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?))
You want to know my story? I am afraid you may be disappointed, friend. For my story is not one of adventure and glory, or of heroes and dragons, no. It is a simple tale, one like countless others. A tale of a small village, full of smaller minds. But very well, if you insist.
I was born and raised in a small farming village on the far edge of the realm. It was a town that my parents had been raised in, and their parents before them. Those who lived in this town seldom left, yet I had always wanted to see the world. I suppose that was the first sign. That something in me was different than those others who had come before. And as I grew older, the differences between myself and those others of the village became more profound. I didn't act like them, or think like them. I had differing views, and differing values. Nothing overt, but in countless little ways, I was different. For myself it was a point of pride, I was unique, but I was an other in their eyes, and they shunned me for it. Eventually, fed up with my presence, or perhaps my very existence, the village came to agree that I needed to leave.
I had been off on one of my frequent walks through the nearby forest that day. But when I returned to the village, I found an angry mob outside my burning house, and at the head of the crowd were my own parents, holding the torches that had lit fire to my home. Witch, they called me, for the time I spent in nature. Devil, they called me, for daring to think as I did. Evil, they called me, for the crime of living differently than them. And so I left. I camped that first night in the forest nearby, scavenging a comfortable night's rest and food from my surroundings. Once the town was abed, I returned to sift through the wreckage of my home in the hours before dawn. Gathering what remained of my belongings, I set out, never to return. I had always wanted to see the world, and it seemed now was my chance, though I had few other choices.
I have been traveling ever since. Wandering from place to place, living the life of a nomad. It suits me. I camp in the wilderness more often than not, only entering civilization for what supplies I cannot gather from my surroundings, or to spend a night in a local inn when I tire of sleeping in the grass. I get by well enough, bartering the scavenged bounty of the wilds, or playing a tune in some small corner of a tavern when I have need of coin. It is a good life, in all, despite my having been forced into it, and so I cannot complain. Though I confess, I always look forward to whatever local strangeness awaits me when I arrive in a new place. What curiosities await here, I wonder?
