Penny the Perilous

## Appearance

Penny is a muscular halfling of average height. She has medium brown skin, curly light blonde hair, and brown eyes. Currently she wears her hair as a curly mop, but until season 3 it was neatly braided and pulled into a ponytail.

Penny is quite muscular from her many years of professional fighting, and she loves to show this off by wearing tops without sleeves. She has received a lot of jewelry as prizes and gifts from admirers, which she always wears with pride. When entering unfamiliar areas (or if she doesn't want attention- which is practically never), she wears a jacket to cover the jewelry. When performing she removes her jewelry and wears a gladiator's costume. As of season 3, she also has a set of winter clothes for cold weather.

After returning from her solo adventuring, Penny no longer displays her jewelry and instead wears a handmade bear claw necklace in service to her totem.

## Personality

Penny is a wild, emotional being with a very strong sense of right and wrong. She wears her intentions on her sleeve and hates secrets and deception. She often acts impulsively and she loves attention to a fault. She works best with a party who can gently steer her away from her more ridiculous ideas while still indulging her need to have fun.

## Biography

Penny grew up in a halfling village on the mainland. When she was sixteen years old, a traveling gladiator troupe came to perform in her village, and they were so impressed with one another that she left the village with them. After 15 years with the gladiators, Penny decided she wanted to serve her community in a more meaningful way than performing, so she retired to become an adventurer.

Penny first arrived in Haven Cross with the original Party at the beginning of Season 1. After completing half of their initiation quest for the Haven Cross Adventurer's Guild, the party split up, leaving Penny alone at Momo's Inn. A few days later, she was found and retrieved by Cailynn, Claire, and Dain, kicking off the events of Season 2.

After arriving back in Haven Cross and finally completing her initiation in the Adventurer's Guild, Penny joined the party in completing several quests leading up to the local Harvest Festival. During this time Penny got to know her new companions better and set a standard of pacifism and chivalry for the Party. While the other party members performed various acts of service for the community in preparation for the festival, Penny searched the woods for decorations to give Hilda, an innkeep at the Drunken Horse who she'd developed a fondness for. She hastily mounted a mutilated buck's head to a wooden board and brought it to the inn as tribute, to Huroda's delight and Hilda's embarrassment.

After the Harvest Festival, the Party returned to the Adventurer's Guild for a new quest and found an angry, pompous dwarf named Donny Clearletter. The Party agreed to accompany him to Viren, but Penny spent the first day of the trip mocking his arrogant attitude. During the night several bandits attacked the Party and assassinated Clearletter in his sleep, causing Penny to feel intense guilt. Fortunately Asimoff arrived to assist the Party in the fight and joined as a new comrade. The party continued on to Viren to deliver Clearletter's message, but Penny paid little attention for the rest of the trip as she was feeling depressed from having failed a mission with such fatal consequences.

Arriving back in Haven Cross, Penny and the rest of the Party learned that the town was preparing for a massive siege by surrounding bandits. They were sent to a residence a few hours from town to ask permission to use it as a strategic fort for the Haven Cross guard. The family there initially declined, expressing distrust in Haven Cross and Nathaniel Haven himself. However, they soon realized the risk they would be facing in the siege and asked the Party to find a safe place for their son, Martin, in exchange for allowing the guards into their home. The Party put Martin into the care of Nick, their friend from the Adventurer's Guild, and brought them to Momo's Inn to see them off on their journey to Elinstad. Before parting, Penny gave Martin her quarterstaff as a gift.

The Party returned to the Adventurer's Guild to receive instructions for the looming siege. They were ordered to slaughter a bandit camp, an assignment that challenged Penny's commitment to nonviolent resolutions. She insisted on sparing the leader of the camp anyway and bringing him back as a prisoner, but Penny soon learned that some people as committed to harming the innocent as she was to protecting them. She and her comrades were forced to take his life.

