The Sheltered Hand: Mama Nguyen
Mama Nguyen [L5] Variant Human Warlock[edit]
"Th' diff'r'nce 'tween gods an' dev'ls? P'rspective"[edit]
Appearance[edit]
Actual
People: Acalani | Gender: Female | Ht: 5' 3" | Wt: 90 lb | Age: 40 | Hair: Black | Skin: Fair to Tan | Eyes: Green | Markings: None
Apparent
People: Acalani | Gender: Female | Ht: 5' 3" | Wt: 90 lb | Age: 75+ | Hair: White | Skin: Weathered and deeply lined | Eyes: Amber | Markings: Facial "Tattoo"
Background: Guild Merchant[edit]
Caravanserai: Where the Merchant Guild travels, you can claim passage for yourself and your companions, be it in a caravan or on a river barge or a seafaring vessel. Because this is a favor, you have no say in available schedules and the like and you and those with you are expected to pitch in along the way.
Personality Trait: I always want to know how people think and what makes them tick.
Ideal: I am loyal to friends and companions more than to any dogma or principle.
Bond: I once cheated the exact wrong person in a trade and must work to ensure this individual never crosses paths with me or those I care about.
Flaw: When trading with someone in a position of power or influence, I can't resist trying to get the better of them . . . honestly or otherwwise.
Deities Observed: In her youth, Nguyen paid proper worship and service to Asamit, but since making Pact with her Patron, her observences are more perfunctory and for the benefit of those who expect such from her than any lingering devotion. She knows now that there are beings older than the gods . . . beings who don't owe their power or origins to the fancies of superstitious mortals, beings who exist on their own outside of reality as the mortal realm understands it.
Nevertheless Nguyen maintains a friendly relationship with Torosur, though her bond with the Changing God was never one of service per se. The traveller within her related to them, and the acquisition of her own powers of maleability after making te Pact only drew her closer to the capricious and maleable deity.
The other Gods she finds pretentious or passe - old playthings of children grown - but she nevertheless avoids overt disrespect of any of them.
Attributes[edit]
STR: 8 [-1] DEX: 15 [+2] CON: 10 [+0] INT: 12 [+1] *WIS: 13 [+1] *CHA: 17 [+3]
Proficiency Bonus: +3 | Saves: Charisma [+6] Wisdom [+5] | Initiative +3
Skills/Languages/Feats[edit]
Deception [+6] | Insight [+4] | Intimidation [+6] | Perception [+5] (Passive 15) | Persuasion [+6] | Stealth [+5]
Common | Sindarean | Taratan | Yrycish
Artificer Initiate | Eldritch Adept x2
Combat[edit]
Proficient Lt Armor | Proficient: Simple Weapons
AC: 15 | HP: 28 | +2 ranged/finesse attacks | [+7] melee attacks [+4 dmg]
Magic/Warlock Features[edit]
Spell DC 14 | Spell Att +6 | Spell Slots 2 [L3]
Spells Known: Eldritch Blast [C] | Light [C] | Mage Hand [C] | Prestidigitation [C] | Arms of Hadar [1] | Feather Fall [1] | Find Familiar [1/ritual] | Darkness [2] | Mirror Image [2] | Misty Step [2] | Spider Climb [2] | Gaseous Form [3]
Incantations: Armor of Shadows | Devil Sight | Mask of Many Faces | Voice of the Chain Master | Gift of the Depths
Features: Great Old One Patron | Pact of the Chain | Awakened Mind | Familiar [Imp: usually in Raven form]: "Caw"
Patron: Nguyen made her pact with a Great Old One that she encountered on the plains of An'la. Though it is forever seared into her mind, Nguyen has never been able to speak her patron's alien name aloud. In the privacy of her own mind, she refers to it as the All Seeing Dark. It speaks to her in images and feelings more than words, but she remembers clearly the one time it did speak to her in words, ordering her never to stand athwart the child of its child in the mortal realm.
Unhelpfully, it had not named this mystery grandchild of the void, but the well of pride she had felt as it thought of its scion matched only one memory in her life. The same feeling had flowed into her from her patron the day she had stumbled into a forbidden sanctum of Tenga and looked on the dark visage of a small teraphim cast in his likeness.
Gear/Magic Items/Wealth[edit]
Steel Spear +1 to hit/damage
Daggers [3]
Merchant's Pack
- Sealing wax [Merchant Guild's Signet]
- Guild letter of Introduction and Rank
- Flint and tinder
- Ink/Quills
- Parchment
- Mess Kit
- Rations
- Waterskin
- Bedroll
50' Silk rope
Gauntlets of Ogre Power (uncommon)
Healing Potion [2] 2d4+2 (common) [0]
85gp
Backstory[edit]
Nguyen is a woman of middle age, but she goes about in the guise of a frail old lady more often than any other face she might wear. Hailing from Acalon, the 'palm' of the Sheltered Hand, she spent much of her formative years as a journeywoman of the Merchant's Guild, a member in good standing, and a mistress of languages.
At least, that was her life until her caravan camped beneath the Eldar Tree on the plains of An'la on a trade mission to the Anlat. She learned later from the nomads of the plains that no such tree was known in their land, but that day it had been real; and that night only she, of the entire caravan, had seen the tree limned in silver under a moonless sky. Its branches reached and grasped like tentacles, and a thousand eyes blinked along the trunk and another thousand on every twig and branch.
Its unspeakable name was seared into the front of her brain like the unseen glyph in a golem's brow that bound it to service and could undo it if marred or removed.
Nguyen served.
Some days as Lady Nguyen. Some - few - in her natural form of Journeyman Nguyen. Some days she played the faceless urchin child. Some days a bearded artisan or guard. Some days she was an exotic Sindanre or a stout and taciturn Tarat or a grizzled Yryc.
But most days she wore the weathered ancient face of Mama Nguyen, wandering elder and so called wise woman of the Sheltered Hand.
