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?))
Haldric Mossvale would step forward with the wary poise of a man used to shadows and broken places. His boots would squelch on the damp floor of the tent, leaving faint prints of mud and pine needles. The flickering candlelight dances across the hard lines of his face—face weathered not just by wind and frost, but by sorrow.
He lowers himself onto the cushion with a deep exhale, the leather of his jerkin creaking softly. One calloused hand idly brushes the pendant at his chest.
Then, with a voice like gravel over stone, quiet but deliberate, he says:
“Two winters past, I watched everything I loved burn. My village… my kin… her.”
“I could’ve chased vengeance. A blade in the dark. But blood for blood leaves the land no safer.”
“So I built. Hammered every nail with hope. Raised walls tall enough to hold back grief. A place where none would ever feel what I felt.”
“And just as the hearth grew warm again, I was taken. No thunder, no fire—just the swing of an axe… and then this place.”
“So tell me, Hag—if you've truly been expectin’ me… why? What is this place? And what does it want with a man like me?”
He fixes her with those storm-gray eyes—not aggressive, but unyielding. A Highlander torn from one world, still standing tall in the next.
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