NPC: Ada Janko

Ada was the apprentice to Alzador in the town of Bug Tussle. She was born in Daggerdale and often visits her brother, Costa, who lives in a house in Dagger Falls. When she first left Daggerdale to go to Bug Tussle to seek to study under Alzador, she foolishly tried to cross the Dagger Hills by herself and was beset by brigands. She surely would have died were it not for the intervention of a gruff and silent dwarf who is very handy with a crossbow. The dwarf has remained her companion ever since, but has never said a word to anyone, anywhere, so far as we know.

She studied for over a year with Alzador and left his tower when her brother fell ill with the Sleeping Sickness in Eleasias, 1368.

In my current campaign, Ada was originally going to be used as a hook to get the PCs to Dagger Falls and into the Doom of Daggerdale module...but it turned out that it wasn't necessary. They were sent there by Shandar as part of the quests undertaken for him. Still, it will be a comfort to the PCs to have a few friends they knew from home in the strange town, so the details of the hook I'd planned on using were left in place...Ada's brother still came down with the sleeping sickness. The Janko house is near the burned Lathanderite temple and so could provide limited background information and a potential haven inside the town. Ada could also provide needed healing for the party if they had to scramble up due to taking a beating from the hook horror or something else equally nasty.

I got this miniature ages ago. She was made by Ral Partha. The No Name Band are a little NPC group that I toyed with using as my own party to play test areas I'd send the regular PCs through or to play on my own using randomly generated dungeons with the random dungeon generation system in the 1E DMG. Never seemed to have time for that though. They've managed to remain useful low level NPCs to have around, though. You don't want high level NPCs like Randal Morn rushing in to save the day all the time. Low level NPCs keep the focus on the heroes.