He lowered himself onto the cushion, the flickering candlelight painting shadows across the tent. His voice came quiet, yet steady.
"My name is Zanen Stillhart," he began. "I walk these lands as one still seeking his path. Family, I have none - at least none I have ever known. The monks of a distant cloister took me in when I was but an infant, left at their gates with nothing but a blanket to mark my arrival."
He paused, letting the thought settle before continuing.
"They told me I never once cried - not when they found me, nor in the years that followed. For this, they named me Stillhart - a child of calm breath and quiet gaze. It was a name not of blood, but of the life I was given, and in time, I made it my own."
A faint smile tugged at the corner of his lips as memories stirred.
He spoke of how he grew restless among the cloister’s stone walls. Though he cherished their wisdom, he longed to know the wider world. Books had filled his hands, while the woods beyond the monastery filled his heart. He spent long days buried in scripture and scrolls, and longer nights listening to the whispers of the wind through the pines. Both the written word and the natural world had taught him truths no sermon ever could.
"When I came of age," he said, "I chose to give back - to labor for those who had raised me, to honor the debt I owed. Yet the pull of the road grew stronger with every passing season. And so, having repaid what I could, I left the cloister to seek my own purpose."
His eyes rose to meet the hag’s gaze, steady though alight with a spark.
"Perhaps it is dwarven blood in my veins that makes me reserved, though I know not from where I truly hail. I am quiet by nature, a man of few words, more often buried in thought, work, or the beauty of the world around me. Yet I value deeply those few bonds I do form. To those I call companion, I will offer aid, loyalty, and every skill I possess."
"This place, this mire... perhaps it is here that I will begin to uncover the purpose I seek."
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