Favorite NPCs

[demiurge1138]

DMs have favorite NPCs. Players have favorite NPCs. Let's hear about 'em.

The favorite NPC of my Age of Worms group completely took me by surprise. This is because he's a zombie. Chumley the zombie bugbear, specifically, mindless servitor of the necromancer Filge, who the party ended up allying with instead of killing. Chumley had no personality, and only one line (his own name, muttered constantly or bellowed as a battlecry), but they loved him to death. Very sorry to see him go when Filge broke off his cooperation with the party. Filge, of course, was not missed.

Demiurge out.

 

[genshou]

Kyra ban Hightower. She was a nobleman's daughter with remarkable physical attributes (in all senses of the word, I s'pose), who left her boring life to become a thief. The first time the PCs met her, she was trying to lift some coin from them. Next time they saw her on the other side of the kingdom, she was travelling with a tribe of barbarian warriors. They met her again when war broke out in the kingdom, and to their surprise, she was one of the soldiers who signed up in the ranks.

The players enjoyed Kyra's stubborn, willful, and very energetic personality, and somehow her desire to always find a bigger and better sword amused them, even though as adventurers they were doing exactly the same thing to a greater extent.

 

[InVinoVeritas]

A couple of NPCs from my time in Living Greyhawk were popular (and fun for me, too):

Huffin' Guffin, proprietor of Huffin' Guffin's Muffins, was a vendor in a market square who, yes, sold muffins. Really good, tasty muffins. No, nothing special or magical or anything. However, it was one of the first, if not the first, hook that didn't rely on "You're all in this tavern when..." Instead, it was early in the morning, everyone gathered around this muffin stand because the PCs individually heard that getting these muffins at dawn, while they're hot, was great. Huffin' Guffin was Keoland's first recurring NPC.

My favorite, though, was Xapatl. A great evil from the Amedio jungle was brought to Gradsul, a major city. Xapatl, a high priest of the Olman people, learned about the great evil and did everything he could to help the PCs remove the great evil. However, Xapatl was himself a terribly evil priest of a death god. He would plead with the PCs, help them, give them information, and hope they were successful--but all the while he left a trail of animated corpses and summoned demons in his wake. A lot of PCs said they'd rather work with him, anyway, instead of the authorities.

Another NPC I remember from years and years ago was Joachim. The PCs arrived in this major city, and Joachim was the kindly innkeeper of the place they stayed while in town. However, the BBEG figured out they were staying at this inn, and sent all sorts of terrible plagues to harrow the PCs. The walls would bleed, demons would appear, things would burst into flames... and poor Joachim would run around, trying to clean everything up, humbly apologizing to the PCs and assuring them that this sort of thing didn't normally happen at the inn. The PCs took extra special care of Joachim and gave him a share of their loot just for putting up with everything.

 

[Shades of Green]

Telina and Naja. Telina is a heavy-bodied (and quite plump, too) female half-orc formerly working in the iron-mines of south-eastern Renya for her living; she is also a member of the not-so-legal (the Argexan Empire doesn't really like armed natives and colonials in its colonies) miner's town militia, and quite a motherly person (unless she loses her nerve, which is rare but quite a bad thing to provoke). SDhe is naturally unfertile, which has brought an end to her short marriage in her early twenties (about a decade and a half ago). During a militia raid on a band of hobgoblin marauders (which the Imperial troops have ignored due to having other priorities than protecting Celiran villagers), she has managed to rescue a fertile Celiran egg - which the hobgoblins, then robbing a Celiran village, were intending to make an omlete off - and has decided to take the egg, and later the hatchling, under her wing. Using some of the spoils-of-war recovered in that raid, she've managed to open up a small smithy in her town with her Dwarven significant-other and work in it part-time, initially dedicating most her time to her adopted daughter, a healthy Celiran hatchling she've named Naja (pronounced Na-Ya), meaning "bird" in the local tounge. Now Naja (often called in the deminitive - sp? - of Nejala or "Little Bird") is an active, clever, over-curious, cute and (often) cutely-annoying five-years-old Celiran living alongside her adopting mother (who is now dedicating a bit more time to smithing). Nejala is fascinated by shiny things (including insects with shiny and/or bright-coloured carapaces, such as cockroaches, and Renya has some quite big cockroach species), loves playing mischief on adults and older kids, loves climbing on trees (and quite good at that) and like eating apples (and apple-pies made by their neighbour Olga). Telina is now the town's smith.

 

[Shemeska]

Probably a tie between A'kin the Friendly Fiend, Nisha, and former factol Alisohn Nilesia of the Mercykillers. Yeah, my online namesake isn't on the list, heh.

A'kin is A'kin. It took the PCs probably around 2/3 of the campaign having passed to be able to trust the guy, despite the fact that he was a yugoloth, and actually get up the nerve to ask him questions. His complex little backstory, which is still being explored a campaign later, is about as twisted and weaving as you can find.

Nisha the campaign's iconic xaositect tiefling was never intended to be anything more than a bit of humor for the first few introductory episodes of that campaign (that itself was never intended to be more than a one month one shot). Well, the players fell in love with her, she stayed on as an NPC with the party, and eventually one of the PCs fell in love with her. Oddly enough she started CN and rapidly went CG as the character developed. I have more fond memories of her probably than any other NPC, and suffice to say it did not go over well when I tried to kill her off. She didn't stay dead, mostly because the PCs were willing to eventually find her petitioner and deal with the rather unhealthy circumstances of her death (mostly complicated by where she died [quasiemental ash] and who killed her [a Baernaloth])

And the last on my list, Alisohn Nilesia. Yes, Nilesia was seen flayed alive by The Lady of Pain in my storyhour, so why is she one of my favorites? *enigmatic grin* Insanity and revenge at its best. "Justice never sleeps, why should I? Why should you?"