You know how to strike subtly and exploit a foe's distraction. Once per turn, you can deal an extra 1d6 damage to one creature you hit with an attack roll if you have Advantage on the roll or if another enemy of the target is within 5 feet of it. This extra damage's type is the same as the weapon's.
Initiative Proficiency: add your Proficiency Bonus to Initiative rolls. Initiative Swap: immediately after rolling Initiative, you can swap your result with that of one willing ally in the same combat.
Choose two of your skill proficiencies: your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make with the chosen skills. Tilda applies hers to Stealth and Sleight of Hand.
You know Thieves' Cant plus one language of your choice (Tilda knows Harbor Cant, the smugglers' sign-speak of the Ratwharf).
You can take the Hide action even while you are obscured only by a creature that is at least one size larger than you.
You can move through the space of any creature that is a size larger than you, but you can't stop there.
When you roll a 1 on the d20 of a D20 Test, you can reroll the die, and you must use the new roll.
You have Advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the Frightened condition.
Behind the character
Tilda Fenn is a small, wiry halfling woman in her mid-twenties, wind-tangled chestnut hair braided with tarred cord and gull feathers, freckled cheeks, and a cheerful gap-toothed grin that never quite leaves her face even when it should. She wears salt-stiffened leather armor under a fisherman's oilskin coat, a hooded grey cloak beaded with harbor fog, and soft-soled boots that make no sound on wet planks. Two shortswords cross at her hips, one hilt wrapped in red cord; a kit of bent lockpicks rides her belt beside a coil of hemp rope and a stolen brass whistle.
She grew up on the Ratwharf piers, running cargo for the Harbor Kin before she was tall enough to see over a crate, and Dockmaster Crane has been chasing her off his manifests since she was a child stealing apples from his stores. She knows every loose board, every bribed guard and every gap in the harbor wall, and she has spent the quarantine using all of it to move food to her family in the fishmarket tenements. She has not yet found a route that gets them out.
Tilda is cheerful, nosy, and allergic to authority; she treats a locked door as a personal insult and a guard's patrol route as a puzzle someone left out for her. Her driving goal is to get her family out of the quarantine alive, by bribe, boat or tunnel, and never mind who has to be robbed to do it.
Before the adventure
Tilda Fenn was born in a fishmarket tenement three streets back from the Ratwharf piers, the middle of five children born to a longshoreman father and a net-mender mother who died of a winter fever when Tilda was nine. Her father, Joss Fenn, worked the Harbor Kin's cargo runs, and Tilda learned to walk on wet planks before she learned to read. By ten she was running sealed parcels between warehouses for the Kin, small enough to move through gaps in the harbor wall that no grown smuggler could use, and by twelve she had picked her first lock with a bent nail and a stolen file. The Kin's older dockworkers called her the Wharf Rat, and the name stuck because she wore it proudly.
Dockmaster Crane caught her fourteen years old and knee-deep in his ledger room, copying shipping manifests by candlelight. Instead of dragging her to the Watch, he made her copy the manifests properly, teaching her to read shipping codes, harbor ciphers and the Kin's private marks in the process. It was the closest thing to an apprenticeship she ever received, and she has robbed him a dozen times since, which both of them consider a form of affection.
At nineteen Tilda broke from the Harbor Kin and started working independent jobs, which the Kin considers an unpaid debt and Mirelle Vantt, who trained her, considers a personal betrayal. Tilda does not talk about why she left, and the truth is in the Kin's ledger: her father died owing a debt for cargo he moved for a rat-masked buyer, cargo Tilda now suspects was the cult's. She read the entry years ago and told no one, and the guilt of it sits in her chest like the sweet stench in the city's air.
When the Weeping Sister drifted into the harbor two weeks ago and the plague began, Tilda's world shrank to the fishmarket tenements where her surviving family, two brothers and a widowed aunt, wait behind a red-crossed door. She has spent the quarantine running food through the checkpoints, bribing guards with stolen silver, and mapping every gap in the harbor wall looking for a way out. She has found routes that work for one small halfling and none that work for a family, and the knowledge that she could leave alone and has not is the heaviest thing she carries.
