Ethel Fernberry

When there was danger in the village, someone would always tell Ethel Fernberry. They were never quite sure how the little old lady managed to best wolves, goblins, and necromancers, but they didn't know that she'd been a prominent adventurer in her time, 40 years ago.

When people in her village started disappearing, of course someone went to Granny Ethel, and Granny will do anything to make sure peace is kept in her town. Including, but not limited to, traversing the gates between dimensions.



When Lionel and Ethel first met, he was tall, for a halfling, and built like a stick figure. He had wide shoulders but barely showed any muscle, and tougher-looking adventurers commonly joked that he could be snapped like a twig. He had thick, coarse, straight black hair that clashed so hard with his pale skin that it made him look sickly. He wore it cropped short, with long bangs in the front that had a tendency to fall into his eyes when he hadn't cut it in some time.

While he would have liked to say he had a noble and chivalrous personality, he often was overlooked for his quiet voice and tendency to show signs of nervousness easily, though he had a knack for finding reserves of bravado in places where other people would find none. Though he spent twice as long as other squires in his order learning the basics of combat, he knew his stuff quite well and could apprehend humanoid foes nonlethally with frightening skill.

When they met, Ethel Fernberry was a petty thief with only one misdemeanor standing between her and a punishment larger than a slap on the wrist, and Lionel Stony-hill was a farmer's son who craved intrigue beyond tilling the stony soil of his parents' farm. Lionel had just finished his education as a paladin of a small theology, focused on eradicating the undead, though he had very little personal interest with that. They met in a small tavern in a medium-sized town and drunkenly started a small band of adventurers doing dangerous tasks for large sums of money.

The exploit that launched them into the spotlight of fame and fortune was when they defeated the Alderpoint Whirlpool. For many years the water elemental had blocked the shortest road between Alderpoint and Grey's Ferry; the news of the opened road and the names of its liberators spread like wildfire. Successive feats only did to bolster their fame.

Perhaps the successes got to their heads, because a few years after their rise to greater glory, a research expedition into the underdark went horribly wrong. The party of adventurers and researchers came across a large hunting party of drow, and most were captured and killed immediately. Lionel fought bravely, but he was flanked on all sides. Ethel never quite remembered her escape clearly in the dark and the haze of bone-chilling fear, but she does remember Lionel's call to retreat getting cut off mid-yell. She remembers with crystal clarity the look on Lionel's face: stunned, at the knife that pierced his armor, as if he hadn't believed he was capable of being harmed.

None of the rest of the party was ever heard from again. Ethel used a portion of her fortune to live quietly for many years at the edge of a town nearby, divining fortunes for the townsfolk.

Through her knitting skills, or her fantastic stories of her exploits, or some quirk of fate, she became known as a grandmother figure to the local children, and in time, quite a number of the adults of the town, despite not having any children of her own.