Hilda Millgrove

Hilda is a Lightfoot Halfling and a member of the Adventurer's Guild. Separated from those she once called family, Hilda looks to find a new path and purpose in life

## Biography

### **Early Years**

Hilda was born into a life of spectacle and excitement within a vibrant and popular travelling circus. Born to two skilled performers herself, she felt it was her destiny to follow in their footsteps. Her agility and dexterity combined with the training of the many experienced professionals that were part of the troupe made Hilda a natural-born performer, particularly skilled in knife throwing and tightrope walking. Though these skills would see Hilda recruited to help in the troupe's more clandestine activities.

Though the circus was popular enough just on its own, it also kept a secret. While audience members were distracted by the performances of the circus, other members of the troupe were enlisted to put their slight of hand and quick thinking to use by discreetly liberating the more wealthy clients of their effects. Hilda was a very active member of this group of pickpockets, and they filled their pockets by emptying others for many years, until one day, they messed up. Having targeted a particularly extravagant looking mage, Hilda reached out for his staff but, this wizard had a key eye of his own. And in a display of arcane might, he ravaged the circus and its troupe asunder, separating them all with a powerful teleport (I imagine some sort of extreme scatter) spell.

After this, Hilda awoke in Arigdon, a town she had never visited nor heard about. Feeling lost and confused, Hilda stayed there for a couple months, unsure of what to do with her life until, a deadly sickness began to spread in the town. Foregoing whatever attempts she could try and make to cure the infected, Hilda, deciding to run from the town to start her life anew, headed to Otha's Rest, a place she new was the most lively settlement in the east ridings, perfect for embracing her talents as an entertainer to sustain herself, and maybe begin to pick up the pieces of her scattered life.

### **Joining The Adventurer's Guild**

Feeling lost, confused and honestly a little bored of just playing songs at the same old taverns night after night, Hilda decided to join the adventurers guild. She'd heard from some drunken patrons that it paid pretty well, and you could see all of this world and maybe even other worlds by embarking on quests there. Hilda was hoping joining the guild would allow her to venture around the ridings, allowing her to get stronger and find some information on where her former family might be, along with the mage that tore them apart.

### **[Additional Paragraphs]**

[Here, I'd recommend adding some more background, or the character's development while they're adventuring with the guild! Go mad, see Sharian for some inspiration.]

### **[Retirement / Death]**

[Once the PC moves on from the rest, either through retirement or death, add some information surrounding it. Describe their life post-guild, or their funeral and circumstances in which they found themselves full of arrows, and empty of blood.]

