When I was writing The Festival of Faces (my Halloween-themed mini-adventure), I decided that Phandalin needed an “Old Nan” type character. I love Old Nan and her stories. If you’re a fan of the A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF) novels, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

For those of you who haven’t read the books, but perhaps you’ve watched Game of Thrones (where she has one semi-significant scene), Old Nan is the oldest living person in Winterfell, and perhaps the Seven Kingdoms. In the books, she serves as a portal into the lore of the Stark family, heroes for the ages (The Last Hero, Symeon Star Eyes) long-dead monsters (giants, dragons) and supernatural beings (The Children of the Forest, The Others, The Night King).

She shares this knowledge through hearth tales told to the children gathered at her feet as she knits in her rocking chair. With her voice scarcely a whisper above the click click click of her knitting needles, Old Nan terrorizes her young audience with fantastical lore that almost every adult disregards as nothing more than stories created to frighten children. Little do they know that Winterfell’s storyteller is, in fact, a very reliable source of truth when it comes to the wonders and terrors that inhabit Westros, unseen by most.

If ASOAF was a game of Dungeons & Dragons, Old Nan would surely be the Dungeon Master, delivering lore to her players through an NPC.

With The Festival of Faces intended to be a semi-spooky holiday-themed mini-adventure focused on all three pillars of adventure (combat/exploration/social), I wanted to include a NPC who knew that the ghouls, zombies, banshees, and skeletons in Lost Mine of Phandelver’s pages were more than just hearth tales; that these things actually existed in the world. Stories told in ways a child could process.

As the oldest living person in Phandalin (who also just happens to be trained in religious lore), Sister Garaele made the most sense for this role.

The Festival of Faces includes four such tales. The adventure is free for download, but given that Halloween approaches, I thought I’d share each of these stories here, rather than have them hidden over on DMs Guild. I’m proud of these stories, and I want them to be put to good use in a festive, seasonal game!

If you like these stories, there’s a lot of other goodies in The Festival of Faces. Please consider downloading it to find out for yourself!

Today, Sister Garaele tells the children about ghouls:

“They were humans once, these miners. That was before an early winter storm caught them unprepared and snowbound in a valley hidden amongst the western peaks of the Sword Mountains. After they had eaten their ponies and their boot leather, they turned to murder and cannibalism to fill their bellies. Not much later, the cold came for them. But instead of finding everlasting peace in death, they found eternal hunger in undeath, for the Gods abhor a cannibal. Some say they’ve seen these ghouls in the hinterlands of Phandalin, gnawing the bones of the dead. When they cannot find graves to plunder, they’ve been known to hunt the living. There’s a reason we bury our dead far from town, children.”

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