Dragonwilds:Nightingale

Template:Infobox NPC Nightingale was a highwaywoman of Bramblemead who robbed caravans and tax collectors during the village's final years and distributed the proceeds among its people. She was killed by the assassin Dragonwilds:Moragrin, who was hired by the nobility of Dragonwilds:Brynmoor and who proved to be her elder sister.

History

Corruption ran through Bramblemead in its final years, with nobles taking disproportionate shares of the region's wealth and the priesthood permitting it in exchange for payment, which left commoners poorer and their work harder. Nightingale attacked trader caravans carrying goods to the castle and took the purses they carried, and tax collectors surrendered their wealth to the woman in green. She took her name from the whistling of her arrows in flight, a musical tone that frightened those she targeted, and the morning after an attack villagers found purses of coin left in flowerboxes, on window shelves, and beneath sleeping cats.Template:CiteJournal The nobility wanted her erased from public memory rather than merely captured, and the difficulty lay in her standing among the villagers, who regarded her as a local hero because she returned what she took. They hired the hunter Moragrin, an assassin trained in several weapon disciplines, who spent days following accounts of Nightingale through the village in a succession of disguises and learned only that the villagers loved her and would protect her identity.Template:CiteJournal

Moragrin abandoned the interrogations and laid a trap instead, sending a caravan loaded with gold from the village to the castle by night, and Nightingale came for it. The two proved evenly matched until a magpie, woken by the fighting, dived at them, and the distraction let Moragrin drive her blade through Nightingale's heart. On removing the mask, Moragrin found she had killed her own younger sister.Template:CiteJournal