CDtrumpet5

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?)) 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?)) [Edmund is from a little-known island, far out to sea. His family is from the old continent, but he knows nothing of their origins, as his grandparents both died when he was young, and his parents spoke little of the old country while marooned on the island.] "Expecting me? I doubt that." He really didn't anticipate anyone being here at all. "But I'll humor you. It seems I'm... not intruding." "You're not." "Very well," he says cautiously, and sits before the circle of candles. The light is calming, he feels at home, though is suspicious of the hag's potential magic. He's seen enough "magic" for a lifetime. "I am Edmund. I come from a land across the sea. A holy land it was, at least to our small village of peoples. We lived upon an island, across the bay from a larger wildland, one which led me to the shores that brought me to this strange place. T'was my grandparents who settled, though by accident, when their ship ran aground the reef that surrounded the island. The Brig Holly went down, so my Grandad said, and even as a child I remember seeing it in the shallows, a ghost of a *different* land, from which my family fled. They never told me why, but as I lived I may have figured it out." -- "I do not believe in the gods of this land," he continues. "In their eyes it makes me strange, but I hold true to what I believe." He touches his heart gently with a closed fist. "In the holy books, in the chapel we built on our highest hill, there were stories; passed from generation to generation, from a flock of pilgrims on a ship to a small village self-sustaining in the wilds. We could not have done it without our patron. It is said that the islands currents were not swimmable. Things had to be built there, or they would all die. There were three trees, two of oak, and one of birch, though the oak greedily gave no saplings to root. On the sixth day, t'was the birch who gave it's life, and it sprouted, and began to grow. This tree was the reason they could stay, the reason they could live, and thus we called her "Moether Trei"," he pauses, "or... mother tree, as you folks say, and on the sixth day we held our sabbath for her. We built a temple, bridges to smaller islands to harvest resources and farm animals. We were a resourceful lot. There were stories written in the third of these holy tomes, that mentioned misadventures in the hells, and dragons, but I never saw these things myself. I have faith that they are real, for no Priest of the Moether would lie to their flock." [[This is his faith. He adamantly believes in this religion, of preserving nature, and creating quaint calm in the face of turmoil and adversity.]] Edmund wonders if hag knows. He continues the story. "T'was near when I was born when folk started venturing to other lands. I stayed, and worked as the elders demanded I work. I would dig stones, coal, and iron for them, and other rocks of shinier nature. I would chop trees, and always replant, and due to Moether Trei's bounty they grew again. The three priests wielded technology I did not understand, red stones, ground to dust, that generated power and allowed us to travel. It must sound ridiculous to you, with your candles..." he worried he offended the hag, but she seems to be alright, even finding it amusing. "I digress. The separation did us ill. They lost touch with their roots." Edmund remembers what he's done, what he did to rectify that situation. The look on his face is telling. "I was a boy of sixteen, then. My father told me not to go to them. I didn't listen. Killed the five who lived there with the other sword-bearers, but I didn't want to. I'm not very good as a fighter, I just got lucky. Man comes in a high guard, you poke him in the stomach... I'm rambling." "War," the hag says. "Sin begets sin." "So you know how it ended, then?" Edmund says, somewhat relieved. "I couldn't handle it. It was shameful, to kill even former members of my village who forsook our vows to survive together." tears well up in his eyes, but he forces them down. You do not cry in sadness, only in joy, when regaling the wisdom of the Moether. He had to remember. "Moether Trei saw us. We were then denied the birch when the trees began to rot, and the soil went bad. I set out in a boat with one other, but he drank seawater and died. Then I was alone. I don't know what happened to the people who remained home. They may be all dead, they may have recovered. I'm not certain. I left to find a new home, one where we aren't struggling day to day. I followed the coast until I found a fishing settlement waaay down, many hundreds of miles from where I started. I was running low on food, the chest in my rowboat was nearly empty. I helped them fish, they fed me. Finally, I asked them where I could go, where I could live. They offered me a job with them, but they were godless fools. This place was not home. They then told me of a... Aevos, a continent with a society that they frequently sold their wares. I said take me there. They had a bigger boat than me. Here I am." The hag finally speaks. "So who are you, Edmund?" Edmund chuckles, and looks at the floor, before looking seriously at the hag. "I'm a priest, I suppose. I'm a soldier. I can trade, I can speak well, and I can fight. These strange men will know my name before I die."