NPC - The White Horseman

NPC - The White Horseman

Near the hills of the Fals River as it winds its way into eastern Ket is a recent battlefield between an army of marauding Hobgoblins and Kettish warriors. The bodies of the dead still rot in the fields. Spirits roam the land and none more prominent than The White Horseman. Still in his armor and carrying lance and shield he rides the edges of the field, terrifying local farmers and hunters, as the Kettish are reknowned for their dread of ghosts and spirits.

A delegation of clerics is due from Lopolla to cleanse the battlfield and put to rest the spirits but as with all things except business in Ket the delegation is slow to arrive. The battlefield, after all, will still be there so the clerics take their time.

The White Horseman is actually part of a group stripping the dead of their valuables. He is normally either Burc, Rifki, or Ferda (two brothers and a sister) dressed in white on a white horse with clay on their face and paint or white cloth on their weapons and shield.

There are seven of them in their family lead by their mother Savina. She has been going over the bodies with a fine tooth comb with an eye out for the commander of the Kettish force who wore a ruby ring of particular note. So far she hasn't found him (as he survived and has been taken prisoner by a handful of escaping hobgoblins).

Twenty-seven hobgoblins escaped the battle, all from the Primrose Scimitar clan. They have three human captives, the commander Arad, his sergeant, a grizzled veteran, Mirac, and a young trooper named Ruzgar. The commander has a head-wound which is how he was captured and why sergeant Mirac ordered the trooper to surrender to the hobgoblins. While the monsters are completely without mercy they do ransom captives and are not without honor. Mirac has always thought of them more like a colony of ants or hive of bees rather than others of goblin-kind.

The hobgoblin leading this group is incongruously named Flower Mountain and was not even a clan leader but a Five-hand (leading twenty-five or so other hobgoblins). The minor Chief who died in the battle lead some five hundred warriors of the clan to their death and he took the prisoners to salvage something from the debacle. Currently they are holed-up in a hidden cave system in a nearby hill while the Kettish patrols scour the area.

The battlefield scavengers have an idea where they are but see no profit in informing anyone of the hobgoblins camp or their own presence while they loot the dead.