She carries a brass whistle she picked from the body of an Ash Watch guard who died at the north wall the night a family was killed trying to flee. She was there. She did nothing. She has never told anyone.
Now she has fallen in with Captain Vey's investigation, because the plague that is killing her city and the cult that brought it are the same thing, and the manifest that proves it is hidden in the wooden leg of the only man on the docks she trusts. She is cheerful because the alternative is weeping, nosy because knowledge is the only currency the quarantine cannot devalue, and allergic to authority because every authority in Nostramus has failed the people she loves. She treats a locked door as a personal insult. She intends to pick every one of them before the city dies.
Threads to follow
Beneath the surface
What haunts them
What drives them
Personal quest · 1
Dockmaster Crane kept a copy of the Weeping Sister's manifest folded inside the hollow of his wooden leg, and the original was stolen by Mirelle Vantt. The copy names the ship's last port of call and the cargo it carried into Nostramus, and the Harbor Kin have already started burning the Ratwharf warehouses to hide what they moved. Tilda must get the copy out of Crane's office before the fire reaches it, decide whether to hand it to the Ash Watch or sell it to the highest bidder, and keep her family's tenement from going up with the rest of the district.
Reach Crane's office through the burning Ratwharf before the warehouse fires spread to the fishmarket tenements.
Personal quest · 2
Tilda spent her childhood running cargo for the Harbor Kin, and she knows their book of debts and favors is hidden in the Rat's Rest tavern's cellar. With Mirelle Vantt serving the Ratbound Choir, that ledger now contains the names of every smuggler who unknowingly moved cult supplies into the city. Tilda must slip into the Rat's Rest while Mirelle's enforcers drink above, copy or steal the ledger, and decide whether to expose the names or protect the smugglers who once fed her family. The ledger also records a debt owed to Tilda's dead father, and collecting it could change everything.
Infiltrate the Rat's Rest cellar through the hidden trapdoor behind the tap barrels.
Personal quest · 3
Tilda's driving goal is to get her family out of the quarantine alive, and she has spent weeks mapping every gap in the harbor wall without finding a route that works. Old Pell, the one-eyed ferryman, claims he once ran a night route through the Drowned Bell at low tide, before the chain went up and the water went wrong. Tilda must win Pell's trust, chart the drowned passage at low tide, and decide whether to use the route to smuggle her family out alone or share it with the desperate families of the fishmarket. The route passes close beneath the Weeping Sister's hull, where the rats are not the only things watching.
Earn Old Pell's trust by retrieving his lost ferry token from the Tallow Yard.
During The Missing Manifest, Tilda holds the only surviving copy of the Weeping Sister's manifest while the Ratwharf burns around her. Captain Vey wants it as evidence, the Harbor Kin want it destroyed, and a Harbor Kin smuggler has offered her 200 gold and a boat out of the city for it.
Delivering it earns Vey's trust, a writ of passage, and +2 to Persuasion against the Ash Watch permanently. Selling it earns 200 gp, the Smuggler's Compass, and Harbor Kin goodwill but makes Captain Vey hostile and delays the investigation by days. Keeping it gives Tilda leverage over both factions but marks her as a target for the Ratbound Choir, who send a Miasma Stalker after her within two days.
In The Kin's Ledger, Tilda discovers that her own father incurred a debt to the Harbor Kin by moving cargo for a rat-masked buyer, meaning her family's livelihood was built on the cult's supply line. The ledger names twelve smugglers who did the same.
Exposing the names gives the Ash Watch a purge list but makes Tilda a traitor to the Kin, costing her all Harbor Kin contacts and safe houses permanently. Protecting them keeps her network intact and grants advantage on Deception against the Kin, but leaves cult supply lines open, giving Act II encounters one extra cultist each. Collecting the debt grants 200 gp and a hidden tunnel map but marks her father's marker as evidence the Inquisitor can use against her family.
