RPGaDay 2026 Day 17: Intensity

 

Developing another female NPC for Ureka and she's got some Intensity. I feel like I'm trying to find smaller and smaller niches as I go along (and I'm also doing these much closer to the wire, so maybe they're getting a touch less thought), but my feeling here is that this is a plucky girl reporter at the Times-Standard.

Name: Hildy Russel

Appearance: A red-haired mousey woman in her 20s in a practical business outfit.

Quote: "Is that on the record?"

Roleplaying: Hildy talks very fast, making it difficult to get a word in edgewise.

Background: Hildy has always been sharp and inquisitive. When the offices of the Times-Standard newspaper were reclaimed and re-opened, she became one of the first reporters to reply. She is also a regular in the local podcast scene.

Key Info:

Hildy has information on a lot of goings-on around Ureka
Hildy may need independent sources to gather information, or competent escort to dangerous locales where information may be obtained.

Stat Block:

RPGaDay2026 Day 16: Composure

Now to come up with an female NPC for the Eureka Ruins who is having a hard time with her Composure. If she were having an easy time with her composure, she might be a little too close to Scarlett from back on Day 4, so let's try to keep things interesting.

In fact, to make things a bit more interesting, let's make her human. What is a human doing spending most of her time in the Eureka Ruins? Well, one of the things that I've struggled to incorporate into the setting is one of the Ruin tags that I rolled up for this part of town has been the Hidden Purpose. It doesn't really mesh with how I think of my hometown,

But if we're willing to accept that Hupa developed some sort of black programs that it implemented while everything was falling apart, there are other kinds of developments that very naturally follow. So there may well be something hidden under this portion of Eureka.

So our NPC is Mary Ross (named after a Native American rocket scientist), who has come up from Frisco to try to learn about what happened up here since the Collapse. Since she is Native American, she is interested in Hupa and she might work her way there at some point. But right now, she's interested in what might have happened in Eureka in response.

She's also interested in Tuluwat, the largest island in Humboldt Bay. It's gone by a few names in its history, but it is currently called Tuluwat and is the territory of the local Wiyot tribe. If Hupa was able to militarize, maybe Tuluwat was able to have a small navy controlling the bay. And maybe Eureka was able to work up a response.

So what does Composure have to do with all this? Well, like any post-apocalyptic scientist, she more than a little MAD!

Name: Mary Golda Ross

Appearance: A Native American woman in her 30's with straight dark hair under a kerchief. She wears khaki outdoor gear.

Quote: "How exciting!"

Roleplaying: She is brilliant and very excitable. The prospect of a new discovery will have her clapping her hands and rubbing them together in glee.

Background: Mary is from one of the larger Enclaves in the San Francisco Bay area on a research expedition.

Key Info:

She has some information regarding Hupa, Tuluwat, and even some of the science projects at Calpoly and underneath Eureka from her studies, but she is limited on practical experience, which she is eager to get.

Stat Block:

RPGaDay 2026 Day 15: Endurance

Now we're making a male NPC for Cow Town and just surviving in Cow Town is an act of Endurance. And for all that we've talked about how horrible it is, maybe we should look at some of the reasons that the people stay.

There is a certain kind of safety in living in a place that no one else wants. No raiders coming to kill you when they know you're going to die sooner rather than later and whatever killed you may well be waiting for them.

There is hunting and gathering that can be done outside the city. And the Eel River with its slamon runs passes under the bridge at Fernbridge.

And cleanup of the radioactive and irradiated materials is possible. It's just slow and difficult work being done by people who are slowly dying as they do it.

One of the people taking on that work is Ernie Pierson (actually named after the founder of one of the most famous hardware stores in Humboldt County). Armed with a Geiger counter, he spends his days trying to isolate radioactive metals and remove them from wherever he can. And even if he were to remove all of radioactive materials, recovery and return to normalcy are a good distance away.

Name: Ernie Pierson

Appearance: A middle-aged barrel-chested white man with thinning grey hair and a bushy mustache. He wears a neon green safety vest over his work clothes and dark protective goggles.

