Your character has just arrived in a swampy, dim town. As they look around, their gaze is met with shacks and cabins. It smells of rotted wood and wet moss. They 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?))
Example:
Cal Burn hesitated before stepping further into the candlelit tent. The old woman’s voice was cracked like parched earth, yet it carried weight—like she knew him before he even spoke.
He lowered himself onto the cushion, his leather cloak damp with swamp mist. The smell of burning herbs mixed with the scent of rotted wood, and shadows danced along the tent walls.
“I don’t know what you think you know,” Cal Burn muttered, rubbing a scar along his jaw, “but I doubt you’ve been expecting me.”
The hag chuckled, a low, rasping sound. “Oh, but I have. Tell me, boy, do the dreams still haunt you?”
His fingers curled into his palm. How did she know about the dreams? The ones where the black water rose to swallow him whole, where eyes—glowing like embers—watched from beneath the surface?
He swallowed hard. “I don’t have a story worth telling.”
She leaned forward, the candlelight illuminating her face—withered and ancient, but sharp-eyed. “Liar.”
A long silence followed, then finally, Cal Burn exhaled.
“I was born under an eclipse,” he began, voice quieter now. “Or so they say. The night the moon turned black, the water rose in the valley. My mother died giving birth to me, and my father… he said I was marked. Cursed by the marsh itself.”
The hag listened, her expression unreadable.
“The village shunned me, called me ‘swampspawn’ when the rains came early, when crops failed. And then—when the river dried up completely—they blamed me. So, I left. I’ve been wandering ever since.”
The candles flickered, as if a wind had passed through despite the tent’s stillness. The old woman tapped a crooked nail against the wooden floor.
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