Den_Mat0407

You’ve just arrived in a swampy, dim town. As you look around, your gaze is met with shacks and cabins. It smells of rotted wood and wet moss. You duck and step into a tattered tent, illuminated by a series of candles suspended in the air. At the back of the tent, an old hag raises her head, “What brings you to this dingy town? she begins, then pauses to study your face—”Ah, it’s you. I’ve been expecting you. Sit,” she gestures at a cushion, “Tell me your story.”

((How do you respond?))

Rothirk begins talking slowly and with some delight as he never got to tell his story that often: "Well we'd better sit down for this story, it all begins in the twilight years of Almaris, my family was living near a small tavern called Jared's tavern, business was good as my family owned some land and a small but humble mine, but one day there was a war, the war of the wigs, this war devastated my family's land and they were forced into the capital of Urguan, they were appaled by the city life and preferred the life on their once quiet land because there they had space and peace." Rothirk begins zoning out and thinks of the stories he got told by his family about their earliest family history and then looks with a face of anger before the old hag manages to catch his attention again. "Ah yes my excuses that happens sometimes anyways when that war ended my family moved out of the capital and went even farther into the forests of the dwarven kingdom, some would call them honorary forest dwarves." Rothirk begins looking at his small but sharp forest axe as he explains further: "There they learned some forestry skills which they passed down generation upon generation through continents and time again would my family move from the mountains into the forests, this until a couple hundred years ago when one descendant of mine, moved back into the cities as no one knew why we lived in the forests as genetic mountain dwarves." Rothirk begins smiling as he goes into the next part, a strong indicator he liked this part of the story and the thought that some of his family is still out there and continues his story: "They returned to the mountains and some liked it and stayed and some hated it and left for their forests again, the once that went back to their forests stayed on the continent of Failor and became descendant settlers, forever the mark of a great civilization." "However the rest went on to Aevos where they lived quiet lives, mostly as miners or sometimes as forestry experts as they still taught forestry skills to their children even though they had then long passed over the forests." This is eventually how I got taught some forest skills by my father, this was mostly basic stuff as we had only the oral tradition left, I remember talking with my father and mother about the different kind of trees that exist in this world and how to chop a tree correctly because there is indeed a way and how to split a log without splitting yourself in two." Rothirk explained all this with various hand gestures to show the old hag what he was talking about when he ranted on about his forestry knowledge. "All this made me a sort of weird fellow because mountain dwarves as me shouldn't know as much about the forest as I do." Rothirk begins zoning out again when he catches himself this time and goes on: "anyhow continuing, In my family there were great incidents as we now call them some of my family went on to fight in the Aevos coalition war, none came back, we then got struck by an unfortunate plague which wiped out every single member of my family except me, my brother and my Uncle we weren't struck as we were out learning in the field about the various different trees that existed in Aevos, and when we came back we were instructed by the city officials that we couldn't enter our house for the plague would take us as well." This part was said with visible sad emotions on the face of Rothirk before he manages to hide his emotions once more before continuing: "Then we made the perhaps brash decision to move out of the city and into the forests once more, which leads me to the modern era where I moved out my uncle's home and into the great unknown and this is where this story ends." "That was too much talking for me now where is that ale where the tavern is so famous for?" Rothirk yells as he stands up and slams the bar excitedly as he savours the thought of finally drinking some quality ale.