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.”
With the subtle jingling of metallic paraphernalia contained within his robes heralding his entry, Arehkan slipped forward into the tent in a way that somehow seemed both graceful and abrupt. "You expected me?" He began, "Does my reputation proceed me, or perchance had you divined my arrival by some arts arcane?" He slinked forward again, seemingly choosing to remain standing before the hag despite the cushion. "Or.. had the Black King sent word of my coming?" He added.
"The.. Black King, you say?" The Hag inquired horsely. She'd planned to make quick work of the stranger and dispatch him for his valuables, a common trick she often played on lone passerby to her dingy hovel.. However, the man's words and strange form had intrigued her. She'd made up her mind- she'd listen to him long enough to satiate her curiosity, and then she'd dispatch him. And Arehkan was none the wiser.
The hag hardly had time to finish her sentence before the goblin liturgist began murmuring to her once more. "The Black King! The great one, whom has taken favor with me; and appointed me as one of his disciples!" He paused, gesturing to the useless third eye that gazed blankly from his mutated forehead. "You see? This is his mark upon me. I was raised in the Isles of Judi; a land across the sea where the Black King first graced this material world. Though my kind is not oft welcome there, this mark shows the king's favor upon me.. and thus, I was raised up by the Church of Fl’nthogg; the acolytes of the King, to be the disciple he ordained me to be before my birth..”
The hag scratched at her ear as she listened with a graying brow raised, questioning the validity of the man's tale.. and questioning his sanity to a degree as well. "So you come here at the bidding of a god?" She questioned, again considering her earlier plot to dispatch him. He likely was either lying, or just a madman and his god was a figment of his imagination. But just in case he was indeed right.. she revised her plan on the spot. "On second thought- I'm afraid I really must attend to my work.. perhaps you should be moving along?"
"Oh, I just…" Arehkan stuttered, tensing up as she directed him out from the hovel. He eyed the crone, then backed outside the tent at her bidding. For a moment, the air thickens with anticipation, until…
"Well ehm.. good day!" The hag announced, closing the tent with a dense curtain before the goblin could utter his goodbyes. With a shrug and a huff, the unwitting Arehkan went off on his way once more, completely unknowing of the fate he’d narrowly avoided.
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