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?))
An entertained grin spreads across the Adunian's face as he sets down a satchel, drawing from it several glimmering coins which he passes to the crone. "Your foresight must make you a lady well-acclaimed," he remarks, impressed.
The old woman gives a light scoff at his understated flattery as he kneels down on the cushion.
He speaks languidly, rather fatigued from the journey he had taken. "Though, I'm bewildered that one with your skills would need such knowledge of me."
The woman's face remains as stone, anticipating for the man to explain himself.
He gently clears his throat, "I am unknown in this world. Merely a wanderer. A pilgrim. A litterateur. A seeker," he reminisces. "However, my elders named me Camulos Eršūtu."
The woman offers Camulos a small cup of herbal tea, which he softly brings to his lips.
"My earliest mimor is of a bookhouse. It likely held no candle to others, it was small, at hand to commonfolk like me, but it was alright in its own sake. Bookhouses are funny things...places where knowledge is collected. Gathered together in a way it could so easily be stolen or destroyed," he dryly asserts.
"That humble spot was where my father would take me to throughout my youth. A stiff learner he was, forereadining me on the yearbookings of our folk and tasteful poems of heroes bygone. Indeed, many times in my immaturity I would rather browse the market or go seeking for odd creatures in the burrows...but it was someday among those volumes I garnered reverence for the endless potentials of knowledge," Camulos continues, "For no blade can cut words, nor spell can cripple judgement. The libraries burn, the pages foul, and great scholars die."
The man sets the cup aside, staring down at the woman, the slight tilt of his face allowing the candlelight to shed upon his duller eye, "But knowledge is amaranthine. Even if you seek to hide away the truth, so long as the sun and stars wave upon the sky, it can be rediscovered within the embers of anbewarp torches."
After he makes such a zealous declaration, the gray hag raises an eyebrow, "And what, Camulos, do you aspire to yield with such fervency from wisdom?"
A hushed laugh escapes from the wizened Adunian, candles flickering from the gust of breath. "Ah, yes, there are indeed many purposes which knowledge may provide. The influence of kings. The reveries of scholars. The exploits of thieves. Or those who seek to hinder the world's end," he notes. "Such things inevitably come to overtake...or already have. But I merely wish to be fit to forlast such principles of thought when the day arrives in which all other wells of knowledge run dry."
The next moments of silence are hazy...but the crone's expression finally changes, closing her eyes with a bothered sigh. "Hmmph. Days which we may hope never come yet." With that, she reaches into a small chest beside her, handing him a small map. She looks at Camulos with her shriveled eyes, "Take heed in bearing such wisdom, pilgrim."
As she extinguishes the candles, Camulos picks up the map and places it into his satchel. He makes his way out of the tent.
"I forsaek you that it will, seeress."
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