Thin Desert Travellers (2d8)

The unhappy fate of a lone pilgrim

Only the very foolish or very competent try to cross the Thin Desert alone. There are many things that would prey on the lone pilgrim, courier, graverobber. Better to wait for a caravan to join. Below a random table of travellers looking for travel companions. Some could be of use as hired help or as new pcs Some might rob you in your sleep. A majority might at the very least be slower than you when fleeing the spellridden pack of jackals pursuing your caravan.

 

 2d8 travellers

From Geschichte des Kostüms (1905).

2 Ancient urchin. Ever-Younger, disgraced viceroy of Lim. Spends his second youth as pickpocket and rumourmonger.
3 One-armed terracotta deserter, looking for blue clay to repair its cracked body.
4 Hopeful suitor with entourage, coffers filled with silk spiders busily weaving complicated apparel
5 Theatre troupe touring with new play. Beautiful animal masks, inane script. The actors know this, and wants a new play.
6 Fugitive from the Sleeping City. Has slept for centuries, now insomniac afraid of dreaming forth new horrors.
7 Jurist specializing in natural law. On the run after accidentally ruining a simple contract of dormancy with minor volcano.
8 Would-be settlers leaving dustbowled homestead
9 Landscape painter, with letters of recommendation to several prominent elementals
10 Sturgeonites, with carefully covered gills and webbed hands, moving a caviar nursery hidden among barrels of cider.
11 Pythagorean tutor. Belongs to sect practicing forbidden arithmetics. With complicated abacus, sack of chickpeas, two yawning pupils.
12 Imperial courier. The report she is carrying would bruise the fragile ego of the emperor, and spell her death. Splendid but impractical clothes. Sylph-in-a-bottle for one-way trip to Phobos.
13 Writer of travelogues, looking for exotic vistas and customs. Sack full of manuscripts, and a readership waiting for new book.
14 Connoisseur of drugs from the Microlevant-by-the-Thoth. Oscillates between obtrusive mania and oneiric reveries. Carries a traveller’s pharmacy with an impressive variety of stimulantia.
15 Astrologist, brooding over the movement of heavenly bodies, giving unasked-for interpretations of dreams and omens.
16 Retired mercenary, on her way to the Cutting Gardens to plant her scimitars for good. Too old, she says, for this shit.