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?))
Brokk ducks into the tent, shoulders brushing the tattered canvas. The air is wet and sour—rot and moss—and it makes his nose wrinkle like he’s been insulted. The floating candles throw hard light across his helm and the black spill of his beard, and his eyes—slightly crossed—make it hard to tell what he’s staring at first.
He doesn’t sit.
He looks at the cushion like it might be damp enough to grow teeth, then at the hag.
“Expectin’ me, were you?” His voice is low, rough—stone-dust in it. “Either you’ve got long ears, or you’ve been pry’in into places you shouldn’t.”
He steps forward anyway and drops onto the cushion with a heavy thud, like a boulder deciding to tolerate gravity.
“Brokk Stonebeard,” he says, blunt as a pick. “Cave dwarf. Kal’Varoth.”
A pause. He glances around the tent, measuring corners and shadows the way he’d measure a tunnel seam.
“I’m not here ‘cause I like your town. Smells like wet dead.”
His gaze settles back on her.
“I’ve mined since I could hold iron. That’s my life. I’ve gone up to the surface a few times—learned what I had to, brought back what mattered. But I don’t belong up there.”
He shifts, plate creaking.
“I’ve got a mother, a father, and two younger siblings back in the hold. Which means I don’t get to die stupid in a swamp just ‘cause some old witch says she’s been waitin’.”
He leans forward slightly.
“So before I tell you anything more—” his eyes narrow, that split gaze making the look sharper than it should be, “—tell me why you’re expectin’ me… and what you think you know about a Stonebeard.”
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