## Mission Log

* The Black Horse Courier
	+ Hilda’s first job at the adventurers guild didn’t go *quite* as she expected it to. She begun her morning at the guild, nursing a hangover after a night of drinking with the sailors and playing music at King Leo the 13th. After hearing an announcement about an available job and receiving a healing potion along with sage wisdom from the barman, Hilda head to the office where the clerk and 3 goblins awaited. The job at hand was as follows: journey to the hidden valley, drop off a crate for a guy named Arlyn, and come home. Easy, right? Well after brief introductions the ragtag group of shorties (and Xerxes) picked up some horses and a cart from Enterprise horses before setting off on the journey. The first day and night of the trip went by smoothly with no problems, though this would change on the second night. While alone on first watch, Hilda was approached by a Tabaxi woman with a seemingly injured child in tow, claiming she had been attacked by bandits. After sensing the woman’s panic was a little half-baked, Hilda woke up the rest of the group and, after she seemingly grew tired of the groups questions, the woman fled down the road before 4 bandits were revealed and began to attack the group. Unfortunately for them, the bandits were quickly dispatched without much difficulty from the group and, after a long nights rest, the group was nearing the end of their route. Once they arrived in the hidden valley, Hilda and the group quickly realised they didn’t know where they were *actually* meant to leave this package, but thanks to some magic and directions from Trix they found themselves at a tower. After some brief arguing with the residents of the tower about who the package actually was meant for, one of the goblins opened the package to reveal… water..? The room begun to flood rapidly, quickly putting all of the goblins and halflings (Including Hilda herself) near full submersion underwater. To make matters worse one of the goblins smashed Hilda in the face with an axe in a failed attempt to open the now-shut door, knocking her unconscious in one strike. Thanks to Xerxes however she was healed and hoisted out of the water. After witnessing a catapulting axe with two goblins in tow smash open the door, Hilda was able to escape along with most of the group, before being attacked and knocked unconscious again. She was brought back to consciousness with her own healing potion and after the enemies who seemed to appear from the box were dispatched by the rest of the group, they were offered self teleportation back to the adventurers guild by the Aasimar who lives in the tower. After a long, and maybe traumatising first day at work, Hilda would’ve collected her rewards, and probably slept for the next 12 hours.
* Be a Good Old Chap-el
	+ Hilda’s second quest at the adventurers guild was a little more vague than last time; go to the chapel at Silver Peak and check it out. But after being reunited with Xerxes, a powerful fighter whom she met on her first quest, along with some other strong looking adventures : Karl, Archibald and Star Watcher, Hilda was feeling cautiously confident about this one. It was a pretty smooth day-long journey to the peak. Nothing out of the ordinary until, as they got closer to the settlement, they started to see dwarves in groups of four seemingly entranced and walking away from the town they came from, saying nothing but the words “The Light” in unison. Unwavering however, the group pressed on to the town and chapel. The town of Silver Peak seemed basically deserted, though Hilda didn’t care to look to hard, so they finally found themselves outside the chapel. Here they had a brief encounter with some weird tiny monsters spilling grease everywhere, and were aided by a gargoyle statue outside the chapel (Hilda stayed up that night questioning that whole encounter). Once the enemies had been quickly dispatched, the group entered the chapel and found it was completely coated in soot inside, with some brief investigating the group found seemingly unimportant dwarvish religious texts, aswell as a bookcase that attacked those that stole from it, and a room with a puzzle. Stumped by the puzzle and more intrigued by the antics of her party member Karl, Hilda followed him as he appeared to be leading one of the entranced dwarves to the enchanted bookcase that attacked Star Watcher earlier. Accompanied by Xerxes, they convinced Karl to unhand the dwarf and Hilda returned him (the dwarf) to where they found him, however after a brief telepathic method with Xerxes, Hilda rushed back to find Karl incapacitated on the floor having engaged in combat with the bookshelf. Attempts to attack it with her psychic magic was fruitless and there was nothing she could do but watch as Karl was struck down, killed by the enchanted bookshelf. After this shocking turn of events, Hilda decided there was nothing else to do but get this mission done ASAP. Scouring the rooms she had previously passed through, she found no clue as to how to solve the puzzle, but did find a magical staff that could make flowers? She stashed this away figuring it could make a nice party trick at one of her performances at the King Leo. Upon rejoining them, the group finally cracked the code which revealed a doorway and staircase up to a small band of enemies. First one of them tried to attack Xerxes on the way up, but they were quickly incapacitated by her and Star Watchers spells. Once in the upstairs room the party had a difficult time finishing off the enemy group, but just scraping through, they finished them off. The final thing Hilda did before heading home was finding various intriguing documents in a few different languages containing plans to destroy and disturb various parts of the east ridings. Shaken by this, Hilda decided to head back to Otha’s Rest as soon as possible to turn in this information and mourn the recently passed Karl
