Orphan with Family tattoos

[Roninblack]

Ok, so I am blessed with a new player joining our group, and in her background she included that she is a Halfling who was orphaned as a baby, and raised by these other people instead. but before her family died they tattood this newborn with a vine motif to symbolize her family and clan. Of course she knows all this, but not how to actually read the tattoos.

Now we're playing 3.5e and I'm playing in the Elsir Vale from Red hand of doom, so that the party get attached to the place before it gets torched here in a few levels, but halflings don't really have a strong presence in the Vale, and I am not sure what to do with this character hook. I went so far as to ask the player what she was hoping to get out of it, but my takeaway was that she wasn't sure what she was hoping for with them, which leaves me at a loss.

have you encountered something similar, what did you do? What should I do?

[Faily]

RHoD is rather famous for being easily adaptable and flexible with many things. I don't think it should be a problem to insert Halflings into the scenario.

Halflings, as fellow nature-lovers, could be living with the elves in the vale.

The distant dwarves that are referenced in one of the possible encounters (Dwarven gold) and mentioned as being sought out as potential allies (that will not make it in time), could be switched out with halflings.

You can swap out the treant (I *think* it was a treant but it's a part of the plot that we've always skipped the times I've played and GMed) and his buddies for halflings, being a remote and isolated group similarly to the elves, but with the angle of "no one notices the small-folk staying hidden" (in the vein of no one notices a hobbit kind of vibe).

[Roninblack]

Those are decent suggestions, thanks

[Martin Greywolf]

If you don't want to just inject halflings, her original folks could be from further afield - all you need for a payoff of something like this is a single NPC, or a small group, that recognizes the tattoos and wants something to do with it. A historian trying to figure out where this praticular branch of a ruling family went, a merchant that was entrusted with some sort of a minor magical doodad by the peoples and now wants to give it back... you get the idea.

[Batcathat]

If you don't want to just inject halflings, her original folks could be from further afield - all you need for a payoff of something like this is a single NPC, or a small group, that recognizes the tattoos and wants something to do with it. A historian trying to figure out where this praticular branch of a ruling family went, a merchant that was entrusted with some sort of a minor magical doodad by the peoples and now wants to give it back... you get the idea.

A more dramatic version could be someone who sees the tattoos and suddenly wants to kill her. Not only does she has a mysterious clan, they also have a mysterious conflict that could bring all sorts of trouble. For extra drama, they (whoever "they" are) might turn out to have something to do with her parents death, if it works with her established background.

[Duff]

Also worth noting the 3.5 Halflings are often nomadic - traveling merchants and the like.
So a similar motif painted on the side of a gypsy-style mobile home could be a hook or clue.

A similar wagon burnt outor abandoned after an attack would be a different sort of hook