Velrith’thill was not always a wanderer, nor always a name spoken with unease. He was born in the cavern settlements of the Dark Elves, where hierarchy was carved as deeply as the stone itself. His early life was unremarkable by their standards—neither high-born nor utterly destitute, trained in the quiet disciplines expected of those who survive by caution rather than glory.
His name came later.
In his youth, Velrith had a habit of watching rather than speaking. Where others schemed, he observed; where others climbed, he endured. This disposition kept him alive, but it earned him little standing. Among his people, stillness can look too much like weakness.
The event that marked him—and gave him his name—was a fire.
Not the kind that warms or illuminates, but the kind that devours. A collapse in one of the deeper tunnels trapped a small working cohort, and what began as a rescue effort turned into chaos. Smoke, ash, and the choking dark blurred all distinction between friend and rival. Velrith emerged from it alive… but changed.
When he was pulled from the rubble, his face was coated in a pale grey ash that clung stubbornly to his skin long after it should have washed away. Whether it was superstition or something stranger, the color never fully left him. It dulled the natural tones of his complexion, giving him a perpetually ashen cast—like a man half-claimed by the ruin he survived.
From then on, he was no longer addressed as he once had been. He became Velrith’thill—Grey Face. Not a title of honor, but not quite an insult either. Something in between. A reminder.
In the years that followed, whispers gathered around him. Some claimed he had abandoned others in the tunnels. Others insisted he had guided several to safety. The truth mattered less than the ambiguity. Among Dark Elves, uncertainty breeds suspicion, and suspicion isolates.
Velrith did not argue.
Instead, he left.
Taking little more than what he could carry, he abandoned the cavern cities and the rigid structures that defined them. The surface world was not kind to his kind, but it offered something the depths did not: anonymity. Among strangers, a dark elf with an ashen face was no more than another curiosity—feared, perhaps, but not entangled in old debts or expectations.
Now, Velrith’thill walks as a wanderer. He trades in small skills—guiding through dangerous terrain, recovering lost things, listening where others talk too much. He rarely gives his full name, and when he does, it is without explanation.
What drives him is not redemption in any simple sense. It is something quieter: a need to keep moving, to avoid the weight of stillness where questions might finally catch up to him.
And yet, in certain moments—when the air grows thick with smoke, or when stone groans under strain—he hesitates.
As if remembering a choice he may or may not have made.
The traveller has just arrived in a small town. As they look around, their gaze is met with run down houses and shops. They duck into one of the shacks, illuminated by a series of candles suspended in the air. At the back of the small room, an old hag raises her head, “What brings you to this dingy town?" She begins, then pauses to study their face—”Ah, it’s you. I’ve been expecting you. Sit,” she gestures at a chair, “Where do you come from? What do you hope to make of yourself?”
Response:
Velrith lingers just inside the doorway, one hand still resting against the rough wood as his grey eyes adjust to the dim, wavering candlelight. He does not immediately sit. Instead, he studies the old woman in silence, his expression unreadable, before stepping further in and letting the door creak shut behind him.
“People who expect me are either liars or dangerous,” he says flatly, brushing a trace of dust from his sleeve as he approaches the chair. After a brief pause, he lowers himself into it with controlled ease, though he does not fully relax—his posture remains upright, ready. One leg crosses over the other, fingers loosely clasped, as his gaze drifts once across the room before returning to her.
“I come from wherever I last wasn’t wanted,” he continues, voice even, edged with something dry. “Before that? Stone. Smoke. The kind of place that doesn’t forgive mistakes.” His eyes narrow slightly, as if weighing how much to say, then dismissing the thought entirely.
“As for what I intend to make of myself…” He exhales quietly through his nose, tilting his head just a fraction. “I’ve found that intentions invite disappointment. I walk, I take work when it suits me, and I leave before anyone decides they know me.”
A faint, humorless curve touches his lips as he leans back just enough to seem at ease. “But since you claim to have been expecting me, perhaps you should tell me what I’m meant to become.”
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