* Water Palava
	+ Hilda started the day doing some brief training with Xerxes, and before long the two of them were ushered by one of the clerks into a quest with some new but seemingly very powerful allies. The group was informed that there was an issue with the weather at Ambercrop farms and they set out to investigate. Once they arrived at the farms, it quickly became apparent there was some sort of magic stopping the water, snow or any other kind of precipitation to touch the floor of this town. Noticing there was something odd about the way the winds and clouds blew, the party walked towards the mountains where they saw an entrance to the cave. The group had to traverse through some tunnels of water to progress through, but after a short while they found themselves at a puzzle with various tokens, however they quickly recalled the elementals outside the cave entrance and used this information to crack the code. After this they found themselves overhearing a conversation between some giff (if that’s how you spell it). Hilda and Xerxes’s suspicions of this areas issue being connected to the documents they found in the silver peaks which detailed plans to disrupt the east ridings increased, as some of those documents were written in giff. The group bust through the door and quickly took down two out of the three giff, the third the group tried to interrogate and, after a successful charm spell from Hilda and a successful subduing of the groups loose cannon Seymour, their suspicions proved correct as the captive admitted to working with the same group, however they didn’t have anything to do with the weather distribution it seemed. Upon being told the culprit was in the room next to them, Hilda subdued the giff again and the group headed to confront the issue. Upon entering the room they saw a sorcerer concentrating on a spell, as well as two salamanders protecting them. The party engaged in combat but Hilda felt pretty pathetic as she couldn’t land a single blow against the salamander she was fighting, along with getting grappled in the process. In the end it was the bow of Seymour and the powerful spells of Tas and Io that felled the two salamanders, however the sorcerer got away. Frustrated by these events, being her first (in her mind) failed mission as well as making a fool of herself in combat. Hilda would head back to Otha’s rest, offering a round of drinks from the tavern she works at to the group.
* Pursuing the Cult
	+ Spurred on by the success of her last adventure, Hilda found herself on another adventure. This time with her maybe good friend Xerxes, aswell as some fellow performers and Ammenos. Together they travelled to the west ridings in search of a dragon corpse, met some folk at a local tavern called the silver fish, and heard some news about Kobolds in the area. Xerxes and the tavern workers put together a map of where to go and they set off, quickly finding Kobolds and some drakes. The group took out the drakes, but the kobolds escaped to their hideout. After questioning them about if they had a dragon corpse with them, Xerxes and Ammenos barged down their door, and the party engaged in combat. However, the group was vastly outnumbered and outmatched, and Xerxes, one of Hilda's closest friends in the guild, came close to death twice. Everything came to a head when they took Xerxes as a hostage, Hilda traded one of the kobolds lives for his, and the group left with a now revealed to be undead cultist woman in tow
* Veil of Temptation
	+ Hilda and some various guild members were hanging about in Glimmergate, she had gone shopping and bought a magical cloak, figuring she was in need of some protection. Before long the group was approached by a very distressed lady, exclaiming her husband had gone missing. After asking some questions they headed to the inn the missing man (Arthur, a dwarf) frequented. There they asked some questions about him, and the group discovered he’d been seen a lot with a woman who was a part of the “red sashes”; a group of sex workers in the city. After finding some other members of the sashes in the street, the party was directed to a brothel in town to meet with the owner of the establishment, a woman called Seraphina. Hilda Aldier and Liz put on a stellar performance for her in an attempt to gain information, but after it proved fruitless, Aldier and Liz used invisibility magic to gain more information upstairs. Before either of them could relay information to her though, the entrance was locked and the group were attacked by guards of the brothel. They didn’t put up much of a fight however had Aldier hypnotised them all in place with ease. Following this, the group ran upstairs to find one of the workers, now revealed to be a succubus, attempting to feast on a man. She was quickly wrenched back to the hells by Narla, Aldier and Kandy, while Liz healed up the man and they began to run away, not wanting to see the guards when their hypnosis broke. Kandy however proved to be a loose cannon once again, attempting to set the building on fire with the injured man still inside. Hilda ran back to help him out, and they all managed to escape safely. Coming to the sad conclusion that Arthur may be dead, the group went back to inform his wife of their findings. Hilda decided to stay in the city on lookout, not really comfortable with the idea of having to inform somebody of their husbands death. That was the end of it for now, another person on Hilda’s list to track down at some point.

