Sahrah Kerrinan
Sahrah is a monster trader. She and her followers run through the forests of the world, looking for the eggs of trainable creatures. Sahrah paints herself as a businesswoman, but in truth she is a mercenary, a warlord and a bully. She claims to just be chasing money, but she is sadistic and cruel as much as she is selfish. Even her own followers fear her, but not as much as they are inspired by her. Sahrah’s followers are awed by her vision and intelligence, and obey her because she is the one who has the plan.
Sahrah was born in the city as the daughter of a store owner. Sahrah’s father had little skill or talent, and was stuck running a second rate, overpriced general store. But his lack of ability and his overdeveloped ambition combined to make him an especially frustrated man. He got involved several times in attempts to elevate his position in life, but they all failed miserably, usually ending with significant loss of finances. With his wife dead, having killed herself a year after Sahrah was born, and no other children, Sahrah’s father had only one focus of his anger: his daughter. Sahrah was constantly abused by her father. One of his favorite methods of torment was to pin her left arm down and carve into it with a knife. To this day, Sahrah has scars on that arm.
Sahrah could not escape her father’s reputation. Everyone knew her as the daughter of a talentless brute, and refused to get involved with her. Other children teased or outright avoided her, adults made conscious efforts not to notice her. So Sahrah looked for an escape, and found it in the forest right outside of the city.
She loved to play in that forest, and especially loved the strange animals she found there. She spent hours escaping into this world of nature, studying the strange insects she found there and trying to understand their primitive interactions. It was in doing this that she ran across a skilled ranger. The ranger had come to the forest on the way to the city, hoping to find some employment, and began harvesting various poisons from the area. He found the young girl when looking for a rare beetle that contained a particularly vicious paralysis toxin. Sahrah followed the stranger around, who paid very little attention to her, but answered her questions directly and bluntly. Sahrah was starved for attention, and tried to win the ranger’s approval, which she ultimately did by leading him to the beetle he was looking for from just a rough description. The ranger was impressed, and agreed to take Sahrah on as an apprentice.
For a few months Sahrah and the ranger worked together in the city. Mostly Sahrah did simple tasks for the ranger, taking care of his wolf companion and fetching him water, while the ranger took on far more dangerous tasks. But the ranger was rash, and took a job kidnapping a noble’s son. He managed to kidnap the boy, but the noble hired a young adventuring group to retrieve him. The group, hungry for recognition and power, hunted the ranger down and retrieved the boy. The ranger managed to escape, but news of what he had done had already spread. He had to leave the city. Sahrah ran into him when he was leaving the forest, and he explained what happened. He explained that he had to leave, and he expected that Sahrah would stay behind. But to his surprise, Sahrah asked to come with him. Shocked, the ranger agreed and brought her along.
Sahrah proved to be a talented ranger herself, and grew from a young girl into a woman. Her ranger master taught her about business as much as tracking and hunting. He taught her to ignore the morality of any job that came her way, and to judge it only as a matter of risk and reward. It did not take much convincing for Sahrah to silence her conscience. In fact, she seemed to love the immoral activities her lifestyle brought her to. Her master was simply indifferent to morality, Sahrah was outright wicked.
The ranger died on a mission, which Sahrah has blamed herself for ever since. They had been hired by a wizard to steal an emerald from a merchant, and were attacking the caravan that was transporting it. Sahrah and her master ambushed the caravan, they attacked from both sides. There were twelve guards in total, and Sahrah and her master were each supposed to take out six. Unfortunately, Sahrah made an oversight and did not kill one of the guards she had been assigned to. She sliced his leg open and stabbed him through the chest, bringing him to his knees but he did not die. But the guard got one attack off on Sahrah’s master, who was already wounded, and killed him in one blow. With reinforcements coming in fast, Sahrah could not take the body of her master with her. She retrieved the emerald and fled, a decision she has been struggling with for years now. She has relived that moment hundreds of times, and she cannot silence that voice that tells her that she could have gotten the body to a priest and raised him from the dead.
