Sarah, the Ferry Lady
A well-known old woman in rags, Sarah operates a small ferry in the Galbinus Riverwalk district. Mostly, she makes her living shuttling passengers and occasionally small amounts of cargo back and forth on the river. While many of her rivals are companies with several ferries and dozens of employees, Sarah only has herself and her boat. It is in this boat that she resides or rests out of the sun or rain when she is without a customer. She doesn't speak much, and stays beneath her hood as often as possible due to a skin condition that makes her sensitive to sunburns. Despite fierce competition, rumors of disease, and even outright attacks from the companies' employees, Sarah always seems to survive and always seems to be available to work.
Residents of the Riverwalk claim that she is a quiet, but sweet old woman and chide the owners of the ferry companies for harassing her. Those who do threaten her usually end up injured or missing, although residents nearby state that they have never seen her move away from her boat- even her food and supplies are delivered directly to her. Some rumors state that she is an old monk who has turned away from the monastery, others say that the ghost of her deceased husband protects her from harm.
Sarah, originally named Sirahst, is a green hag who has found that disguising herself as an old ferrywoman lets her stay near her preferred habitat without risking too much exposure. Usually, she prefers to kidnap and eat visitors to the city, or those too poor to be missed from the Riverwalk area, usually drowning them into unconsciousness before slitting their throats. In the past year, however, the ferry companies have had an eye on the small amount of business that she brings in and have attempted to buy her out. When that failed, they started threatening her, and the threats have recently progressed to actual attacks. These attacks failed, obviously, and Sarah devoured the attackers to do away with the evidence. Since these attacks are illegal, the companies have yet to report the disappearance of their employees to the proper authorities and have only just now started to question whether Sarah is who she claims to be.
Adventure Ideas
- The wife of a company-man or one of the companies hires the heroes to investigate what happened to the company-man sent to intimidate Sarah into selling out. The company is not likely to tell the truth about the employee's mission, but his wife might. During the investigation, they will be placed in the dilemma of assisting "the poor old ferrywoman" or completing the mission from the Company. Sarah is not likely to reveal herself unless she is confident she can defeat an attacker and prevent her true nature from being spread across town.
Designer's Notes & Resources
I wanted to flesh out Praxus with more characters to make it a more rich and fulfilling environment. When designing the Riverwalk District, I tried to keep in mind the concepts that spawned The Flannish Cities and infuse them in the descriptions and details. An old ferrywoman being driven out of business by a large company fits in perfectly, but doesn't add much as to a fantasy RPG. When Urbis was being based on 3.5, I used a Green Hag, because it seemed fitting and it adds a twist to the "sweet, innocent ferry-woman" story. I'm unfamiliar with 4E, so I don't know if this creature still works here.
As I am trying to move Urbis away to a more system-less description, "green hag" is probably too D&D-centric. However, "hags" themselves have lots of associations in Faerie lore, and making them some kind of faerie would probably be appropriate. I'll have to think about this…
The Spambot Death Wall
Arcana Wiki - Distilling the Real World for Gaming
Urbis - A World of Cities - an urban fantasy setting of industrial magic
LiveJournal
Yeah, definitely. That text was written when I we were on Eruvian, but I was having issues posting characters. I'm not even sure if they exist in the same way in 4E anyway. She can easily be replaced with any humanoid monster or just a monstrous human.
I think making hags a race of Faerie would be the best fit. I'll need to research their appearance in various myths, legends, and folklore so that I can come up with something appropriate for Urbis.
I don't know how much time I will have this month - my thesis defense is coming up on the 27th - but I should be able to find something useful after that.
But if you find any good references on hags, please feel free to share them here…
The Spambot Death Wall
Arcana Wiki - Distilling the Real World for Gaming
Urbis - A World of Cities - an urban fantasy setting of industrial magic
LiveJournal
I'll look, but the rest of the summer is pretty busy for me also, so we may just put it off until later. :) We're building a huge structure for Burning Man, I have several huge shows at work, and all the "normal" busy/crazy stuff that goes on. I'll start with hags though. I like the idea of getting back to the lore that inspired the original D&D.