Emma Verney

Appearance
Emma Verney wears a long dress of green silk with a golden charm of the kind worn by Orcs around her neck.

History/Background

Emma Verney was brought up from a young age on tales of her father's struggles with various opponents in his younger, spell casting days.Many of these struggles involved fights with Orcs, in the days before they were forced deep into the trackless wastelands of the Bush.When she was fifteen she got to see her first Orc.

It hardly seemed threatening, sitting there in it's iron cage, it's green scaly back laid open by repeated lashings, it's yellow eyes full of sadness, with nothing in the cage but a pile of straw and a pot of water, and she started to feel sorry for Orckind and to speak up in favour of leaving the tribes in peace, speaking of them as 'noble warriors' who were only defending themselves from human attacks and land grabs.

Her father told her off and she was ridiculed by those who had been involved in many fights with the Orcs and had lost friends and relitives to their blades and wanted them exterminated. So three years later she slipped away one afternoon into the Bush, taking only a few day's water and food with her and a short dagger for defence, to try and meet Orcs living their normal lives and speak with them. She has not been seen since.

Special Equipment
Her charm has limited magical powers,placed within it by her father to protect her, in that she can use it to create an invisible sheild around herself, but the sheild only lasts for minutes and can only be used once every twelve hours. It is meant to defend oneself in a busy town until a City Guard patrol arrives or until a safe place can be found, not for a battle situation.She also had a spell cast upon it by a mage to translate Orcish to Human and Human to Orcish so she can speak to Orcs.

Roleplaying Notes
Emma is a nice enough girl, but she has a naive love for Orcs, seeing them as noble and unfairly targeted for destruction by other races, and will seek out Orcs where even hardened adventurers or soldiers would fear to go.She thinks that as she is no threat to them they won't harm her.She collects Orc tales and artifacts and has a large collection at home.She has some skills as a healer.

Plot Hooks

What did you expect,Fool?

The Orcs she has encountered have captured and stripped her and are preparing to boil and eat her/sacrafice her to the Gods/give her as a slave to their chieftain.All the PC's need to do is rescue her, and her father will give her a rich reward if they do, but nothing if she gets killed in the attempt.

Dances with Orcs

She has, astonishingly, some might think, made friends with an Orc tribe through healing the Chieftian, who's neck had a bad infected burn on it after the removal of a patch of Orcrot fungus went wrong. The Orcs treat her as one of them and she feels perfectly safe.The PC's can leave her where she is (and not get the reward from her father) try and persuade her to come with them, or resort to outright kiddnapping to take her back to her father and claim the reward.

I'm pregnant!

She has an Orc lover and has willingly had a half-Orc child by him, and is six months pregnant with another. When asked to return to her family, she will point out that not only would she have to leave her child behind as he would be ostracised in human society,and regarded as the lowest of the low, but her father would have her unborn baby forcibly aborted and she herself would be despised by everyone in her town for willingly having Half-Orc children.She is the tribal healer and is in no danger from the Orcs that she lives with.

The PCs have a clear moral choice here-they can either try kiddnapping her for her father's reward, destroying her Orc family in the process,and returning her to a human society that will never fully accept her again, or they can miss out on the reward and leave her to live a happy life amongst the Orcs,where she is valued by the tribe and loved by her Orc husband.