William Brandes Stoddard
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Twenty Strange but Useful People to Meet in the Dungeon
🕑 Added 2025-01-30 01:56:57 +0000 UTCIf you need some weirdos for your PCs to meet while exploring the dungeon, if you need a change of pace between two fights or just think a minor social encounter sounds like the thing, this table is for you! (The three other tables linked below could also serve, depending on your situation. Never overlook the potential of a bounty hunter tracking down a PC at the worst possible time, after all!
If the dungeon complex was sealed off from the world for centuries before the PCs arrived, you may have a more complicated job explaining what the NPC is doing here for some of these entries. Pick a different one or have them enter after the PCs and follow a different path or enter the area from the direction the PCs came.
Bounty Hunters | Crewmates | Scholars | Dungeon-dwellers
Dungeon-Dwellers
1. Estaxi the Whisperer: a goblin cultist who can eat a wide variety of non-food items. She knows her way around this floor of the dungeon and where the nastiest traps are. In exchange for fifty feet of rope or a flask of lantern oil, she’ll share details.
2. Aaeppo: previously a human mage named Abel, now a stable green slime due to an idiosyncratic interaction between the slime and Abel’s Helm of Telepathy. Aaeppo can speak only with great difficulty, but has Telepathy within 10 feet.
3. The Winking Statue: this Large statue at the center of a fountain was built with a tiny Mirror of Life Trapping in one eye, which it currently keeps closed. A soul trapped in the mirror inhabits the statue and can speak through it. It only opens its winking eye if someone agrees to take its place—or angers it excessively.
4. Etchling, the Mimir: this silver-etched goat skull is a well of knowledge about a wide range of topics, most of them interesting or amusing to the characters but only rarely applicable to this dungeon. It was carried here by an adventurer who has since met a gruesome end, so it hasn’t had a chance to learn much about this place yet. You can trust this skull.
5. Kerges the Runemarked: this orc mage is down here looking for a particular inscription on the dungeon wall that he can turn into a tattoo. Kerges is covered in tattoos in a wide variety of scripts and languages, and could be persuaded to cast a helpful spell or two.
6. The Widow of the Silver Shroud: this ghost was once a halfling woman named Orlana. She came here seeking her husband Matthias, but she was killed by a bite from a strange silver spider. Her mission incomplete, she repeats her exploration, now wound around with silver web-strands that she doesn’t notice. She reacts to the PCs, but doesn’t remember them from encounter to encounter.
7. Thenarik the Dragon’s Child: this gnome scout has been infected with the dragon-sickness—an all-encompassing desire for gold—but without violent urges unless the money he has already amassed is threatened. A skilled sneak and scrounger, he is unusually likely to have just what the PCs need… in exchange for more money than they’d prefer to pay.
8. Musiphol the Resolver: this human knight was told to meet here to fight an honor duel. Musiphol is stupendously gullible and trusting (his opponent was trying to get rid of him, obviously), but also a warrior of great skill and honest in his dealings.
9. Yizeriovh the Occulted: this arcanaloth got her leg caught in a trap set for her in the Ethereal Plane. She can now manifest only as an ethereal head and upper body. With no ability to harm the PCs in her current state, she wants someone to free her, and if she is treated reasonably, she honors her bargains. Her manner is refined.
10. Brindle the Mourner: this tabaxi bard thinks of dungeons as places where many have died unmourned and been forgotten. She knows the names of half a dozen people who are said to have died somewhere in this dungeon and valuables they might have been carrying.
11. The Vermilion Codex: this telepathic tome holds papyrus pages in an advanced state of wear and uses its telepathy to guide anyone touching it to the useful lore contained on its pages. After it reveals something that the reader agrees is useful, it collects a toll in the reader’s choice of blood (expending Hit Dice, which rejuvenates its pages) or secret knowledge (which appears on its pages and can be learned by others).
