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?))
She sit slowly, her gaze never leaving the old woman. Her cloak still drips with the swamp's filth. There's a moment of silence before she speak, her voice low and steady.
"I don’t know who told you about me, but my name holds no weight where I go. I come from a place forgotten by the sun… and now, I seek only answers. If you’ve truly been expecting me, then you already know—my story isn’t one told lightly."
*As she spoke, the memories flooded back—uninvited, yet vivid as ever. She remembered the bitter cold of that forest, the gnawing hunger, the way her tiny hands had trembled as she wandered among the trees, abandoned and forgotten. She could still hear the crackle of dry branches underfoot, the whisper of the wind through dead leaves, and the strange, almost guttural lullabies sung in her native tongue—a language now all but lost.
She came from a kingdom that no longer existed, razed by war and swallowed by time. Once it had been proud, steeped in old magics and older wounds, its people speaking a lilting language New Marian—rich with consonants and quiet sorrow. But it had fallen, like so many others. Its name barely lingered in the mouths of wandering traders or in dusty tomes hidden in forgotten corners of the world.
She didn’t even remember the name of the place(the place is Hanseti-Ruska but due to trauma her brain refuse to remembrance and aknowledge her past)—only fragments of its sounds, its music, and the stories her grandfather used to tell. He was not her blood, but he had taken her in when no one else would. An old woodsman with rough hands and kind eyes, who taught her how to read the trees, how to speak with the birds, and how to listen when the forest whispered back. He never asked where she came from—only smiled when she spoke in the old tongue, as if he understood more than he let on.
He had died protecting her. She had watched it happen—frozen in place as a wolf the size of a bear lunged at them in the dead of night, its eyes glowing like embers, its growl like thunder in her bones. Her grandfather had stood between her and the beast, axe in hand, defiant and fearless. He fell before the beast did.
And now, that memory burned behind her eyes like the dying light of a star.
She carried his axe still—not because she needed it, but because it was his. Because it was all she had left of that forest, that language, that life. Because she had sworn, standing over his broken body, she had promised herself that she would kill that wolf, not because revenge, or rage, but to set the soul of her grandpa free or at least is what her religions suggest her to do
"Ea remember.," she whispered into the dark, the words foreign to those around her, but sacred to her heart.
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