Gootcha

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For a beginner-friendly player guide, see Gootcha/Player Guide.

Gootcha

Halfling Rogue

Personality

A clever infiltrator who maintained deep cover within the Cult of the Dragon.

A streak of class snobbery surfaced in Session 52 when the party was handed a ruined fort to restore — "rebuilding this structure sounds like peasant work, not… Deez Nuts type of work." So did a rare flicker of conscience, after she put an arrow into an unidentified invisible target: "I also feel bad because we don't know if she's an enemy or not."

Faction Membership

  • Harpers – an agent of the Harpers; bears the Harper signet ring (see Equipment). Her squire, Will, is a Harper placement out of Baldur's Gate [1]. Rank 3 — Ciphermaster, conferred August 2026: she now runs a Harper cell of her own, with a cipher clerk posted to Nuts Deep to read her notebook and field agents she directs across the Sword Coast. Harper intelligence (including The Grove Burnings and the Prophecy of the Thorn-Born Star's third stanza) arrives directly in her magic notebook.

The Raven Queen

Gootcha has a personal, defining bond with the Raven Queen, goddess of death and fate (first explored in Session 36 - Gootcha Talks to Death). She regards the souls of those she kills as offerings sent on to the Raven Queen's domain. In Session 44 - Garmok's Mine she made a point of slaying a bearded devil with her crossbow specifically so that its soul would be carried to the Raven Queen's realm rather than reforming in the Hells — quipping, "Go visit my Raven Queen, see what she thinks of all these souls I've been sending her." Her death-aligned powers flow from this patronage, and even her resurrection in the Hells required her to remain death-aligned.

The Pact Weapon Reveal

A major mechanical clarification landed in Session 52: the Raven-Queen effect rides on her pact weapon, not on any one item. Gootcha can make any weapon her pact weapon, and a kill with it sends the soul permanently to the Raven Queen — no resurrection. The Shadowfell Crossbow does not need to be wielded for this to work.[1]

The Cult's Central Problem

As of Session 52, the Cult of the Dragon has identified Gootcha herself as the reason Deez Nuts cannot be dealt with. Under interrogation, Rook Blackstring laid it out: prior hit squads sent after the party "have not been able to resurrect them. So we know it's a problem, and we expect that it's due to her."

The consequence is chilling. Enemies dispatched against Deez Nuts now come to the fight having already made peace with permanent death — because they know they will not be coming back.

Soul Tokens

Gootcha's Raven Queen abilities are fueled by Soul Tokens — a rare, hoarded resource earned only by killing something that has itself "escaped death." As of the Session 50 voyage home the party held two (taken from Lord Valtheran and an assassin). In The Turnip Wagon Ambush she took two more — from Rook Blackstring and Keith Sorrowmere, both previously-resurrected creatures (only such creatures yield a token) — bringing the party's total to four.

Spending a token powers abilities such as:

  • Threshold Walk — teleport the whole party to a place Gootcha vividly remembers.
  • Stolen Vitality — over half a long rest, restore all of a companion's spell slots or all their HP, and cure their diseases, curses, and exhaustion.
  • Reaper's Verdict — a sneak attack becomes an automatic critical hit for maximum damage.
  • Queen's Veto — a reaction to overrule a creature dropping to 0 HP, restoring it to half its maximum.

The party voted to hoard the tokens rather than spend them freely.

Session 51 — Old Instincts, New Rules (2026-06-28)

Back in Luskan, Gootcha's +10 Sleight of Hand finally got its exercise: she pickpocketed a Ship Kurth bridge guard and found the answer to the city's sickness in his purse — 20 gold, 18 of them blood-red (the party's first hard evidence of the coin corruption), plus an unidentified gold ring set with a blue gemstone, which she immediately put on and now wears.

She re-summoned her familiar in cat form as Catalicious to scout the Superior Stables (the horses approved), then ran two clean heists under the Cloak of Invisibility and Keyleth's Pass Without a Trace — a 34 Stealth safecrack at the stables and a Gaseous Form infiltration of the school. Both jobs followed her own thief's code: she took only the red coins and left equal ordinary gold in their place. "What little bit of goodness that I have, I am only going to take the red."

She also carries a fresh grudge: the Superior Stables proprietress horsewhipped Karma's bat familiar Batty out of the air and killed it. Gootcha's verdict: "Vengeance would be fine." And she handed the Prophecy of the Thorn-Born Star research to Maccath the Crimson.

Session 52 — The Reason They Stay Dead (2026-07-12)

Aspect Mid-Combat

Gootcha's Tempered Soul Aspect crystallized in the middle of a fight — on the hidden shortbow shot that opened The Turnip Wagon Ambush. The spend itself tipped her over the threshold, and her die was retroactively upgraded for that very roll.

Will the Squire

Her squire is Will, assigned from the Harpers in Baldur's Gate — and promptly deployed as a canary, sent to search a suspicious wagon on the road.