* The Kitty Conundrum
	+ Told to head to the fey wild and deal with some cat, Hilda along with her fellow bards Liz and Aldier spent the day walking to a woods where the flowers seemed always in bloom, a location which was used in a previous adventure to get to the fey wild. Once they arrived, the group set up camp and took a rest. In the early morning they were approached by a talking bird called burt, who led them to the fey wild in exchange for some berries. The group then made their way to Redwall to hunt for the cat, where to Hilda’s dismay, Aldier got some eladrin children hooked on his cigarettes. Upon asking around, the party discovered the cat had already been “dealt with” by some powerful man who lives in winter. The group found her responses a bit too ambiguous though, so they decided to head to winter and see for themselves. A large mansion made out of dead trees is where the bards found the powerful man in question, who explained he had the cat locked up in a prison downstairs. The group were allowed to see him and deduced the cat (now revealed to be a tabaxi) had been feebleminded and, along with many other people locked up, were being used as test subject for this man to try out different poisons. They inquired further about what these people had done to deserve being practically tortured, and it seemed he basically took anybody that was even a minor inconvenience. The rest of the group didn’t seem too bothered by this, and just wanted to go back to the guild with the tabaxi, having completed their mission. Hilda however was disgusted with this man, how dare he think he has the power to take who he deems lesser and torture them? She struck a deal with Aldier to promote his cigarette business at the bars she works at in return for his help, she held him in place with a spell, before killing him on the spot. After this the group released all the prisoners (who all seemed to have had feeble mind cast on them) and led them back out of the fey wild and to Otha’s rest, where they sought the aid of clerics in the temple of gods. Once in good hands, the bards turned to other matters. According to Aldier and Liz, strange spiders had been following them since leaving the fey wild, and Cerci agreed to help them get rid of these spiders. The group fought the strange spiders that kept blinking out of existence, Hilda and Liz came very close to death but, Aldier managed to finish them off and see them both safe to fight another day