Going by a lead found at the bandit camp, the Party decided to go to another camp that they believed held a crucial point of the bandits' strategy. Their suspicions were confirmed when they found a large battering ram, guarded by the biggest and strongest men in the bandits' ranks. While deliberating on how to proceed, the Party heard a horn signaling the beginning of the bandits' war march. They fled, hoping to stop some of the marching bandits and warn the people of Haven Cross.

As exhaustion forced Penny and the others to stop for the night, they encountered a half elf named Daniella. She seemed very familiar with the party and their exploits, though only Cailynn recalled ever having met her before. Penny was anxious to return to Haven Cross and aid in their defense, but Daniella insisted that the Party had a greater purpose and instructed them to go back to the camp they had fled from. Her friends seemed to agree, so Penny reluctantly chose to stay with them rather than return to Haven Cross alone.

The Party returned to the larger camp to find it mostly deserted. In an attempt to buy time for the others to investigate the camp, Penny and Asimoff decided to distract the people there by posing as salesmen. It worked at first, but eventually the bandits saw through their deception and attacked. The Party emerged victorious, and hurried back to Haven Cross with a prisoner and all the evidence they could find at the camp.

Penny had been restless with worry for days, and her fears were confirmed when the Party finally arrived back at Haven Cross. The signs of destruction were everywhere, and many of the buildings in town were still on fire. While the rest of the party searched for survivors, Penny rushed towards the Drunken Horse. Counting Huroda among the corpses on the floor, Penny ran upstairs to search for the other staff of the inn. She found Sarah and her younger brother, but there was no sign of Hilda. She carried the survivors outside and rejoined the party, who were headed to the inner walls to turn their prisoner in to Lord Haven.

Uninterested in a meeting with Nate the Great, Penny headed to the medical wing of the Adventurer's Guild offices to assist in treating the wounded. She did not get to meet with Hilda, but she was assured that she had spent the attack safe in the inner walls while Huroda spent her last hours defending the Drunken Horse.

After leaving the inner walls to find more survivors, the Party was summoned by John Mercy, the main shopkeep of Haven Cross. He told the party he found Lord Haven's approach to investigating the attack to be too lax, and gave them a secret mission to investigate any leads they had by any means necessary. Penny and her friends left Haven Cross with a new sense of purpose, but not before Penny gave Mercy a letter addressed to Hilda.

The Party's leads led them to Viren, and Viren led them to Big Marco, the city's notorious shipping tycoon. The Party's snooping attracted Big Marco's attention, and he offered everyone jobs working for him so they could learn more about his business without having to sneak around behind his back. Penny was very uneasy with this deal- she and her friends believed Marco to be responsible for the attack on Haven Cross, and there were countless implications of criminal dealings under the cover of his business. The Party reluctantly decided to accept the job, but Penny could not compromise her ideals any longer. She walked out, leaving her Adventurer's Guild badge on the table.

With nothing better to do, Penny decided to travel back to Haven Cross alone. One night as Penny camped along the road, Daniella appeared. After a brief conversation about Penny's plans, she returned Penny's guild badge and left. It was not clear how she'd obtained the badge, and she was gone before Penny had a chance to ask.

Penny arrived back in Haven Cross late at night and decided to go to the house outside town where Martin's family had lived. Despite getting lost along the way, she eventually found it abandoned and in shambles. Penny barricaded the door and slept there for the night.

She got lost in the woods again, but eventually Penny made it back to Haven Cross. She went to the Drunken Horse hoping to reunite with Hilda, but she told Penny that she had been "blacklisted" and immediately shuffled her into a closet in the back room to hide. Confused, Penny waited in the closet for hours until Hilda finally came back and instructed her to get into a sack. Penny felt herself being tossed into a cart and then it started moving. Penny didn't know how many hours she spent in that cart- she only knew that she was scared, uncomfortable, and that she smelled like onions.

