1d6 Random High Level Adventuress NPC's Encounter Table For Your Old School Campaigns

There are ladies who don't have time or wait for anyone to 'take care' of them. These lady adventurers are forces of nature in their own rights and might if the party acts nicely take them in hand to help them out. Perhaps to act as patrons or information brokers, often these adventurers can be found at the fringes or dimensional borderlands between worlds. For sufficient treasure they'll be glad to help if its in their best interests.

Several adventuress are based on Njinga Mbande or Ana de Sousa Nzinga Mbande

In pulp adventures these ladies could be invaluable but use them sparingly for their impact on an adventure is in the novelty of the characters appearances. They are dangerous forces of nature and highly specialized in how they can impact an on going campaign.

1d6 Random High Level
Adventuress NPC's Encounter Table

1. Queen Gel' Te Trus - This former adventurer has found her niche as a black magician & queen among a people lost to the ages. She is a ninth level wizard with several ancient demonic pacts that she uses to protect her people. She is wise as she is deadly but her intelligence is her greatest weapon, a master chess player she often pits enemies against each other but has at her command a guild of assassins & duelists who often come from a wide variety of walks of life & social standing. She is great patron of adventurers however & often finances expeditions across dimensional divides. Here former party of adventurers forms the core of her court. 
2. Naba Naba  - This very dangerous & former cunning thief is now the head of her own thieves guild that operates as a group of mid wives for a wide variety of wealthy clients. They boast several witches within their ranks but they are actually all thieves of one stripe or another but not in the classic type. These ladies are each dedicated protectors of children and hunt a wide variety of exploiters of them. These are quickly and quietly murdered, their gold or goods are taken & the operations destroyed in a quiet fashion. Naba Naba often hunts special prey herself through her 'wolves' operatives of fifth or better level which move across social and social lines. She often pays adventurers for information on wizards, slavers, and others sometimes acting as patrons for those seeking revenge against these sorts. 
3. Duchess Fl'ra 'The Green Lady' this former fighter now turned land owner is the owner of a well off plantation operation. She is also a master swords women who has journeyed across space & time making her wealth. Her husband was her partner but died in a horrific battle against the forces of Hell. She now seeks to train & use a wide variety of fighters who have seen far too much. Her fighters are all very dangerous in their own right and command top dollar as mercenaries. Those who have trained with her send her a five percent tithe every new moon. She sells arms, equipment, and information to prospective adventurers. She is also a very dangerous opponent of the forces of chaos & Hell. 
4. Sister Val - This former adventurer is now the head of a travel flock of very dangerous worshipers of the power of Law. She appears to be a beggar & priestess of the local migrant workers but is actually one of the most potential inquisitors of Law seen. Her zeal is dangerous and as a ninth level cleric she has seen it all and travel across the worlds. For 'small' a donation she will advise & perhaps help groups of adventurers but she is fickle and very dangerous. 
5. Lady Jessica - A ninth level former wizard of the darkest type this midnight queen is has traveled to many distant lands and made her fortune with a core group of outlaws. She is now a wealthy land owner but uses her black magic to help out and act as a patron to other groups of wizards & adventurers. Her thirst for black knowledge is tempered by a very dangerous streak of politic. She has several minor cults that she uses as her cat's paws throughout the planes and her reach is far. Paying for relics and treasures her former pupils still bring her. She is still a force to be recokoned with even all these centuries after her adventuring career has ended.. A great patron but a dangerous lady to cross.She often travels in disguise among various temples across Europe and beyond.
6. 'The lady who travels ' is a mysterious costume adventurer who is a whisper on the wind but her pistols have killed and murdered many evil rival outlaws. Her guild of masked outlaws have been seen throughout the planes acting as highwaymen & thieves to many mercenary outfits. She takes her cut but how and why is not known. She has acted as patron for no less then fifty two other dimensional adventures through strange upper crust proxy houses and agents. But her wrath knows no bounds should she be double crossed.
   
   
   

Commentary On Ass Kicking Warrior Women of The Old Mars Setting

Diane thanks for the email & that's a great question, 'How do you place more women warriors on an 'Old Mars' setting & make them credible for players?' 'And are there real world historical examples of these?' Yes, and yes to both questions. Since Jeddaks,queens, and other royals of Mars exist in the classic science fantasy of Edgar Rice Burroughs, C.L. Moore, & Leigh Brackett its not a hard stretch to place classic historical female warriors within these fictional bounds. "The Dahomey Amazons or N'Nonmiton of  which means "our mothers" in Fon, were a Fon all-female military regiment of the Kingdom of Dahomey in the present-day Republic of Benin which lasted until the end of the 19th century. They were so named by Western observers and historians due to their similarity to the semi-mythical Amazons of ancient Anatolia and the Black Sea", at least according to their wiki entry. 

They served as some of the inspiration for Lamentations of the Flame Princess's World of The Lost which features a wide variety of warrior women with similar skill sets by Rafael Chandler. Now I've written extensively about this source book before. Basically your dealing with women warriors who are not only competent but agile, lightly armed, & used to killing within their environment. Africa proving to be one of the inspirations of Edgar Rice Burroughs for not only Tarzan but Barsoom as well. Africa was one of the last great unexplored frontiers well into the '20s to Western eyes.

