Janar

Janar is a grung priestess from the Forbidden City of Omu, coming from the small grung tribe that lived around a shrine to the dead god Nangnang. A member of the orange-skinned warrior caste, Janar was born and raised to be a protector of Omu's shrine to Nangnang and nothing else. When Janar began to hear the whispers of her tribe's goddess and shared that she planned to become a priestess, she was exiled for attempting to break away from her birth caste as well as practicing heresy. Janar's life alone, and later in the city of Port Nyanzaru, eventually led to her becoming a proper cleric of 'Nangnang'. Unbeknownst to Janar however, the dead godddess of the grung was not truly her divine patron. In 1490 DR, together with a trio of Harpers, Janar played a part in disrupting a Xanathar Guild plot to replace the Merchant Princes of the city.

Janar was a player character in the three-shot adventure *All Eyes on Chult*.

## Description

Janar is an orange-skinned grung, standing at about 2 feet and 9 inches (0.8 meters) and weighs about 34 pounds (15 kilograms). Janar is most often seen wearing only a white loincloth on her waist, alongside the large strips of dark leather that make up her armor. On anyone else but a nimble and small grung, this patchwork leather and mostly exposed torso would look pointless and ineffective as protection. Aside from that armor, Janar was never seen without her wooden buckler shield.

## History

Janar was born and raised in the Forbidden City of Omu, her orange skin making her destined for the fate of guarding the holy site her tribe resided around- the statue of the goddess Nangnang. Thus, once she was old enough to walk she was taught by her fellow warriors how to hold a weapon and stand guard, though a part of her wished to have a purpose greater than being the statue's or her chieftain's honor guard. After many years of this service, it became clear to Janar that she was not as physically skilled as other warriors, and had greater ambitions than them. Her faith to Nangnang, however, was strong enough to keep her from breaking tradition.

In 1488 DR, this changed when Janar began to hear strange whispers from the statue of Nangnang, urging her to break from her post and demonstrate her piety. The voice of Nangnag instructed Janar to listen and obey, as well as to not share her divine revelation until the day Janar could prove Nangnang had returned to her worshipers. Days of being posted outside the statue and made to listen to its quiet lessons eventually taught the young grung her first bits of clerical magic- which she took as the evidence that the statue had asked her to acquire. Janar presented this evidence to her people, asking to be made the High Priestess of the tribe due to her ability outshining the current priestess, who had no divine magic at all. For this heresy, Janar was exiled for both defying the role of her birth-caste and attempting to convert the tribe to heresy. The chief of her tribe, convinced by the tribe's priestess, believed that Janar was the agent of another trickster god of Chult- sent to steal them away from Nangnang.

In some ways, the priestess and chief were correct in their assumptions. Nangnang had died and had her vestige trapped in the Tomb of the Lost Gods, and thus could not be the source of Janar's magic. Unbeknownst to the exiled grung cleric, this divine revelation was instead brought on Leira, the Faerunian goddess of deception and lies. Leira, having only recently returned to life due to the Second Sundering, was merely putting on the illusion of being the dead grung goddess to gain an agent among the jungles of Chult. Janar would never learn this, and would go on to continue acting as she believed a priestess of Nangnang would- all while using the trickery-based spells granted to her by Leira.

Following her exile from Omu and her inability to find another grung village that would take her in, Janar moved to the Old Town of Port Nyanzaru. Using her goddess-given skills to make her life for herself as an agent-for-hire, she found work first with the Beggar Princes of Port Nyanzaru and then later the Ytepka Society, who would hire her for tasks under the the guise of being temple priests, shopkeepers, and occasionally the agents of Nyanzaru judges.

### All Eyes on Chult

The Ytepka Society saw some promise in Janar as a future agent, and eventually she was given her more important task when the harbormaster Zindar brought her in to replace the missing harper Zikorin in the year 1490 DR. Together with the harpers Mua'glib, Gro'ok, and Therpora, Janar was tasked with capturing the rogue Zhentarim Captain Florina DuRaal during her meeting with her fence, Dour Orlando. Janar along with her new harper companions staked out Orlando's shop in the Grand Souk marketplace, ultimately staying behind after DuRaal's meeting to capture the fence while Mua'glib and Gro'ok went about tailing DuRaal. With a bit of enchantment magic, Janar manipulated Orlando into following her to Zindar's office, where the Amnian fence could be put into custody and questioned. Her companions were successful in bringing in DuRaal, and the party learned that the Zhent was working alongside a Xanathar Guild smuggler named Red-Eye in a plot to replace the Merchant Princes of Chult. Janar was then paid for her efforts and dismissed, alongside the harpers who had worked with her.

In the morning after, she was summoned to meet with Zindar again through a *sending* spell. At his office she was debriefed on Red-Eye's break-in at Jobal's villa, as well as the prince being held captive. As the sorcerer was being kept under watch, he'd needed to use a *simulacrum* to meet with the party- being unwilling to besiege the villa himself if it meant Jobal's death. Together with the other members of her party, Janar climbed over the outer wall of the villa through a tree, and made her way into the building itself through a window looking out at the Merchant Prince's garden. Once inside, she and Therpora were sent to scout out the villa's rooms for Red-Eye. The duo later had a confrontation with steam mephits in Jobal's bathroom, which had been summoned in the Prince's defense but were unable to leave the room. After almost being overwhelmed the two fell back to their initial entrance into the villa. Once there, leadership of the group seemingly shifted to the grung Mua'glib.

Under Mua'glib's lead, the party ascended to the second floor of Jobal's villa and stumbled upon the room where the Merchant Prince was being kept captive. The resulting confrontation did bring the death of Red-Eye (at Therpora's hands) and his closest associates, but it also brought the death of Jobal to an intellect devourer Red-Eye released upon the Merchant Prince.

Though the party had failed in their mission of saving Jobal, they were still rewarded for stopping the plot to have the Merchant Prince replaced with an intellect devourer. Zindar believed it would not be too difficult to bring Jobal back to life, though the experience would undoubtedly give the Chultan Prince some aberration-related trauma. For her service to Zindar, the harbormaster continued to hire Janar on for future missions, hoping to one day induct her as a proper member of the Ytepka Society. When it became clear that Janar had some crueler qualities and a penchant for torture, this relationship with the Ytepka Society frayed and eventually became non-existant.