Sahrah took a few more missions herself, but gave up eventually. It felt hollow without her master there, and without him she could not pull off the sort of jobs that turned a reasonable profit. So she gradually turned to a different line of work, of raising and training monsters. It started simple enough, she trained a few dogs for a group of mercenaries, then trained wolves for a street gang, and it kept escalating until she was training more and more exotic mounts.
Sahrah also found herself with quite the following. Her unique line of work attracted followers, there was some appeal in training and selling monsters that brought people to her. In truth Sahrah’s subordinates are very much like her, they are sadistic, cruel and hungry for power and recognition. But they respect her, and Sahrah is an effective leader.
Sahrah and her gang spend most of their time finding eggs and young offspring of rare monsters, ones that are still young enough to be trained. They look for dungeons that these monsters might have moved into, kill the parents and take the young. Then they find whoever will pay, whether they are mad mages trying to conquer the world or just common mercenaries. Sahrah and her followers will also buy eggs and young monsters from adventurers, but only if it seems to make more sense to pay for them than to just kill the current owners.
While Sahrah seems to just care about the money, she is in truth an anarchist. She hates society and specifically urban locations. She cannot even enter a city, they bring back too many memories of her childhood, and she wants them all to burn. A welcome side effect of selling these monsters is the spread of chaos, which she believes will result in the destruction of all organized society. Once the entire world returns to a less urban state of being, Sahrah reasons that she will be the unofficial ruler of this new global society. She will not be restricted as to where she can go, and the entire world will be her paradise. It will be a world of forest and shade, with millions of hiding places, all of which she will know. There will always be conflict, and she will be the one pulling all the strings.
When the business of selling monsters is slow, Sahrah and her followers attack remote towns. They usually make one attack, causing some significant collateral damage and killing a few of the citizens to “Prove their point,” and then demand an extortion fee be paid. Sahrah always carefully calculates the fee so that the village can pay it, but it would severely cripple the town’s economy. The ransom may be food, money, or anything the town produces, but most towns do not recover from one of these raids. Sahrah and her followers make the argument that they are doing this for the money, and are simply calculating out the maximum they can get for their efforts. But in truth this is just an excuse for them to practice their cruelty, a convenient outlet that both allows them to torment the innocent and to get paid for it.
Sahrah and her gang keep a few of their trained monsters for themselves. The DM should choose which monsters are the most appropriate, but Sahrah prefers flying mounts of some kind. Sahrah does not care for her monsters or her followers, and will let them all die if she must. However, she knows better than to waste time and money, and will protect her investments to the best of her ability.
Chaotic Evil female human (Medium Humanoid)
Ranger 6th, Fighter 2nd
Hit Dice: 6d8 + 2d10 + 24 (64 hp)
Initiative: +4
Speed: 30 ft
Armor Class: 24 (+4 dex, +1 natural, +9 armor)
Base Attack/Grapple: (+8/+3)/+12
Attack: 2 Sickles (+11/+11/+6/+6)
Damage: Sickles (1d6+6)
Space/Reach: 5ft/5ft
Saves: Fort +13, Ref +11, Will +7
Abilities: Str 18, Dex 19, Con 17, Int 16, Wis 17, Cha 15
Skills: Handle Animal +13, Knowledge (geography) +12, Knowledge (nature) +12, Ride +15, Heal +12, Move Silently +13, Survival +12, Spot +12, Listen +12, Intimidate +7, Climb +9, Jump +9
Feats: Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes, Great Fortitude, Weapon Focus (sickle), Weapon Specialization (sickle), Combat Reflexes
Special Abilities: 1st Favored Enemy (human), Track, Wild Empathy, Combat Style (two-weapon combat), Endurance, Animal Companion (wolf), 2nd Favored Enemy (elf), Improved Combat Style (two-weapon combat)
Equipment: +5 Chain Shirt, Amulet of Natural Armor +1
Languages: Common, Elven, Goblin, Dwarven
Spells: Speak With Animals, Charm Animal