You’ve just arrived in a swampy, dim town. As you look around, your gaze is met with shacks and cabins. It smells of rotted wood and wet moss. You 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?))
Kenrik closes his eyes, looks up and inhales the candles' scents deeply. "Do you know what it's like to have your world crash down around you?" He sits on the cushion, adjusting his cloak to do so. "I used to be a boy with a happy, whole family in Almaris. We weren't the richest or the most well-known family, but we were happy. My father made an honest living as a merchant of animal pelts and meats. We were happy. Then the Mori came. I used to be a boy with a family. Now, I'm a man barely scraping by." Kenrik gestures to his cloak, a solemn look upon his face. "This belonged to him, you know? My father. I was, maybe, 6... 7 years old back then. Time has lost its meaning now. This whole outfit used to be his. While the citizens of Almaris were evacuating, I saw my father laid lifelessly against a tree by the roadside; my mother nowhere to be seen. For days, I could not leave his side. When his body started to decompose, I couldn't bare to look at him. I ran. Aimlessly. The citizens of Almaris would've been miles away by then. I took my father's cloak for warmth and bundled his clothes into my bag as a keepsake. Thus begun decades of mere survival. That's what caused this..." Behind his unkempt veil of shadowy hair, Kenrik reveals his right eye, as gray as stone, with a large claw mark scarred deep into it. Was it an animal attack or a man-made infliction? Kenrik could not remember... After a long pause, Kenrik looks into the old hag's eyes and desperately pleads,
"I want to know what home feels like again."
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