The Story

Tabitha Moonwrecker is a dwarven woman with a tiefling son, Adri. Tabitha moved to Fletcher’s Perch a few years after the original Fletchers died. She lives on one of the further farms and raises goats and sheep. She sells cheese, wool, milk, and meat in town. She also has a deal with Benjamin Hilt, a traveling merchant whose home base is in town. He sells her goods to other towns and shares the profits with her.

Over the past year or so, Tabitha has been having long bouts of illness. The town knows she’s sick when Adri sets up the market stall without her. Adri tries to put on a brave face, but he is clearly worried his mother is going to die soon.

What’s Going On

Tabitha has Delver’s Lung, a rare disease that afflicts Mountain Dwarfs. The symptoms are similar to influenza, but with a more intense fatigue. Dr. Pierce knows what the disease is, but the best she can do is treat the symptoms. Tabitha keeps collecting ranks of Exhaustion. Dr. Pierce can lower her Exhaustion, but she cannot get rid of it entirely. If Tabitha wants to get better, either she needs to leave for a town with the medical care she requires or someone needs to bring Dr. Pierce the medicine she needs to treat Tabitha.

What Can the Players Do?

If the players have Greater Restoration, they can treat Tabitha’s exhaustion and make her feel a rank better. If the players have Resurrection or True Resurrection, they can cure Tabitha by killing her and then bringing her back to life, though they will have trouble talking her, Adri, and Dr. Pierce into it.

The ingredient Dr. Pierce needs is kalmorite. She can source the rest by reaching out to other healers and medics in the area, but kalmorite is rare outside of the mountains and isn’t something that is readily sold. Kalmorite is like a salt crystal and she needs to grate it into the medicine she makes. The players can go on a quest to the mountains to find the mountain dwarves who mine and protect kalmorite and convince them to sell or give some to the players.

The players can also convince Tabitha to go to the mountains to receive the treatment she needs. She is very stubborn, though, so this is a very difficult task. The initial DC is 25, but the players can lower that by getting Adri to talk with her again and by building up a good reputation with her. Each quest can lower the DC by up to 4, but if the players harm one of Tabitha’s animals, it lowers by 2 instead. If the players kill one of her animals, it doesn’t lower at all.

Another option is for Tabitha to become a werewolf. The players would need to find some werewolves and convince them to turn Tabitha. They’d also need to convince Tabitha and Adri it was the right move.

Quests to Build Reputation

• One of Tabitha’s goats has escaped its pen and gone missing. Track the beast into the forest, potentially save it from a bear/group of gnolls or goblins/owlbear, capture it safely and take it back home or otherwise herd it back to the farm.
• A pack of wolves is stalking Tabitha’s sheep. Two have been taken and eaten already. Lure out the wolves or track them to their den and then kill them or find a way to otherwise keep them from Tabitha’s farm. 
  • Use either regular wolves or dire wolves, whichever is a better fit for your players. This should be a Medium to Hard encounter.
  • Consider mixing some werewolves into the pack and combining this with the return of Vivian Pike.
• Tabitha mentions that she has to share a well with a neighbor because the closer well on her farm is haunted by a ghost. The ghost is Arla Fletcher. Her parents were Anna and Bart. They told her the secret of Fletcher’s Perch, swearing her to secrecy. Arla was eaten by guilt and that guilt remains. She can be killed or she will move on willingly if she can apologize to the cousin she never met for what her parents did.