A Sorrowsworn is what a person becomes when the Sorrow takes them, as everyone in the Vale has heard.1 Petra Ashford named one on sight in the forest north of the Sisters' farm on the night of 27 Coldrise, 1714 PSF, and told the Light Wardens with her to draw.2
The sorrowsworn are also a family of creatures in Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse.3 The one the party fought used the statistics of the lonely sorrowsworn.4
Appearance
Before it turns, the one the party found passed for a man leaning against a tree in a straw hat, pale and gaunt in the lantern light.2 Its skin had gone a dreary grey. Black ooze came out of its mouth and its eyes, and it gurgled.2
Its arms lengthened as it reached for the Wardens, with bone cracking out through the skin. One arm narrowed to a fine point. Both hung off loose flesh and dragged along the ground as it stepped forward.2
Abilities
It throws an arm out like a harpoon on a rope, drives the point home and reels the target in, then holds them against itself with the other arm.5 The one in the forest aimed its first strike at Petra Ashford’s waist rather than anything vital, cut the lantern off her belt and dragged her into the dark.5
It wails. The sound alone drove blood out of Ashford’s nose and mouth.5 For Iva it arrived as a voice inside her head instead, which left her convinced there was no point fighting and put her on the ground.5
Wounds dealt to it in the dark closed part way, the black ichor pulling them shut. Wounds dealt to it in lantern light stayed open, and it kept out of the light where it could.5 Burned through the stomach and still standing, it forced hands of black ichor out of the hole to crawl up its body and hold its wounds closed.5 Fire finished it: the ichor burned away and it did not get up.5
Behavior
The one in the forest talked before it did anything else. It said it had lived in the town, that its wife did not love it any more, that it had grown sad and lonely, and that the three Wardens were the first people it had seen in days. It asked one of them to come closer and let it hold them, and told them, “So lonely, so alone, but not anymore.”2 Burned nearly through, it said, “I will not be alone. I will not be alone again. I will not go into the dark alone,” and fought on.5
History
Session 7
The party and the three Light Wardens killed it in the clearing two miles north of the Standing Stone on the night of 27 Coldrise, 1714 PSF. Rhysaene finished it with three rays of fire, the first burning away the ichor holding it together and the last taking out the place where its heart would have been.5 Destroying it let the Sisters complete their warding ritual.5
Hazel burned the body. Petra Ashford told the party that it had been a person, and that nobody had seen a Sorrowsworn this close to Argentum in years.5
Session 8
The party concluded that the Sorrowsworn they killed had been Douglas Fletcher, a farmer of Silverthorn whose wife had been searching for him.1
Everyone in the Vale has heard that those who succumb to the Sorrow become Sorrowsworn, and that nothing is more dangerous. Few have seen one. Dealing with them is the work of the Inquisition’s Purifiers, and they are rare enough that none of the party had seen one before.1 Hazel may have heard Hecate mention dealing with one in Hazel’s childhood.1 Iva had taken them for Order propaganda.1