Beek-a-boo as Semaphore

Her familiar Beek-a-boo was used as a silent semaphore, circling pointedly over the position of a hidden enemy. Nobody in the party worked out what it meant.

Session 53 — Wyrmling-Slayer on the Walls (2026-08-09)

In the Battle of Nuts Deep (played by Ashley, remoting in from Patty's) she was ice-cold from the crenellations:

  • Evasion zeroed the second Blue Dragon Wyrmling's 28-damage lightning breath — the same blast that dropped her squire Will beside her.
  • When Baelgrum's Command grounded that wyrmling on the wall, she poisoned it (poison sneak attack — trading a sneak die to force a Con save; it failed) and killed it the next round with crossbow and poisoned sneak.
  • A natural 20 crossbow crit blasted a skeleton archer clean off the wall.
  • She spent her bonus action on triage — administering a healing potion to the downed Will ("Don't try to be a hero. That was a lucky first hit.")

Her Tempered Soul Aspect domain was defined: name, memory, and what has passed — rolls drawing on memory, past knowledge, or experience, aligned with the Raven Queen's dominion over death and memory (the DM intends to tighten the wording). Now level 9. At the harvest her Thieves' Tools were ruled a generalist fine-work column — her 10 stripped the first wyrmling's Azure Scale Coat and talons.

Equipment

  • Harper signet ring (acquired Session 45): casts Disguise Self at will, and carries 3 charges shared between Gaseous Form and Expeditious Retreat. (Two Gaseous Form charges spent in the S51 school heist.)
  • Gauntlets of Ogre Power — gives her surprising raw strength for a halfling (used in S44 to shove aside rubble the others struggled with).
  • Patron Signet pact item (from the Compact, S50): Hex / Blindness-Deafness / Hypnotic Pattern. She also gained the universal Tempered Soul feat.
  • Shadowfell Crossbow — as of S52, it need not be wielded for the Raven-Queen permanent-death effect; that rides on her pact weapon, which can be any weapon she chooses.
  • Gold ring with a blue gemstone [2] — lifted from a Ship Kurth guard's purse; unidentified; worn anyway.
  • A raven familiar she scouts and casts through — her earlier raven died to the Mind Gobbler in S45; by S50 her raven scout is named Beek-a-boo; in S51 she re-summoned it in cat form as Catalicious (instantly mobbed by schoolchildren, adored by horses). Beek-a-boo made his first kill in Session 55 — a wounded Peryton, slain in its own nest by a Chill Touch channeled through his beak — earning the title murder crow.
  • Her magic notebook — the channel through which Harper intelligence reaches her, and, since Ciphermaster, the one her handler at Nuts Deep reads and answers.

Character Arc

  • Successfully infiltrated the Cult of the Dragon as a possible double agent
  • Had a cultist contact named Murray who was mysteriously murdered [3]
  • Navigated the delicate balance of maintaining cover while helping the party
  • Serves as a sender of souls to the Raven Queen (see above)
  • Confirmed as a Harper agent with the signet ring in Session 45
  • Died with the party against Arauthator (run by Patty in Session 49); reforged in the Hells and bound into the Compact in Session 50.
  • Cracked the Luskan coin mystery with a pickpocket and pulled off two leave-the-gold heists in Session 51
  • Named by the Cult of the Dragon as its central problem in Session 52 — the reason Deez Nuts's victims stay dead. She is now, personally, the thing the Cult is trying to solve.
  • Killed a Blue Dragon Wyrmling and saved her own squire in the Battle of Nuts Deep [4]
  • Raised to Harpers Rank 3 — Ciphermaster (August 2026), given a cell of her own: a cipher clerk resident at Nuts Deep and field agents posted across the Sword Coast at her direction.

Relationships

Appearances

Correspondence

Everything sent or received under her name, each piece kept on its own page. The campaign-wide collection is at Correspondence.

Date Letter Sent by To
Hammer 4, 1489 Harper Dispatch: Boareskr Bridge Hesk Amberlane, road-desk, Berdusk Gootcha
Hammer 6, 1489 Harper Letter: Founding the Nightingales Leosin Erlanthar Gootcha
Hammer 9, 1489 Harper Dispatch: A Source at the Bridge Leosin Erlanthar Gootcha
Hammer 14, 1489 Nightingale Dispatch: Eyes at the Bridge Gootcha The Nightingales' archive
Hammer 17, 1489 Harper Reply: The Najara Question Leosin Erlanthar Gootcha
Hammer 24, 1489 Nightingale Dispatch: The Serpent's Prisoner Gootcha The Nightingales' archive
Hammer 24, 1489 Nightingale Letter: The Najara Watch Gootcha Leosin Erlanthar

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Session 52.
  2. ↑ Session 51.
  3. ↑ Session 25.
  4. ↑ Session 53.
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