With war potentially looming over the horizon, I wanted to determine how Eveningstar is defended.
The Process
My approach for writing up my version of Lady Winter was to identify what I thought were the key aspects of the NPC as she appears in the original module (beloved wizard-lord, high level, cool cat, used to sleep with the king, gender stuff) and then make the numbers smaller (level 9 instead of 21, etc.). I’ll apply that same process to Eveningstar’s military: I’m ditching all of the patrols that “pass any spot every four hours”, with their 1d12+12 2nd or 3rd level soldiers and magically equipped clerics and mages, as well as Tessaril’s access to teleporting squads of level 14 war-wizards, and using only the warriors mentioned as being part of Lady Winter’s household. The nearby towns aren’t sending soldiers in to regularly patrol the roads – as the lady of Eveningstar, that's her job.
The module says that she has nine fighters of 3rd and 4th level, a 5th-level captain, six level 1st-level recruits, and four “hostlers,” semi-retired 6th level fighters who are “missing an eye or hand, or sports a limp,” for a convenient total of 20 men. There are also 45 “well-trained but poorly equipped” 1st-level fighters in the militia, which takes at least a day to muster.
I forgot to include Lady Winter's herald Tzin Tzumner (7th-level Bard) and the 3rd level town clerk Auldo Morim, as well as the fact that the captain was named “Flaergan Hondh”. I’m fine to keep omitting those details.
I’ve decided to make these guys knights, because I didn’t realize that “Purple Dragons” and “Purple Dragon Knights” are different things, but ironically they will no longer be Purple Dragon Knights. In my Realm orders of chivalry are fairly new, and the Purple Dragons are an invention of King Azoun that he hopes will bind his kingdom together after the strife of the Succession Wars. Lady Winter is one, but most of her men are knights in the sense of “a warrior who can fight from horseback”.
The six hostlers will be veterans of the Succession Wars who fought for Lady Winter when she and Azoun’s other companions supported his claim to the throne. I’m splitting up the rest of the fighters into housecarls (Lady Winter’s retainers, who live with her), and thanes (landowners who owe her military service). The thanes live on Eveningstar’s outlying farms and supply small contingents of militiamen from amongst their own followers. These take longer to muster than the local militia.
A distinction I’m choosing to make with how I interpret these guys is that they’re professional warriors, not adventurers. While they may do battle with orcs, goblins, and the occasional wizard, and think that hunting dragons and giant spiders sounds like a good time, they won’t have a lot of magic items. I’ll only roll items for the captain and the old 6th-level grognards, representing relics of House Winter and prizes of war, respectively.
