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?))
He lowered himself onto the cushion, the fabric damp and musty beneath him. The flickering candlelight cast shadows across his face as he began to speak, his voice low but steady.
“I once called Norland home—though it never felt like one,” he said. “When I was just nine years old, I ran. Took nothing with me but a bruised memory and a half-eaten loaf of bread. I felt I needed distance from Norland, so Alba was the place with shadows deep enough to hide in. That’s where I ended up.”
His gaze flicked toward the hanging candles, watching one flame tremble as if in sympathy.
“Talking… doesn’t come easily to me,” he continued. “I find silence more trustworthy than most people.”
His eyes dropped, fingers absentmindedly tracing the edge of a burn mark on his sleeve.
“I grew up scraping by in the back alleys and broken streets of Alba. Learned more from watching cutpurses and drunks than I ever would’ve from books or priests. The city raised me, in its own cruel way.”
There was a pause—almost involuntary—before he spoke again, softer now.
“No one ever taught me to read—not properly. I can make out signs, warnings, a few words scrawled on paper… but when it comes to the written word, I’m more blind than most.”
The hag watched him closely, as if weighing every syllable. He leaned in slightly, his voice edged with something darker.
“I’ve done things to survive. Things I’m not proud of. I don’t ask many questions when there’s coin on the table. If the price is right… I’ll do nearly anything.”
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