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.”
(He lets out a thin, wheezing giggle, almost like a rattle, while distractedly stroking the damp wood of a tent pole)
"Expecting me? Oh, the candles dance to your breath, old mother, but they do not know that the wood here is already dead... rotten to the core, like the secrets of this town drowned in silt. I can feel the weight of the black water pressing against the walls—can you feel it too?"
(He suddenly squats in front of the cushion, but doesn't quite sit; he balances on the balls of his feet, his knotty fingers fumbling with a scrap of bark)
"My story is not written in ink, but in the whistle of the wind through the rafters and in the blood spilled to please those who dwell high—far higher than your hanging candles. I have built wings of oak to furrow the abyss, and I have seen the waves laugh at the courage of men. I have come because the metal no longer sings as it used to, and the visions... ah, the visions have grown too loud for one head alone. Tell me, crone: is this mud we tread upon the end of all things, or just the start of a new, beautiful ruin?"
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