After many hours, Penny was unceremoniously dumped out of her sack onto the ground. She was surprised to find herself outside Momo's Inn. Momo chastised Penny for the trouble she'd put everyone through and for going off by herself, but he was still kind enough to let her stay for the night. Penny learned that Momo's Inn had been severely damaged during the siege, and that Sarah of the Drunken Horse was moving in temporarily to help Momo renovate and reopen his inn. Sarah thanked Penny for saving her and her brother back in Haven Cross.

Penny couldn't stay at Momo's any longer, she couldn't return to Haven Cross, and there was nothing for her in Viren. She decided to travel to Elinstad. However, she got distracted hunting for food along the way and became hopelessly lost in the woods. Penny was lonely, tired, and hungry, and she began to regret parting with her friends. In her desperation, she learned that she had the ability to talk to animals. She bonded with the birds of the forest, and in return they helped her find food and clean water. She went on like this for what felt like months, until eventually Daniella appeared again. She offered Penny tea and answers to any of her questions. Penny learned the following information:

* Daniella was part of a Resistance against unknown and unseen enemies who controlled Elin. She and the Resistance had been tracking Penny and her friends for months, offering help when necessary.
* Martin's family was dead, as Penny had suspected.
* Penny's friends were safe.
* Asimoff had ties to the Resistance and was secretly their primary contact within the Party.

Daniella gave Penny directions out of the woods and left her with her thoughts. Penny didn't like the feeling that all the actions she'd taken thus far had been playing into the hands of a larger force, no matter how benevolent. She resolved to always act on her own terms, and found her way out of the woods and into Elinstad.

After a mostly uneventful trip, Penny left Elinstad during the mayhem surrounding an assassination in the city. She was found on the road by the Party, who hadn't seen her in weeks. Penny attempted to evade the Party but was tackled by Claire and brought onto the cart, where she reunited with her friends and met Curt, Sander, and Roscoe for the first time. Penny was expecting a happy reunion, but the atmosphere in the cart was somber and silent. Rather than pushing for an explanation, Penny drifted off to sleep. She and the party entered a bizarre dream world of skeletons and cabbages where they completed a mission for Duke Amberhusk, who rewarded Penny with a magical dagger.

Penny and the Party awoke to find that Roscoe was feverish and unconscious after having committed suicide in the dream. Sander took him to see a mage who could help while Curt took the Party to Haven Cross. Penny warned the Party that they were no longer welcome there, but Curt insisted that they go anyway. Fortunately, the Party was actually not in that much trouble as Haven simply wanted to question them about an assassination that occurred in Haven Cross shortly after they had left. The Party was forced to end their membership with the Adventurer's Guild, but they remained on friendly terms with Lord Haven.

Penny and the party went to the cave where Sander had taken Roscoe. While attempting to find the mage who supposedly lived there, Penny was attacked by a Black Ooze who destroyed most of her clothes. After a narrow victory, the Party met Arzy, a drow alchemist. Arzy proved to be abrasive and difficult to negotiate with, and he was upset that the Party had killed the Ooze that was guarding his lab. He offered to cure Roscoe in exchange for either a large sum of money or the party's souls, neither of which they were willing to part with. Penny cursed at the drow, sending him into a rage and prompting the party to leave and discuss their options. Claire, Dain, and Asimoff left to try and earn more money, while Penny and the others stayed in the cave with Roscoe.

## Affiliations

* Sword Coast Gladiators (former, player may change name due to setting retcon)- The troupe where Penny spent 15 years as a professional fighter.
* Haven Cross Adventurer's Guild (former)- Penny reached Level 2 before Lord Haven removed the Party from the guild.
* The Resistance- Current employer.
* Hilda- the innkeep of the Drunken Horse Inn in Haven Cross and Penny's love interest.

## Notes & Trivia

* Penny is not her real name. She is embarrased of her birth name and hopes the party never learns it.
* She is a very heavy sleeper and not a morning person.
* She is the only remaining main player character from Season 1.
* She calls Nathaniel Haven by the nickname she gave him, Nate the Great.
* Unlike the rest of the party, Penny is not officially an employee of Big Marco's, despite having assisted in jobs for him.