12. Blatherskite the Homunculus: this homunculus emerges from a crevice in the wall that seems almost too small to hold it. The wizard who created it, Danavoycha, has been gone for a long time, but must still be alive in some sense, or else Blatherskite would be dead. Probably. Presumably? Blatherskite is polite to the point of tediousness, but has every desire to be helpful.
13. The Laughing Glass: behind this pane of black glass (a one-way mirror) is the nothic Canev. It begs and pleads for someone to stay and talk with it (so that it can use its Weird Insight on them), and is willing to divulge all manner of other secrets if it thinks creatures will linger. Its characteristic giggle is unsettling.
14. Granivort the Generous: an empty cage hangs from the ceiling, on a track that leads to a strange little door at the top of the wall. When a creature approaches, a voice booms out, “Granivort the Generous awaits you!” Granivort is a stone giant who trades scrolls and prophecies for gold and gems, delivering them all through this cage. He has little desire to meet surface-dwellers face-to-face, as he does not believe they are real in the same way he is.
15. Bad Jack: this scarecrow has only a pumpkin head, having survived (in a manner of speaking) separation from the rest of its body. It is surly and frequently insulting, but for the promise of reattaching even a part of its body (now a vine blight elsewhere in the dungeon), it remembers its manners and shines with a light that keeps avians and Undead far away, permitting a safe Short Rest.
16. Ilkavarn XVIII: this azer occupies a forge in the dungeon, working tirelessly to reforge scrap metal into useful armor, shields, weapons, or vehicles. Ilkavarn’s only companion is Ssarth, the fire snake that sustains the forge. Ilkavarn offers to sell their creations or mend damaged goods for anyone nearby, even while combat rages around them.
17. Naziha the Splendid: this dao is using Stone Shape to dig through a stone wall, seeking two genasi companions that she hurled into the wall in a fit of pique. If offered gems, ore, or valuable items of metal (such as magic items), she could be persuaded to use some of her other spells (Gaseous Form, Move Earth, Passwall) to let the PCs reach hidden or blocked-off parts of the dungeon. Naziha otherwise regards the PCs and their mission beneath her interest.
18. 2K6 the Keeper: this modron monodrone moves around the dungeon, disregarded or abused by most of its denizens and small enough to fit into passageways that others could not. Its aim is to maintain a census of all the monsters on this floor of the dungeon. 2K6 is happy to give the characters what information it has, but it notes that there are parts of the dungeon it can’t gather data about.
19. Lenefora of the Brood of Aurimos: this dragonborn noble was here to negotiate with whatever the PCs just killed for information on a gold dragon egg that is rumored to be somewhere in this dungeon. Lenefora is haughty and incensed at this setback in her mission, but she is also a detail-oriented planner and (if mollified) could tell the PCs a great deal about how to avoid combat in this dungeon.
20. Sangasu the Damned: this revenant was once a male earth genasi. Now he is imprisoned in a cage that is chest-deep in a pit of acid: his Regeneration keeps him alive (so to speak), so that he can’t reform in a safer place. His target is the same as whoever the PCs most care about defeating, in this dungeon or elsewhere, and he shares some information before departing to pursue that target if he is freed.
I hope this collection of unusual social encounters sparks ideas for you, and if you were to use one of these in a campaign, I hope you’d let me know about it in the comments. Several of these are also good replacement PCs if someone dies unexpectedly and can’t be raised—particularly Estaxi, Kerges, Thenarik, Musiphol, Brindle, Blatherskite, 2K6, Lenefora, and Sangasu. Aaeppo, too, if you can play him as a Plasmid or you can get back to human form somehow.
Also, thanks for your patience with the scarcity of Patreon posts lately. I’m hoping that my schedule will be a little less intense in February, once the first Citadel 3-day is done!
Comments
William Brandes Stoddard
I'm so glad that you like them!
Geoffrey Fortier
I love these. So many weird and wonderful ideas which could kick off their own full-fledged adventures!
