadily from her bowed face.
- The company woke, and addressed the woman. She seemed to notice them, though she did not raise her head. She began to speak, telling them a number of dire things:
Strangers have come among The Land.The Dragon must be slain. A lie of whispers had come between the Dragon and the Serpent.If the dragon dies, there will be fire in the earth and new life.
If the Serpent perishes, there will be ice and long rain and sundered seas.
You possess shards enough to speak to the Bodiless servant, whose body has been interdicted. You do not possess enough of the Dragon’s Egg to rebody the servant.
The Bodiless servant has sent its children to find you, but they do not have language, and their understanding is different from your own.
- When questioned about who the speaker was, it said this was the voice of and then there was an unpronounceable name that seemed to emerge from earth and sky and would surely break any mortal who attempted to pronounce it. Fodaan speculated it may have been one of Those Who Stand Apart.
- The girl who was the speaker collapsed. They nursed her back to waking and warmth, Bayeo barely saving her life with his illimitable Vulfen heat. She named herself Evayn, from a House whose name she did not know in the Bys Pynydden where many novitiates studied. In order to save her ravaged feet, and ease their own difficulties, they spent another day resting at the cottage.
- On the day following that, they set out for a small mining camp off the Ribbon. There, they found little enough help for Evayn, except boots. They did find enough supplies to continue – and a reluctance to leave a siar virgin novitiate in the hands of miners. They spent the next day and the next crossing the Pynwydden into the contested lands of its north side, south of Elderwood. After much discussion, they elected not to split their company, but to proceed as one west along the Bys Pynwydden to find the House of Evayn.
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The “Plot-Heavy” components of this Evayn’s message was a very welcome distraction from the Dun Crys game… and gave the characters and players a lot to chew on. Here it became apparent that the Mist Lord was not some ‘evil force’ seeking to undo the world, it was a symptom of a world already breaking. The message and its implications evoked memories of the Stormbringer series, when Elric had to try to remake the world (and we all know how well that turned out…).
Caerdwyn’s distrust of the ‘gods’ began here, because it truly felt like that while we were being told a ‘kind of truth’ by the divine being, it was being done manipulatively. They were a stakeholder in one of the outcomes, therefore making the messenger unreliable.
Caerdwyn hadn’t yet made up his mind about Evayn. At this point he thought she might be someone he could help, in a way that she felt like a delicate victim that somehow he could shield. At the same, he felt no romantic inclinations toward her… she felt like an abused child, and by that token he felt helpless and uncomfortable around her (note how he delegated caretaking for her).
A player observation: I just recently noticed that my characters seem to rarely like Pol’s female NPCs in any games. I think it could be me more than Pol. I think they often strike me as temptress “Eves” – “here, taste this fruit…” archetypes… whom I see as much more dangerous than any badguy with a sword (or gun). The more ‘sensual’ and physically attractive she is described, the less I am apt to trust her.
Now there are exceptions: I liked Alicia (though less her late-season gun-toting badass chick Michelle Rodriguez recast) and Beauticia from Mannheim, and I liked Felice in End-of-the-World as a brilliant rival for Alec (although in-character Alec hated her, and as we saw, almost murdered her). Also the Salience spy who’s name I cannot remember in your Drauchsflame one-shot, she was great fun. So here’s my tongue-in-cheek challenge to our GM: Come up with a female NPC I can like, ha!