MooWood

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?))

Immediately the elf is apprehensive, gathering her skirts beneath the muddied cloak she wears in case she needs to flee. Her lips press to a thin line, the bags of sleeplessness under her eyes making her glare appear more malicious than usual. "And why would someone like you," she inquires with venom, "be looking for me? I was told this place would be safe. Mean you to tell me this is not true?" Just what she needs right now; another betrayal to add to the pile. Kaatreya keeps her veil in place, despite it being rude in higher company. This crone, surely, is not higher company.

Before the old woman has a chance to respond, Kaatreya huffs and waves a hand dismissively. Her feet ache from days of travel and at the slightest hint of an encounter which might not kill or capture her, it takes all of Kaatreya's resolve to place herself gently in the seat rather than collapse into it. "No matter. I'm already a dead woman walking... What is the harm in indulging a decrepit crone? Have you wine to spare that has yet to become vinegar?" As a tarnished goblet is offered to her, Kaatreya peels off her riding gloves and flexes her fingers. The first fresh air her hands have felt in days makes the skin tingle somewhat. "It is all to naught but dust and dreams in the end. Someone as old as you ought to know that already. But very well..."

"I hail from a house of priests. Hailed, I suppose, as of a few days ago. What a small change of diction to have such enormous weight. What my brother could have possibly done to anger the higher clans, I know not. Our house was quiet, apolitical, possessed neither of great strength nor of great position. Maybe that was what did it. One who refuses to take sides finds themselves without allies. Or perhaps... truly times are changing, and the world has little need for faith. The altar is gone now. The statues we tended have no doubt been reduced to rubble. How does a ghost share a tale? What song speaks the wind? You ask for a story, crone, as though I come baring some grandiose tale..." She swirls the goblet, taking a long sip as she glances back towards the opening of the tent. Footsteps drawing near, then away again. Under her breath, Kaatreya curses herself for being so jumpy. "The fire started in the south hall and seemed to consume even the stone itself. Smoke made it hard to make out the assailing banners, but by the impacts made to the stone, I would wager one of the great arcanist clans. Before that? Angels above, before all that..."

"I was a studious girl, not given to any particular field but that of magic and the finer arts. The honor of ladylike comportment and etiquette lessons was bestowed upon my sisters, beauty being among their many virtues I lack. Our parents passed into the family crypt before I could know them well and my brother assumed control of the family affairs. We lived modestly," she insists with a waspish bite, brushing at the beaded lace of her veil as she adjusts it, "reliant wholly upon patronage and the meager earnings of some property or another at the edges of the city. While my sisters courted for good marriages, I learned all I could without formal tutoring. Eventually I came to assist my brother with management of the altar and our humble congregation. ...The fire interrupted one of our services, those dogs. One of the mages among them struck me directly and I have... not been able to cast but even a gust of wind ever since." A truth for which Kaatreya seems especially bitter, lifting the veil to take a long, seething sip of wine. "Surely he and my sisters are gone or fled, as have I... The other day, I received word to meet one of my bannermen here in this backwater you undoubtedly call home, but I saw him hanging from a tree on the way in..."

Sitting forward in the seat, Kaatreya rests her empty goblet upon a nearby crate with a sharp tap, her fury at the whole situation evident, simmering beneath the surface. Her eyes glint beneath the veil enough to promise volatility, as hot oil on a pan shimmers and threatens to set alight. Sliding her hands back into the riding gloves, the dark elf finally draws back her veil and regards the crone. Her pale eyes and sallow, sharp features hold no hope for a continued existence. Unwashed for days, her once-finely braided hair hangs in wisps from its styling, lank and dull as tin. She watches the hag for some time, allowing the silence to draw out before she gathers her skirts and cloak and rises. "If you have been waiting for me, no doubt you were waiting for him. ...I could vanish into the night and begin life anew and we could part as strangers, or you could claim whatever reward you were no doubt promised to stall me with such frivolity as a story. What will it be?"

Kaatreya draws her veil back down over her features and begins to walk out, unless of course the old woman stops her...