tezzaract

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?))
 

Liza all but falls onto the cushion, flashing the hag a sharp-tusked grin. "Ooh, my story. What a funny way of asking - never got why people put it like that. It's so... Imprecise! Vague! If you're after specifics, you're better off asking practically any other question. Shall I start all the way at the beginning, when my poor ma had to push out three little brats at once? When I was a little kiddy, stirring up mud with sticks and making so-called potions out of soap? How 'bout last week, when I lost my favourite book down a well - don't ask - and climbed down after it and then I lost my me down the well?" The goblin speaks at a mile-a-minute pace, hardly pausing to take a breath in-between the avalanche of words tumbling out of her mouth. It's a wonder she hasn't run out of air yet, and she snickers, taking the hag's lack of an answer as permission to go on.

"The name's Liza. Don't worry about the surname, it's not important."

"I grew up one of five kids, smack bang in the middle. There was us triplets, and our big sister, and our littlest brother. Don't you worry about who they are - we're talking about me here. Our ma 'n' pa were salespeople, travellers, so we moved about a lot. I got to see a lot of the world, but never very much for very often. That's the thing about travelling salespeople - you're always bloody travelling. Never putting down roots. Never staying put. Never just... Stopping, and taking it all in, whatever it is. And at my big old age of nineteen," an ironic lilt edges into her tone - she's aware of how silly that sounds. "I'm sick to death of it. Call it a super-duper-early mid-life crisis, leaving the nest, whatever. But I'm done. I wanna set out, do my own thing. I'm leaving them behind.'"

"I fancy myself a bit of a amateur scholar, y'know. Who would've guessed - a goblin that likes tinkering and learning! Shocking!" A smirk twitches across her lips, and she chuckles again. "You've probably heard that a thousand times from a thousand different gobbos. Can't say I stand out from the crowd." She pauses, and for a beat, an oddly intense expression darkens her face. "Yet."

And quick as a flash, she brightens again, and is rocking in her seat with enthusiasm, waving her hands about for emphasis as she explains. "I just want to do something BIG, you know? Capital B-I-G. Really make a name for myself. I don't know with what, I don't know with how, I just know it's gonna be BIG and DIFFERENT and it's gonna change people's lives. Mark my words, it's gonna happen. But to do that, I gotta do some learning. Need me a teacher. Access to facilities. Proper training, and all that. A kid on the road can only teach themselves so much."

((Hi there! Thank you so much for reading this through! I've kept things pretty vague, so I can adjust Liza over time as I get a better grasp of the server's lore and get settled in, but feel free to let me know if anything needs to be changed or clarified, or if you have any suggestions! Happy to answer any questions you might have. A couple of friends told me about LOTC and I'm excited to see more of what they talked about!))