William Brandes Stoddard
patreon
Ten NPC Adventuring Parties
🕑 Added 2024-09-05 04:12:59 +0000 UTCI’ve done a few posts now that are collections of NPCs you can drop into your campaign. I usually do sets of twenty at a time, but since these are going to have more description for each item, and both Patreon and Wordpress do awful violence to tables, I’m doing ten adventuring parties at a time and we’ll see how long of a series this becomes.
Each adventuring party gets a name (a good name is everything, because your PCs will use it a lot), the number of members, one leader’s name, and a general theme. I’m not getting into the names of individual party members, because no matter how much I love making up names, that’s daunting. Also, a lot of the party names could be some other kind of group or faction, so feel free to steal the names for those kinds of things instead.
The excellent first season of Dungeon Meshi is a significant inspiration for this post. I love the show’s sense of adventurer culture and the personal relationships and histories that the main characters have with other adventurers.
Keselyan’s Heralds
This group of five adventurers, now led by Avestir the Younger, were once a team of eight led by Keselyan Lond. They worked as messengers and go-betweens on the most dangerous routes, especially in war zones. Keselyan and two others died when a contact betrayed them, so the Heralds kept his name and swore vengeance. They’re most likely to encounter the PCs if the PCs have been hired to protect someone associated with their revenge—they have no interest in harming bystanders, but they can’t be bought off or scared away.
The Crows of Prosper’s Valley
The Crows are always a team of four, and always include at least one dwarven member. Their roster has changed many times—more from members making their fortune and seeking a life of comfort than to calamity. They made their home in Prosper’s Valley several years ago, where they can readily explore the peculiar ruins found at the bottom of a played-out mine nearby. Fiyara Sestino, an elf paladin of mixed heritage, is their current leader. The team takes their name from an insult that they thought sounded interesting.
The Koratlikon
This team of five are the last remnants of a centuries-old military order, struggling to keep their tradition alive but finding few interested in committing their lives, fortunes, and honor to this cause and their strict rules. Knight-Commander Arlana is still young and has not given up hope of revitalizing her order. Their sworn mission is to protect their island home from external enemies, especially the chaos wrought by an artifact called the Imperial Lancarian Jewel. The five members have a range of talents, rather than being exclusively fighters.
Fortune’s Favored Four
I used this group in my post-Dragon Heist campaign. Led by the tiefling swashbuckler Fortune Arrik, the other members are Sir Galvan, the gnome mage Mizel, and Loros of Tymora. The four of them work for Lord Dagault Neverember, and mostly don’t realize what a crook he has become. (They must have watched An Apologia for Dagault, marketed for some reason under the title Honor Among Thieves.) Anyway, the PCs ran into them deep within Castle Never and had to rescue each of them individually from various horrible things. In return, Fortune and his buddies waited an extra 12 hours or so before reporting the PCs to their boss. He, of course, wanted the PCs dead for stealing his half-million gold in the course of Dragon Heist.
Joyan’s Taverners
These eight friends were once young men and women with a profound love of ale and bad decisions, some of which led them into adventure, danger, or romance. Now they get together just twice a year to explore ruins and poke about for treasure. Most of them have married other members of the group and have children. Joyan is the only one who remains single, and he’s dedicated to keeping his friends from his youth meeting up and delving into danger. For now, he has the charisma to bring most of them back each time without browbeating, but he can see the end on the horizon. The PCs most likely encounter them either planning their next venture, or in the midst of something comically disastrous.
The Denavith Pass Patrol
A military outfit of two hundred soldiers got isolated in Denavith Pass when enemy forces crossed the mountain range in a daring maneuver. The enemy wants nothing more than to clear Denavith Pass so that they can continue their invasion. The Denavith Pass Patrol has refused repeated offers of safe-conduct back to their own people, even as their numbers have dwindled to two dozen in repeated clashes. First Officer Haziron has shifted their strategy to something more like adventuring life, engaging with monsters and wildlife to lure them into attacking enemy forces.
The Gravesworn of Solai
This grim band of adventurers dedicate themselves to hunting vampires and other predatory undead. Beyond this, their name comes from their shared oath on the grave of their mentor, Leilat Solai, who was also the first vampire they defeated. Leilat’s daughter Alayne now leads the Gravesworn with energy and ruthlessness. The six members etch the words of their oath into their shields or embroider it on the edges of their cloaks.
The House of Vervain
(This name is lifted from a long-ago Song of Ice and Fire campaign.) These six adventurers, which include a dwarf, a human, two halflings, an orc, and a bariaur, present themselves as a noble family, as a result of a grant of lands and titles by a grateful monarch. They don’t hesitate to throw their weight around when dealing with nobles who dismiss them as new money and up-jumped commoners, but they still have some rough edges in their manners that suggest their origins. Rallow Vervain is the technical head of the House, by group vote. They operate out of a manor house on the Shalingford estate.
The Honorable Guild of Delving-Smiths
The five adventurers in this party are supported by a full guild infrastructure. The guild handles their logistical needs and extracts maximum profit from whatever they discover. Trained as builders and engineers, they solve problems in unorthodox ways using tools and construction supplies that they carry in Bags of Holding and Portable Holes. Your PCs most likely encounter their handiwork before encountering them, whether that means a repaired bridge or an exploded wall. The guild leader is Maxine Thunast, while the expeditionary captain is Chali Daynor.
The Painted Band
These three adventurers make a point of wearing distinctive and elaborate war paint when on a mission, usually with fiendish themes. They have put in the practice so that the look is impressive rather than laughable. With only three members, they have learned to rely on each other completely. Their leader is Timmon Welbury.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoy this mixed cast of weirdos. Let me know what you think and what kinds of additional details would help this be useful to you in session planning or at the table. There will be at least one more post of adventuring parties, eventually.
