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Fallen Machina
Nihilore CC BY 4.0

Scanlan Shorthalt

Scanlan Shorthalt — “The Silver Tongue”

Scanlan Shorthalt, the Silver Tongue, carrying broadsheets and a cane through a rain-soaked Emon alley

“You know what they don’t write down? They don’t write down the songs. The empire is in the songs.” — Scanlan, Emon broadsheet, signed “a friend”, dated 811 P.D.

Public Memory

Gnome bard. Vox Machina’s propagandist, diplomat, and front-man. Wrote the Vanguard Hymnal — the songbook Vox Machina circulated to convince ordinary people they were liberators. (Modern children sing inverted parodies of these songs at festivals; the originals are banned but everyone knows them.)

Scanlan is the only member of Vox Machina whose body was never recovered. He was last seen in 813 P.D., during the Saviors’ final assault on Vox Machina’s mountain stronghold. He vanished. The Saviors searched. The Saviors are still searching.

Whispered Truth

Most of the Saviors privately believe Scanlan is alive. Vecna believes it openly — he claims he can sense Scanlan’s continued breath in the world, faintly, the way one can sense a slow leak in a great vessel. Vecna will not say where.

Scanlan in life was the most genuinely intelligent of Vox Machina. He understood what they were doing. He understood the cost. He participated anyway, then designed the escape route. The other six did not know about it.

The Vox Machinist cults that exist in the modern world circulate broadsheets that are clearly current writing, in his style, dated within the last year. Some are forgeries. The Saviors are not certain all of them are.

Stats & Build — as currently encountered (Tier 3)

  • Tier 3 (level 16).
  • Class: Bard (College of Lore) 16.
  • Signature gear: Mythcarver (legendary sword, currently disguised as a walking-stick on his person), and a lot of cantrip-disguise. He carries no other obviously magical items.
  • Suggested CR: 15 if cornered. He will not fight if he can talk. He almost always can talk.
  • Special: he has the Wish spell once per long rest from a ring he stole from Tiberius before Tiberius died. He will not use it lightly.

Roleplay Hooks

  • Voice: warm, witty, exhausted underneath. A lifetime of pretending to be people has worn the original down. He is genuinely funny. He is also the most morally complex Fallen Machinist living — he might help the party against a cult resurrecting his old friends.
  • Soft spots: Kaylie. His own old comrades, in spite of everything (he liked them). The act of writing.
  • Hard spots: any suggestion he is “the worst of them.” (He thinks so. He hates being told.)

Return Conditions

Scanlan is already returned, secretly, the entire campaign. He is the campaign’s most flexible recurring NPC. Possible roles:

  1. The hidden mentor. He befriends the party in disguise (a printer, a tutor, an innkeeper) over several arcs. They learn who he is at a key moment in Tier 3. The reveal can be devastating or redemptive.
  2. The reluctant ally. A cult is genuinely trying to bring back Vex’ahlia or Pike. Scanlan needs the party to stop them before Vox Machina exists again. He will not fight beside them — he will leave broadsheets, songs, and clues.
  3. The final villain. If the campaign goes Reckoning-stance dark, Scanlan is the only Fallen capable of an active threat in the present. He has ideas. He has been writing for twenty years. He has not been idle.

Default recommendation: option 1. Scanlan is the campaign’s most affecting reveal if he is the friend the party did not know they had.