Non-player character
Witch of the Cottage
DeceasedA nameless Burnt Wood witch, finally at rest; the party found her skeleton seated in her cottage after freeing Shadukar's souls.
- Ancestry
- Human
- Gender
- Female
- Location
- Burnt Wood
- Factions
- None
Overview
No one knows her name. The party knows her only as the Witch of the Cottage, a strange recluse who lived near Shadukar in the Burnt Wood.
When the party first met her, she was thin and frail, with a sunken face, a large nose, night-black hair, and an uncomfortable smile. She dressed entirely in black beneath a mourning veil. Dozens of ravens shared her decaying cottage and followed every visitor with their eyes.
The Party’s Visit
The party reached her cottage during a sudden thunderstorm. When an undead horde advanced through the rain, the Witch of the Cottage greeted its arrival with laughter and warned that the dead yearned for the visitors’ flesh.
After the party destroyed the horde, she performed a disturbing ritual on Kaelvhen. She pressed his head against the earth and forced black death larvae into his mouth. The ritual showed him a small black heart in a dry underground grotto, with purple and blue energy radiating through cracks around it and a constructed altar nearby.
The party fled the cottage after the vision.
Half an hour later, they saw five warforged heading toward her cottage. The party left without her.
Her History
The party learned her history in Session 24.
During the Last War, Boris and three other deserters from Karrnath found her cottage hidden in the woods. She gave them food and a place to hide while they prepared to move on and escape the war.
The other three soldiers tried to sexually assault her. Boris killed them, then stayed to protect her. In time, he and the woman who would become the Witch became lovers.
When Karrnathi forces massacred Shadukar after its surrender, she raged and blamed Boris for the acts of his countrymen. She cursed him and took his manhood. Humiliated and unable to face his former comrades, he hanged himself inside the cottage. The skeleton hanging on the wall was Boris, the man who had once saved her.
The decades that followed fractured her mind. The strange woman the party met had lived through that history and remained long after it as one of the undead.
Final Rest
In Session 24, after freeing Shadukar’s souls, the party returned to her cottage. They found her skeleton sitting in her chair. She had been undead, too; now she finally rested. The ravens left after her passing; none remained in the cottage.