Shop: Ned’s Porter Service

While this business initially only provided porter services (carrying equipment and other goods) to merchants and adventurers, it now acts as a brokerage house for hirelings. This is the go-to place for a wide range of different hirelings; they provide such laborers as guides, torchbearers, valets, and cooks. All of the hirelings available through Ned’s Porter Service are laborers. They do not possess learned skills and are not combatants. If an adventurer is looking for something like a scribe or assassin they will have to go elsewhere. 

Contracts for the hirelings follow standard pricing and a hireling can be hired of variable lengths of time. However, a contract that lasts longer than 1 year means the hireling has entered an employee/employer relationship and is no longer a contract worker for Ned’s Porter Service. Ned’s does supply some life insurance to be collected upon death, but injuries sustained in the course of their duties are the responsibility of the persons hiring the hireling.

Ned Kiddler

Ned started out as a hireling, a porter, to a group of adventurers, the Ascent. On their last adventure they were exploring an old ruin when they came upon a liche, The Skinned, who decimated the party. Ned was allowed to leave as he was “beneath my notice” and “to spread the word that the ruin is not abandoned”. Ned fled. He was also happened to be carrying some of the treasure the party had already accumulated and used that gold to retire from active jobbing. He then started Ned’s Porter Service and eventually expanded it into a full service hireling agency.

Since retiring Ned has gone soft and packed on some pounds. He has a habit of always looking around him, like he expects to be ambushed at any moment. He also walks slowly and stooped over from long years of carrying large burdens.

Adventure Ideas

-While Ned is grateful that he was able to survive the encounter with The Skinned, he has long dreamt of some sort of retribution to make up for his survival and the death of the Ascent. He still has some money left and is looking to hire some adventurers to finally kill the liche.
-Lily Strand is the sister of Milo Strand, the fighter from the Ascent adventuring group. She believes Ned either made a deal with the liche or led the Ascent into a trap that got them killed. She wants revenge. She is not really being rational but that has not stopped her from accumulating a sum of money and hiring a group of adventurers to kill Ned Kiddler. Ned has gotten word of the coming attack and is likewise looking to hire the characters to protect him and then “stop Lily”.
-One of the employees of Ned's Porter Service, Ange Bartho, has not returned from his last assignment. He was hired as a torchbearer by a group of adventurers, the Gilded Scepter. Ned's Porter Service is looking to hire another group of adventurers to investigate what happened and bring him back. The Gilded Scepter had been asking around town about a ruin known as The Den of Iniquity.
 

List of Hirelings

This list does not include what particular occupation the hireling is skilled at. Pick a hireling and you can assume they are proficient in the task for which they were hired. Instead, this list is meant to provide some personalities and quirks for those hirelings in the character’s employ.

 

1)      Laerd Mikoluk- He is a collector of knives and loves talking about the topic. He will ask everyone in the party about their knives and swords; where they got them, how well they function, etc.

2)      Trent Burke- He is a writer. He is using his experiences with the party as a basis for his next novel. He can be seen scribbling lots of notes after each encounter.

3)      Madge Leith- This burly woman has an inferiority complex. She will attempt to do anything the party asks her to do, not matter its difficulty. She also will try to outdo everyone. She will always try to carry more than anyone else, always work later than everyone else, claims never to be tired, etc.

4)      Vic Ogletree- He is a failed bard and this job is “just something I’m doing in between gigs”. Despite this, he will often start singing to stay in practice. This can sometimes happen at inappropriate times. Also, he is a pretty bad singer.

5)      Chall Turke- He is a bit hard of hearing and often needs to have things explained a second time.

6)      Dawn Wigand- This burly woman tries very hard to always stay clean and pretty. She gets up early to make herself up. She tries to take baths whenever possible. Whatever money she makes goes to buying new clothes. Unfortunately, no one would ever call her pretty.

7)      Kriss Vanetti- She has a compulsive need to count everything. Every evening she counts the inventory of the party's supplies. She counts the number of coins the party has. She counts the number of goblins the party encounters. If something can be counted she does so.

8)      Valleri River- She talks very fast whenever speaking making it difficult to understand her at times.

9)      Phin Sealover- He likes to use clichés, metaphors,  and truisms but he always gets the saying wrong.

10)   Thom Moranos- He is a hypochondriac and always thinks he is sick. He never claims to be too sick to work, but he will constantly be complaining about the cold he has, how he tore a muscle in his leg, that he has a growth under his skin, that his skin color has turned a nasty shade of yellow, etc.