Quote:

Roleplaying: He is always willing to help, but averse to violence. He is on good terms with most folks in town and can provide some information on most of them. He will guide

Background: Ernie has always been an explorer and his Geiger counter lets him find safe places as well as identify radiation hazards that he may eventually be able to remove.

Key Info:

He has a Geiger counter that can identify radioactive materials and areas.

Stat Block:

RPGaDay 2026 Day 14: Regard

 Now to create another female NPC for Squatch-Ville. Because this is another female NPC and the prompt is very close, I want to make sure that I'm not retreading Day 2, so I'll make this character a human. She won't have Stature, but she will have Regard.

I do have a couple more chances to make sasquatch NPCs and I do want to develop their society further. But one of the ways to do that is to show how humans live in their society. And the difference between Stature and Regard gives us an opportunity to look at the glass ceiling that prevents humans from rising too high in Squatch-Ville society.

So our NPC clearly has some measure of authority, but that is sharply limited. She lives and works among the sasquatch, but is frequently overruled.

The truth is that Squatch-Ville is not a single city, but a widely distributed community. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle means that the people must forage from large sections of the forest to feed their families and communities. There is a "trade town" that acts as a central hub where these distributed gatherers can come together to trade for what they need with other gatherer groups and also outside traders. This is what most outsiders refer to as "Squatch-Ville."

Each of these smaller communities is overseen by a sasquatch. Since they are nobility in this situation, they would naturally have little feudal fiefs. But our NPC is not a sasquatch. She's actually something of a secretary or vizier to the sasquatch overseer of this particular fief. So she's very close to power, but just a hairsbreadth away from it.

She's actually competent and when the last overseer went invisible, she requested that she be promoted to overseer permanently. Instead, the position was filled by another sasquatch designated by the Central Council, with the use-name "Percy."

Name: Lillian Donovan

Appearance: An attractive slender Black woman with tightly curled, close-cropped hair. She wears a simple dress with bangles and bracelets denoting her position in sasquatch society.

Quote:

Roleplaying: Lillian is very well organized and helpful. She sees Percy as useless and will avoid involving him as much as possible.

Background: She grew up in Squatch-Ville and found herself to be a competent and capable organizer. She's taken risen through the ranks to be the top human administrator in her fief.

Key Info:

She is a capable and competent administrator
She wishes that she had the authority to run the fief without having to defer to a sasquatch

Stat Block:

RPGaDay 2026 Day 13: Strain

 

Now we're looping back to Ureka, and since the last NPC for Ureka was female, this one will be male and he is under some Strain.

Our last Ureka NPC was the wife of a timber baron, so that means that there are probably a good number of lumber workers of varying varieties and that has got to be hard work. We also established that she used her immense social power to protect her timber baron wife from any evidence that there might be anything wrong with her operations. So let's make our strained NPC the face of what's going wrong with Dolbeer Timber.

There are a couple of ways to play that. One way is simply to accept that being a lumberjack is a dangerous job. Another would be to lean in to an aspect of the Fallout series, which is the dark humor of corporate absurdity. Vault-Tec and the other corporations of pre-Fallout America were constantly developing new products and new lines of scientific research. The Vaults themselves were given over to psychological and sociological experiments, but there was nothing that Vault-Tec wouldn't try to improve upon. We find these documented in the games via logs kept on the various computer terminals throughout the game environments.

So there might be an efficiency upgrade to the fusion donkey that pulls an immense log at up to 100 feet per second, but nobody was aware of how fast that really is and 12 loggers were crushed. Which is still an improvement, since the last tree of that size cost 15 loggers their lives.

In either case, Harry is a rough and tumble kind of guy. And I think the Strain he's under isn't just the labor of harvesting enormous redwood trees. I think he's lost something that he is struggling to get back. Maybe he was there when the fusion donkey crushed those loggers and he feels the need to get justice for them. As a post-apocalyptic reconstruction of the 19th Century, it is both before and after OSHA.

