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?))
Example:
As I step into the tent, squinting as my eyes adjust to the candlelight's bloom, I pull my cloak to my nose, shielding my senses from the smell of swamp clinging to cloth and rotten wood as I scrunch my nose.
"Expecting me?" I murmur to myself, eyeing the dancing shadows cast from the candlelight. Walking towards the hag, each step meant a new scent hitting my nerves: putrid rot, spices, cattle, sickness, and scents I've never smelled before. Bottles sprawled out inside the tent, filled with fascinating colours of reds, greens, yellows, and blues, some with their contents spilled out on the floor.
Finally reaching the cushion, I settle down with a thud, letting my travel-weary legs rest after so long of protest, watching the woman who invited me in. Her back turned to me as she insisted on answering her question, she started browsing her shelf of herbs before lobbing a couple into a cauldron over an open flame.
Hesitantly, I reply, "I was only 12 when they came... My parents raised me in the slums of our hometown. We weren't well off, but we were happy."
"But that all changed after my mother drew ill."
The old hag turns and nods slowly, acknowledging my words, as she takes a ladle from the cauldron she had been bubbling, scooping a thick, fragrant liquid into a wooden tankard. Shuffling towards me, she pushes the tankard into my reach. I give her an appreciative look, accepting the drink as she motions for me to continue.
"We couldn't afford her treatment with too many mouths to feed. We became desperate, I took to thieving, my old man took to the tables. One day, he went too far, and he lost everything. He gambled everything we owned; he gambled me..."
She gives a low rattly sigh as she precariously seats herself opposite me.
"Pity the sod, really," I mutter, looking down into the mug of tea
"For six years, spilling blood to pay off our debt, fighting battles I ought not to have, earning scars I ought not to have." Her gaze travelled to the scar on my right eye and the flood of scars on my palms.
"But for the last year, I've tasted freedom," I say, loosening my previously white knuckles.
