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?))
He lowered himself, realizing the deceit behind her hospitality the moment he sat down. She meant to sit there, and he could see that in the way she positioned herself and watched him, the way he couldn't leave.
He breathed silently and chose to begin at the beginning.
“Um… Let’s see…. I was born into the Clan Ousanna.” His fists clinched in his lap before unclenching them. “My parents were pretty much distant when I was a youngster. Then they went off to war and never returned.”
“He looked away as if he was staring at something much older than the room he was in. “I barely knew them. It was hard to believe in the ancestral and familial ties the Dark Elf culture is so passionate about. I questioned too much.” A bitter laugh escaped him. “That’s how I got exiled. I was only eleven.””
He shrugged. "By then, I was nearly self-supporting. The rest of the family was too involved in their own children to miss the other one."
Pause. Very reluctantly, he uncovered the left side of his face by lifting his mask slightly. A huge gouge crossed the burned flesh of his cheek and eye, twisted into a mesh of scars surrounding an eye that was flame orange—and unfocused.
“It happened approximately two weeks after my banishment,” he replied softly. “A wild phoenix attacked me when I tried to survive through the night.”
He clenched his jaw. “If you’re thinking it doesn’t hurt anymore. It hurt like hell at first.” A bitter tone entered his voice. “And I nearly drowned in the river trying to put the fire out.”
He lowered the mask once more, his fingers hesitating momentarily there. “Now it’s numb. Thank God for that.”
He leaned back, his eyes clouded. “That brought me back from giving up. Made me fight just to live as a one-eyed man, by myself.” His face became stony. “That’s when my mental break happened. I lost most of my empathy. and I heard the voices.”
Another pause.
"Then what? Oh, not much." he shrugged. “I managed to get out of the forest maybe in five weeks. Learned how to steal, since a child wouldn't be taken seriously." His mouth twisted into a thin smile. “It’s all about manipulation, staying out of sight, shadows.”
He looked down at his clothes. “Finally, I saved up enough to buy this. To hide myself.”
Then he looked back up.
“And after that,” he finished softly, “I left. Took off into the world.”
