NPCs · Minor · Artistic/Performance
Lynnia HarpCrafter
A harper is a harper no matter where they are.
Appearance
Human, Female, 40ish
She is a slender, almost gaunt woman, with exceedingly long finger. Her hair is a mousy brown shot through with grey. It is very long and pulled back in a thick braid. Her face has a firm jaw. Her face has many, many laugh lines. Her eyes are tired. She has difficulty walking, so she does so with an unsteady gate and a slow pace. She can lift her
History/Background
She has been a harper for her entire life. She has never played for kings, but she has played for nobles. Her instrument is a full sized harp. She has had a problem walking for a while, but it has gotten worse over the last fwe years. One day she was travelling along, and her horse fell off the road, wrecking her cart and killing the horse. With some assistance of the local farmers, she and her harp were extracted from the ravine. Since she can't walk out with her harp and will not leave it behind, she has stayed in the village... eking a minor living there.
Special Equipment
Her Harp of course. It is of the large sitting variety, rather than a smaller travelling harp. It is quite a fine piece. While not decked in gold or jems, it is of a rich dark polished wood. Its craftsmenship borders on the near elven magical.
Roleplaying Notes
Tired. Resigned to her fate.
She can grunt and lift the harp. However, it does not go very far before she is tired.
Gaming Notes and Plotlines
This is a minor character that may or may not create a subplot.
The players may or may not become involved with this character. If the characters stay in the village for some reason, they might be struck by the quality of the playing (or if appropriately skilled, the cost of that harp). There is no inn here and travellers are scarce.
They could help her move the harp to a place with an inn.
They could help her move to a good place with lots of inns.
They could just ignore her.
A nice trick is to have the players encounter a threat that could be countered by music (sirens, musical traps, etc) in the next session or two. It might click, and they will go back to find her. They might wish that they were friendlier to her back then, as the price and efforts required will go up.
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This is good stuff. The character is believable and has a suitable amount of background without being difficult to add to an existing campaign. I can see this resigned yet diginified old lady playing her harp and sniping at the other musicians who favor lyres and other portable instruments. Great for local color as well as possibly being a great plot hook or information source.
A nice, minor character with a simple tragedy; while nothing fancy, the sub comes right to the point and makes it clear.
I like the idea behind it, every village needs an idiosyncratic aspect, the glossed over village that is born of common notions of history and cultural memory is so predicatable as to be unrealistic.
But again like many NPCs this leaves time out of the equation for the most part. What we get is a character at a single moment in life, we have few facts, but the question comes up, why chose this moment?
A few quotes, couple more notes about how interactions with her might go or her general style would make this useful sub.
An interesting character who could end up being more then she appears.