The Boy Who Could Not Shudder and Shake
This is the fourth in my series adapting elements from each of the Grimm's Fairy Tales for Cairn in order of their KHM numbers. The story this time is The Boy Who Could Not Shudder and Shake (KHM4).
This one is an absurd story about a dim-witted younger son who can’t shudder in fear and sets out into the world to learn how. He goes through increasingly odd situations trying to find ways to be scared: including staying in a house where a priest poses as a ghost, spending the night under a gallows with bodies hanging from it, and spending several nights in an old house with a walking bed, bodies falling down the chimney in pieces, and an angry corpse being brought in in a coffin, amongst other nonsense.
It ends (as so many Grimm tales do) when he is allowed to marry a princess after staying three nights in the last house. She has cold water poured on him, which makes him shudder, but he laments that he still doesn’t know fear.
This is exactly where I think it is interesting to pick up with a gameable NPC. The boy has grown into an old man and, now that his wife has died, he sets off again to try to finally learn fear before he passes on.
The Old Man Who Didn’t Know Fear
1 HP, 4 STR, 4 DEX, 20 WIL
Decrepit old man in ill-fitting traveling clothes and an overstuffed backpack charging fearlessly into every dangerous situation he can find hoping to learn fear
Likely to be found in or around a dungeon in great peril responding incoherently to the situation (e.g., trying to share his rations with a group of ravenous goblins)
Eager to join any party that might help him find more danger to face but entirely useless in almost all situations
Likely some of his servants are nearby trying to covertly keep an eye on him despite being instructed not to do so