Mother Halla
Leader of the Anchorite Remnant on Hollow Keep.
A Fold-bleed survivor who came out of it a blank. Not a Fold-psion, not a gene-psion: a Fold-null, an absence where a person should register. She cannot feel the Fold and the Fold cannot find her.
Every other survivor of a bleed comes out marked. She came out empty, and she has built a theology on the difference. If the Fold looks at everything and does not look at her, then she is the one thing it has been kept from, and a thing kept back is a thing kept for a purpose.
She leads the Anchorite Remnant, who read the Penitent's Light as prophecy: a generation ark carrying a holy relic, drifting home after millennia, the first word returning. To her the ark is the sign, the casket is the relic and the thirty-one Fold-touched children are the seed.
She is wrong about all three. The casket is a Fold-bleed source whose makers were never identified, its seal failed two centuries ago, and the children are children.
She has two hundred zealots and a working knowledge of the Anchorite Communion's original verse-code, which means she can read the ark's chapel and its hymnal and the captain's last log in the language they were written in, and nobody else on Hollow Keep can.
She waits at the Keep. Whatever the party bring back -- the ark, the casket, the children, or all three -- she is there when they dock.
Rules Reference
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Abilities / Cha | 18 |
| Abilities / Con | 14 |
| Abilities / Dex | 14 |
| Abilities / Int | 15 |
| Abilities / Str | 10 |
| Abilities / Wis | 17 |
| Armor Class | 14 |
| Base Attack Bonus | 3 |
| Creature Type | Humanoid |
| Flat Ac | 12 |
| Hd Count | 5 |
| Hd Sides | 8 |
| Hit Dice | 5d8+10 |
| Hit Points | 38 |
| Hp Bonus | 10 |
| Initiative | 2 |
| Senses | Normal human vision; reads the Communion's verse-code on sight; passive Perception 16 |
| Size | M |
| Skills / Bureaucracy | 5 |
| Skills / Leadership | 8 |
| Skills / Notice | 6 |
| Skills / Persuasion | 12 |
| Skills / Sense Motive | 8 |
| Skills / Streetwise | 5 |
| Speed | 30 |
| Threat Rating | 5 |
| Touch Ac | 12 |
| Xp | 1800 |
| Dialogue Path | game/dialogue/npc-mother-halla.yaml |
Notes
Languages: Core Standard; Trade Cant; the Anchorite Communion's verse-code; enough archaic English to read a two-hundred-year-old hymnal aloud
Attacks
Communion staff
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
bonus | 4 |
category | melee |
damage | 1d6 |
name | Communion staff |
notes: Two centuries old, carried rather than wielded, and she has never needed it while two hundred people were standing behind her.
Special Abilities
Fold-Null
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
actionCost | passive |
name | Fold-Null |
description: Mother Halla does not register to Fold-sensing of any kind: no psion reads her, no Fold-touched creature tracks her, and the Fold-Lurker will pass her by. Player-visible: a party psion feels a hole in the room where she is standing, and the hole does not move when she does.
The Absence Is The Election
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
actionCost | passive |
name | The Absence Is The Election |
description: Every argument that she is merely a blank has already been put to her and confirms her: an instrument is not asked to feel the hand. Player-visible: no evidence about the casket, the children or the Communion moves her position, because all of it is prophecy arriving on schedule. The only thing that reaches her is a Communion verse she does not already know.
Two Hundred Standing
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
actionCost | Full-round (1/encounter) |
name | Two Hundred Standing |
description: Mother Halla does not fight. She stops speaking, and the Remnant behind her comes forward. Player-visible: the docking bay fills, and no combat statistic on the party's sheet is relevant to two hundred people who are not afraid of dying.