* Marsh to the Beat of Your Own Drum
	+ Being told to investigate a strange drumming noise coming from the black swamp, Hilda Kandy Narla and two new faces headed there to investigate. On the way there they encountered some trolls that requested they answered riddles in order to pass through them. They seemed playful enough and after answering most of the riddles, the group were allowed passage. The party arrived at their destination, a large cave. During exploring it they found some weird snake creatures who were sleeping and guarding some drums. They attacked the group but they were quickly dealt with, and the party continued to explore the cave looking for more drums or clues. They arrived in a bigger area of the cave where a large creature with tentacles and tusks stood with another snake-like creature around some drums and also a portal to who knows where. Another fight took place and the group was victorious again, Hilda swiped a magical scimitar that, when back at her apartment, whispered in the back of her head thoughts of violence and murder, making her wonder if the creature that attacked her gave into these whisperings.
* Captivating Crustaceans for a Big Time Shellebration
	+ After a small bit of deception (lying to peoples faces) Hilda gathered a group of powerful adventures to head to the water plane with her to get Sharians prawns. The cursed sword Hilda wanted to un-curse begun speaking to her about killing Io, the pestering got more and more frequent aswell as more and more tempting as the day went on.. Anyway Sharian teleported the group to lake with a portal to the plane in, and the adventure begun. Once in the water plane, the group found a large mass of coral, that Io found out had a hag in. As usual, the hag was into kidnapping children and turning them into hags, but Io seemed to be having too good a time fraternising with the enemy, so ending the hag wasn’t possible. The hags pet/assistant eel led them to a civilisation of crabs who apparently had tons of the prawns they needed, but before the eel could even react, Creed and Horatio killed him. The group entered the crab settlement and had planned to try and do some trade for the prawns, but Io decided to threaten the lives of the crab people after the first trade offer wasn’t accepted, which begun a series of prawn hunting and crab killing shenanigans. Eventually the group killed the crabs attacking them, and recovered two chests of prawns as requested by Sharian. They then headed back to the lake where the curse was lifted on the sword, and a seafood BBQ was enjoyed by maybe all (Hilda didn’t check if people liked the prawns or not)
* New Beginnings
	+ Hilda was hanging around the bustling adventurers guild in the morning, and it wasn't long before she was yanked to a table by one of the clerks, reunited with Star Watcher and some new companions (though one of them named Kandy seemed vaguely familiar), and told to head to Ornament and find some missing food..... sure. A bit disconcerted by how close to death her and her party members have been during the past two quests Hilda has undertaken, she spent some more time preparing for this one. A couple days ago she purchased a rapier to better suite close range combat, as well as picking up a healing potion before departing. On the way to Ornament the group ran into a merchant on a horse drawn cart, pulling some passengers. They all seemed extremely shaken, and when questioned, they informed the group of a strange black tent that had shown up recently in the town and some creatures that came out of it and attacked his cart. The group pressed one to Ornament following this and sure enough, saw this strange black tent surrounded by citizens of the town. The villagers seemed to be attempting an arrest on the people inside the tent and, after an incredible display of cool-ness by Kandy, the party were greeted by an extremely scantily clad man. From the furs he was wearing along with his whip, Hilda presumed he was a performer of some kind due to her childhood at the skytooth circus and sure enough, he called himself a "Beast Master" and invited the party inside. The inside of the tent was vastly bigger than it appeared on the outside, set up with rows of seats and a big stage where the beast master "performs". Star Watcher asked for a performance so the group sat and waited until he came back out. The "Performance" was more of a display of caged animals. He opened some strange capsule and the stage flooded with water and an orca came swimming out. After the perfomance was done and the beast master went downstairs (because yes, this tent had a downstairs. And an upstairs?), the group decided to do some investigating. Hilda, Seren and Eris all decided to check out the upstairs room, flanking either side of it while Kandy followed the beast master and Star Watcher inspected a stage door. The upstairs door was locked and tripped with magical traps from both sides, but looking through the comically large keyhole, Hilda could see a man tied up and, after some quick message cantrips, discovered that the beast master held the key. Star Watcher called Eris, Seren and Hilda down to explain that Kandy was in danger. Hilda and Eris chased after Kandy while the others tried to open the stage door. Hilda's rapier purchase proved extremely useful as she killed two goblins in one strike each with it, while Eris freed some tied up performers and the other two discovered and calmed an owlbear trapped behind that door. Following a fleeing goblin down a trapdoor, Kandy Eris and Hilda found themselves in the middle of a vast cave with exotic animals all around. Quickly spotting the beast master, Hilda unleashed a charm spell while Kandy restrained him. Star Watcher, Seren and the owlbear took out goblins from the other side of the cave and, while the goblins numbers quickly thinned, the fight was only just starting as a large pane of glass shattered unleashing two orcas along with 20ft of water into the cave. Hilda attempted to swim away from the Orcas while laying magic into the Beast Master. Kandy got the final hit on him after being weakened by Seren and the smell of his blood in the water thankfully distracted the Orcas. Though the true mvp was Seren, as he unleashed some powerful magic unknown to Hilda, charming all the animals around him and calming the Orcas. After swimming out of the cave and freeing the man upstairs who turned out to be a powerful wizard and owner of the tent. The group was rewarded with an enchanted apple each along with the wizards help in giving the food back to the townspeople. Hilda went home that day feeling pretty proud of herself, along with being interested in enhancing her sword skills further.
* Comet me, Bro!
	+ Honestly this could’ve gone wayyyy worse. Called to collect some magical coloured shards from some meteors in a swamp, Hilda and a group of new faces set off with a very suspicious cart driver toward their destination. On the way there it was revealed the man taking them to their destination was working with some bandits, the group handled them pretty quickly except for the driver, who turned out to be a magic user and got away. Another mage to add to Hilda’s list of people to track down… Once they arrived at the swamp they discovered another group of people excavating the meteors. Though the two scientists in the group tried making conversation with the leader, his bigoted comments got him killed real fast. The group hunted down the employees and ended up disintegrating half of them with the explosive crystals. After investigating the meteors some more and discovering two more colours of shard, the group collected the magic crystals and headed back to Otha’s Rest
* No Dig-ity
	+ Hilda, Io and Maxwell were found by an orc in the guildhouse who had a statue, and wanted the three of them to help him get closer to an orc god. The group followed him to an excavation site full of ancient orcish religious and historical artifacts. Hilda isn't particularly interested in religion or ancient history however, so she just sort of walked around while Maxwell excitedly investigated old tombs and statues. The group solved a few puzzles using statues seemingly of the orc god Gruumsh, and were able to descend further. Throughout the descent, various tombs contained what seemed like ancient royalty, and the extravagance of these dead orcs seemed only to grow as they ventured deeper. At one point Io tried to swipe an amulet from one of the mummified bodies, which awoke some strange orcish creatures that tried to suffocate her. The party dealt with them and ventured even further to a room full of gold, with a portal to the shadowfell in. The portal took them to a large tower in the shadowfell, full of orc statues. Hilda Io and Maxwell begun the ascending the tower, going through room after room of orc statues before, a bunch of orcs attacked them. Hilda borrowed a bow from Maxwell for the fight and had a pretty successful test run of her archery skills. Looking out of one of the viewpoints from the tower after the fight, the group saw a massive orcish army, and decided to get out of the shadowfell asap, leaving them to wonder why such a vast army was building
* Happy T-Orc
	+ Hilda, Creed, Horatio and some people she hadn’t met before were told to go to a fair They went to the fair. Hilda spent the day throwing axes for tokens and playing some music on an empty stage. At some point a pretend dragon caused some chaos but Horatio handled it, and the third band had a really weird entrance that made the group nervous but, nothing eventful came out of it. At the end of the day Hilda spent her axe throwing winnings on some Pipes of Haunting before going home, a pretty uneventful and strangely relaxing day
* Squirrels

## Trivia

* [Place any interesting information related to your character here]

## Appendix

### Appearances (Outside of played in sessions)

Adventures
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### Mentions

Adventures
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