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?))
Adam Pinetree lowers himself onto the wooden bench, his movements deliberate and quiet, as though habit has taught him not to draw attention unless he intends to. His hands rest on his knees, calloused from years of hauling nets and rowing against a river’s current.
“Adam Pinetree,” he says evenly. “Son of Rowan Pinetree, woodcutter by trade. He spent his life trimming timber, but his nights were for telling stories.”
Adam’s gaze drifts, softened by memory. “He’d speak of the river spirits, the old shapes beneath the water… but he also told tales of something greater—the Big Sea. A place so wide you can’t see the other side. A place where the creatures are older than memory and larger than anything the river could ever hide.”
He shifts his weight slightly, boots scraping the floor. “Folk around home treated those stories like entertainment, nothing more than campfire talk. But Father believed them. And I did too.”
A faint tension settles in Adam’s shoulders. “I took to the river early, hoping to glimpse something real—some sign the old tales weren’t just stories. But lately the river’s been… different. Tracks in the mud that don’t match anything living nearby. Wakes without boats. Something big moving under the surface long after the moon’s risen.”
His brows draw together, troubled yet resolute. “Those signs made one thing clear: if the river still holds remnants of the old creatures, then the sea—where the stories say they first came from—must hold even more.”
He lifts his chin slightly, his expression firm. “So I left home. Followed the disturbances downstream, each one leading me farther from the forests I knew. I want to reach the coast. I want to see the Big Sea for myself. And when I get there…” He pauses, a spark of determination in his eyes. “I mean to sail out and find what really lurks beneath its waters.”
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