Pages

Thursday, 30 January 2020

Tragic backgrounds for urchin hirelings

Adventurers are keen to help employ young people and possibly homeless drunks or prison parolees or lepers into dungeons for minimal wages. Adventurers put the high priority of helping their hirelings survive as they need to maintain reputations as good employers. So all kinds of vagrants and kids who nobody wanted as apprentices end up working for peanuts for adventurers and hang out near the adventurer noticeboards. Some only go once, they die or are crippled or made enough to get away or just chose a less deadly lifestyle. Unfortunately some of those brats you hire to help the cause of child employment have secrets and if they die in a hole or even employ you might attract trouble. And no adventurers ever wanted surprises or complications or enemies.

d10 Mysterious backgrounds for urchin hireling types

01 Escaped confinement
02 Refugee
03 Church
04 Previous Job
05 Nobility
06 Cult member
07 Lowlife
08
 Fugitive criminal
09 Nonhuman links
10 Magical


d10 Mysterious backgrounds for urchin hireling
01 Escaped from children's prison for petty crimes
02 Escaped from children's home for some industry like sailors or miners
03 Escaped from a child slave sweatshop
04 Escaped from a home run by sadistic old monks or nuns or boys or girls
05 Escaped from a military school, treated brutally for years 
06 Escaped a apprenticeship with a cruel master
07 Escaped slavery as a labourer (or house servant if CHA 13+) 
08 Escaped having been raised in a isolated place in ignorance by a cult
09 Escaped a labouring job bound by contract to service to rich man
10 Escaped a privileged boarding school for nobles children
11 Family killed in plague run here hungry and desperate
12 Escaped massacre by military in homeland still learning local dialect
13 Escaped forced recruitment into military during war and has fled a massacre
14 Homeless from starvation, learned to eat in woods from hermits
15 During famine several of his siblings were eaten so fled here for work
16 Family home and clan burned by arsonist gang with wrong address
17 Family member offended a powerful rich man and carried away as slaves
18 Family murdered by assassins from a cult or some crime family
19 Family killed by raiders while child hid and saw everything
20 Nobility overtaxed and claimed new privileges and child told to flee
21 Fled a church school that was corrupt and brutal
22 Fled a church orphanage that was mostly a work hall
23 Member of a order of monks or nuns but fled
24 Member of a city choir in a temple and fled creepy clery
25 Made personal servant of a priest which was terrible
26 Sent on a mission but others eaten and this survivor over missions now
27 Taken on by a profesional undead hunting cleric which was very unsafe
28 Worked with an inquisitor hunting cultists and beating up old people without kin
29
 Was taken on a crusade which was pretty horrible and fled rather than return
30 Was recruited into templars as a orphan and expected to be a warrior order cleric
31 Worked in a seedy brothel and taver cleaning slops and sleeping in stables for porridge
32 Worked in a scriptorium copying texts more like a prison sweatshop

33 Worked cleaning up slops in abattoir and saw crime syndicate murder an official
34 Worked in a mill pulling out things stuck in dangerous machines
35 Worked as assistant gongfarmer in a sewer while small enough for some pipes
36 Worked sweeping chimneys and slowly dying so now here instead
37 Worked in beggars guild but master wanted to cripple the kid so fled
38 Worked in stables and spreading manure now hates horses smell
39 Worked in a mine with blind pit ponies until escaped chains
40 Worked collecting dropped coal in a huge boiler   

41 Bastard of a bloodline, new family head wants all rival claimants killed
42 Escaped minor child of nobles who want returned to be married
43 Escaped minor noble child from a coup and family slaughtered
44 Escaped minor noble family accused of treason all have been killed or hidden
45 Sent to serve noble wizard who was terrible
46 Sent to serve a knight as a squire who had a deathwish to fight monsters
47 Was a kidnapped heir who escaped and wants to get home without anybody noticing
48 Escaped assassination hopes to get home in disguise
49 Family killed seeks to learn adventuring, get power then avenge them
50 Locked in a multi clan death struggle and in hiding waiting to return home
51 Escaped sect of kidnappers sold to another cult to sacrifice far from home
52 Member of a cult on a quest to collect human faces or something awful
53 Cultist wants monster body parts to sell to wizards and alchemists
54 Cultist looking for evil relics can snatch off other cults or peoples
55 Cultist seeking documents and lost lore to report to masters
56 Cultist seeks money or contacts to find hidden black school of magic
57 Cultist wannabe looking for a cult to join but murder hobo work will do
58 Cultist seeks a certain ruin and secret room and needs to see several dungeons
59 Cultists looking for a lost idol
60 Cultist want to convert other hirelings to murder cult and learn from party
61
 Used to work for drug smugglers, likes to smoke and get high in dungeons
62 Parents arrested and sent away to a convict colony
63 Parents killed by mob over gambling and drug debts, mob wanted child
64 Parents were mobsters killed by rival crime clan
65 Abandoned, found and sold to a crime syndicate to learn crime
65 Informant for secret police until discovered was on a kill list by accident
66 Parents were foreign spies executed but child escaped
67 Family murdered by mob cos someone squealed to the law about thieves guild
68 Served bandits for years growing up living rough with criminals
69 Served on a pirate ship, caught, spared execution and escaped convict transport
70 Family killed by spies for forging official documents and coin clipping
71 Child was a trained assassin getting away after killing a important person
72 Child stole a important letter and on the run after noble want letter destroyed
73 Child was a royal servant who fled stealing silver and clothes
74 Witch child hunted by inquisition who survived burning
75 Child wanted for stealing poor box and blew it on horse racing and out to rob adventurers
76 Child is a witness of terrible crime and has had to flee home or die
77 Child witnessed knights murdering a crown official and now they hunt witness
78 Child stole stash from a gang haul and ran ever since after hiding the 300gp treasure
79 Child stole treasure looted from distant natives after 4 years on a ship and in strange land, explorers want the strange pagan idol as does foreign native cult
80 Child stabbed a corrupt priest and fled with gold and wine and has hidden stash
81
 Is a mutant but hides it for now
82 Child was raised by demihumans and wants to return to human ways but shy

83 Child was bitten by a lycanthrope like a were rat or were wolf or hyena
84 Child raised as slave of monsers in a cave for years
85 Child raised by talking animals and faeries
86 Child raised by witches or a hag
97 Child raised by spirits
88 Child raised by beast folk in winderness
89 Child raised by mermaids in underwater fairy land in sea or lake
90 Child raised by dragons in secret dragon sanctuary
91 Child was used as experiment by alchemist and wants to dissect kid
92 Child served a wizard who wants kid dead for knowing wizard secrets
93 Child of a famous wizard on run from parents wants adventurers life
94 Child of a wizard who's parents were killed by a former student and wants the child
95 Child was sent to posh wizard school to get a proper wizard job but
96 Child raised on another plane kidnapped as a baby to be a slave
97 Child is really a ogre magi
98 Child is a young doppelganger
99 Child is really an imp is disguise
100 Really a petty god in disguise

2 comments:

  1. This is timely and awesome. My players are looking to hire some kids. Well done, sir.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is awesome - both for your hirelings and other urchins about the place. I will be using this in my next session! Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

I love and welcome feedback but not spambots
Good feedback and suggestions inspire me to write more