But what does this have to do with 'Old Mars' as a setting? Quite a bit because your dealing with race & class separated in both Warriors of the Red Planet & Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.  So this means that your going  to be dealing with Amazons within the bounds of 'Old Mars' as a human nation of adventurers cycling through the Human & Martian city states, smaller kingdoms, even the po dunk Western style settlements ala C.L. Moore.  There is a lot to pull from from using World of the Lost from robotic horrors, to energy weapons and more for an 'Old Mars' campaign. I digress.

So what does this have to do with 'Old Mars'? Well pulling from Edgar Rice Burroughs one of his later efforts shows a completely different side to those Martian princesses in 'A Fighting Man of Mars'. Since its Frank Frazetta's birth a couple of days ago here's the Doubleday 1973 cover of  The Master Mind of Mars & A  Fighting Man of Mars. I'll cover The Master Mind of Mars another day. Wiki has a really good break down of two of the essential Barsoom books.



These two novels are intertwined," The story-teller is Ulysses Paxton, protagonist of the previous novel, The Master Mind of Mars, but this story is not about him; rather, it is the tale of Tan Hadron of Hastor, a lowly, poor padwar (a low-ranking officer) who is in love with the beautiful, haughty Sanoma Tora, daughter of Tor Hatan, a minor but rich noble. As he is only a padwar, Sanoma spurns him. Then Sanoma Tora is kidnapped.

As Tan Hadron crosses Mars ("Barsoom", as Burroughs calls it) searching for Sanoma Tora, he encounters some of Barsoom's most ferocious beasts: huge, many-armed, flesh-eating white apes, gigantic spiders, and the insane cannibals of U-Gor. He also meets the mad scientist Phor Tak, who cackles "Heigh-oo!" and is crazed with the desire for revenge.

The initial simplicity of Burroughs' well-worn pursuit plot is elaborated by Hadron's rescue of an escaped slave, Tavia, from a band of six-limbed green Tharks, en route to the city of Jahar where Hadron believes Sanoma Tora has been taken. Tavia is an atypical Burroughs heroine; depicted as self-reliant and competent with weapons, witty and intelligent, she compares favorably for both reader and Hadron with beautiful but shallow Sanoma Tora, who ultimately shows herself unworthy of the virtuous hero. With the addition of Nur An, a disaffected Jaharian warrior, and another escaped woman slave, Phao, Hadron's quest becomes more collaborative than Burroughs' usual, although Tavia, in an unsurprising plot development, is revealed to be a princess at the end"
Its really Tavia that's important; "Tavia is an atypical Burroughs heroine; depicted as self-reliant and competent with weapons, witty and intelligent." Burroughs Martian women are not your typical bubble headed heroines or the usual 'Sword & Sorcery' 'damsels in distress' in fact these ladies are bound to be mercenaries & adventurers within their own rights. Many of the games I run Martian ladies are some of the most blood thirst & dangerous  adversaries player's PC can run across. Leigh Brackett's 'The Sword of Rhiannon' has a number of female Martian queens and royals running around in the background of a lush million year plus setting of Mars ancient past.


So what does this have to do with the Amazon power blocks on old Mars? Well, if we're looking at Hyperborean races intermingling through the Boreas Winds onto 'Old Mars' then your looking at Amazon warriors, adventurers, wizards, clerics, outlaws, and others making their way into the social structure of outlaw nations, thieves guilds, thieves quarters, anywhere that they can assimilate into the fringe elements that adventurers are drawn to. They're going to exploit the 'patriarchal controlled' decedent royal houses, and play them for all their worth. So are Martian women adventurers & Hyperborean lady adventurers going to get along? I think that you could see some mixed parties but I also don't think either group is going to see the other for anything other then competition in the wastelands pure and simple.

Lady adventurers are probably found in every single quarter of 'Old Mars' having run my fair share of  Warriors of the Red Planet, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, and even Dark Albion. Players love lady warriors as PC's. When you get into the wastelands of the archaic pulp origin of 'Old Mars' doesn't dictate the origin point of your adventurers.
In fact I'd be remiss for not mentioning Dark Albion's great section on women adventurers which had some nice ideas for using real historic lady warriors as a guide for that world's fantastic fantasy setting that's grounded in real  world history. Some of those ideas might work in other games enhancing play.

The tropes & ideas of pulp writers  of the past should be explored & to some extent exploited by OSR players & dungeon masters. There are plenty of ways of break molds & stereo types of the past with some imagination & creativity. Edgar Rice Burroughs, C.L. Moore, & Leigh Brackett were some of the trail blazers for many other writers who followed in their foot steps. We're only playing in the shadows of those who came before us.
Note that this is for personal use only and is not an attempt to violate the copyright or trademark of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea nor the Warriors of the Red Planet rpg systems
Note that neither Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea nor the Warriors of the Red Planet rpg systems is anyway responsible for the content or materials of Swords & Stitchery.
Ideas, items, names, adventure ideas, opinions to follow are the copyright & trademark of the author & Dark Corner Productions