In A Door Out of the City, Tilda finds a working escape route beneath the Drowned Bell that could carry her family to safety past the harbor chain. The fishmarket tenements hold forty families who will die if the plague runs its course, and Old Pell's boat holds twelve.
Keeping it for her family moves them to safety but costs Tilda the fishmarket's trust, removing the militia ally in Act III. Sharing it grants the loyalty of forty families, a squad of volunteer fighters for one major encounter, and permanent advantage on Charisma checks in the fishmarket, but her own family must wait for a second crossing that may never come. Turning it over to the Watch earns Sergeant Holt's permanent aid and a squad of four Guards, but the Watch seals the route after one use and the families riot at the betrayal.
Reading the manifest's last line aloud on the pier
Tilda stops being a thief who happens to live in Nostramus and becomes someone who understands what the city is facing; she gains the ability to read Harbor Kin ciphers at a glance.
Choosing the fate of the twelve smugglers in the Kin's Ledger
Tilda either accepts that she is Harbor Kin to the bone or breaks from them forever; the former grants her the Harbor Whisper Ring's use, the latter grants her Captain Vey's open endorsement.
The choice at the Drowned Bell
Tilda either becomes the fishmarket's protector or its most successful deserter; either way, she can never again claim she had no choice.
Ally
Crane has been chasing Tilda off his manifests since she was a child stealing apples from his stores, and their rivalry softened into something like mutual respect over fifteen years of cat-and-mouse on the Ratwharf piers. He caught her fourteen years old and knee-deep in his ledger room, and instead of dragging her to the Watch he made her copy the manifests she had come to steal, teaching her to read shipping codes in the process.
She has robbed him a dozen times since; he has never once turned her in, because he says a dockmaster who cannot catch a halfling does not deserve the post. When the quarantine began, Crane found Tilda's family in the fishmarket tenements and left a barrel of salted fish at their door without a word. He keeps the manifest copy in his wooden leg because he does not trust anyone else in the district, and Tilda is the only person he would consider letting read it.
Enemy
Mirelle ran the Ratwharf piers when Tilda was a child runner, and she taught the girl everything she knows about locks, bribes and patrol routes before Tilda outgrew her usefulness and started working independent jobs. What Tilda does not know is that Mirelle marked her as Kin property the day she trained her, and the manifest theft that started the Ratwharf fires was Mirelle's way of punishing a debt-runner who thought she had left the family.
Now Mirelle serves the Ratbound Choir and has stolen the Weeping Sister's original manifest to hide the cult cargo the Kin moved, and she knows Tilda is digging into exactly what she buried. Mirelle has ordered the warehouse fires that threaten Tilda's family tenement, and she considers the halfling a loose end that charm has failed to tie off. Tilda, for her part, has never forgiven Mirelle for selling out the dockworkers who fed her during the lean years, and she intends to take the Harbor Whisper Ring off Mirelle's hand one way or another.
Faction
Tilda grew up inside the Harbor Kin's network, running cargo along the Ratwharf piers before she was tall enough to see over a crate, and the Kin's marks are scratched into every hiding place she knows. The older dockworkers remember her father and still slip her food when the Watch is not looking, and the smugglers she grew up with would hide her from the Ash Watch without asking why.
But the Kin's leadership has rotted: Mirelle Vantt secretly serves the Ratbound Choir, and the warehouse fires consuming Ratwharf are the Kin burning evidence of what they moved for the cult. Tilda's standing is genuine but fragile, because she left the network years ago to work independent jobs and the Kin does not forgive independence. She can call on perhaps a dozen loyal smugglers if she protects their names in the ledger, or she can burn her bridges entirely by exposing the Kin's cult connections to Captain Vey. Either way, the Kin knows every route she knows, and Mirelle knows her better than she knows herself.
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