Name: Harry Bridges

Appearance: A solidly built white man with a bushy dark beard and a knit cap on his head. His clothing is rugged, flannel shirts and denim jeans.

Quote: "Do right by your team and they'll see you through"

Roleplaying: Gruff and empathetic.

Background: Harry's been a lumberjack long enough to know how dangerous it is. He's lost a number of fellow loggers to enormous trees and the powerful equipment needed to move them. He's got some ideas about how to make things safer if only anyone would listen.

Key Info:

Harry wants to make logging safer
Harry does not want to take extreme action, but might be forced into it.

Stat Block:

RPGaDay 2026 Day 12: Loss

 Now it's time to create a male NPC for the Eureka Ruins. This typically means that we're looking at a Ratfolk. And this Ratfolk is going to be someone who has experienced a Loss.

To keep things interesting, let's think about the kinds of losses that only Ratfolk can have. Such as their tail. Now, on the common rat, the tail actually does a lot of work. It helps with balance and heat regulation, among other things. Among the Ratfolk, the tail allows them to connect their minds with other Ratfolk to form a collective consciousness known as a Rat King. The Ratfolk of the Eureka Ruins are led by such a hivemind, which has applied its intellect to the problem of the people of Ureka.

But that's not the only Rat King. Similar collectives may be formed to accomplish some other goal requiring significant mental effort, which are known as Philosopher Kings.

So today's NPC, who I'll call Splinter, was part of one of these Philosopher Kings, but after a raid on the school they were occupying by the Ratcatchers, his tail was severed, removing him from the collective and destroying any chance of joining another. Not only has Splinter had to adapt to being alone in his own head, the loss of the nerve clusters in his tail has affected his cognition as well.

Having his tail severed in a Ratcatcher raid gives him reason to be antagonistic, but the link to a Philosopher King is intended to tie in to the other Tag that was rolled for the Eureka Ruins: Hidden Purpose. Whether that's something that the Ratfolk themselves are working on, or something that came to Eureka before the Collapse that they are trying to discover (I'm not sure yet myself), that's something that should be brought up.

Name: Splinter

Appearance: A dark-furred Ratfolk with scars on his body and no tail.

Quote:

Roleplaying: His mind is splintered. He's got more control when he's calm, but especially when agitated, he will suddenly trail off or pause, unconsciously trying to pass off the mental effort along the link that is no longer there. His memory is muddled because some pieces of it were stored in other rats when he was separated.

Background: Splinter spent much of his life linked into a Philosopher King living in the Eureka High School library. A Ratcatcher raid some years ago stormed the place and forcibly separated the Philosopher King, leaving Splinter as the only survivor. Now missing a tail, he struggles to manage thoughts and memories that are only fragments of the hivemind.

Key Info:

Splinter likely has information from his time in a Philosopher King that could reveal a secret that the Ratfolk are trying to keep or discover.

Stat Block:

RPGaDay 2026 Day 11: Tact

 

Now to create a female NPC for Cow Town. With the prompt being Tact, there's the temptation to recycle the society matron concept that I already used for Ureka. But Cow Town has its own needs. I think someone with a lot of Tact in Cow Town would probably be a doctor who has to give their patients increasingly bad news.

But we also want to use this round to create NPCs that are possibly antagonistic and would wind up in conflict with a prospective adventuring party. So let's make her a little cold, a little ruthless, maybe a little too eager to make the hard decisions.

Name: Dr. Kristi Hale

Appearance: Middle aged aged, thin faced white woman with her light brown hair pulled up into a messy beehive in a failing effort to keep it out of her face. She wears a clean lab coat over worn, drab clothes.

Quote: "Would you please stop! You're not doing anyone any good!"

Roleplaying: She uses the forms of politeness, but she is used to being obeyed. "Please" is an order.

Background: She took over her father's practice as the Cow Town doctor when his passing from radiation poisoning forced her to take it on. She was quite young at the time and she was not prepared for the amount of death she would oversee.

Key Info:

Dr. Hale is likely to restrict care for patients that she feels are lost causes.

Stat Block: