Otari sprawls along the rugged coast, its docks alive with the creak of ships and the shouts of fishers, its lumberyards feeding the hungry markets of Absalom, just across the water. To Kaelen, it is home—a tangle of salt-soaked memories and shadowed secrets. As a boy, he darted through the town’s bustling wharves, slipped into the pine-draped woods, and drank in the tales of sailors: dragons felled by knights, treasures lost to the deep. Those stories stirred a fire in his Kellid blood, his dark eyes—sharp and unyielding, like polished obsidian—dreaming of a destiny beyond the sawmills. Yet the Veilspire Mountains, looming beyond Otari, always watched, their peaks whispering of the
Umbral Pact, an ancient bargain that seemed to know his name.
Now twenty-five, Kaelen has returned to Otari, his long black hair tied back, his hornbow a silent weight across his shoulders. The town feels tighter now, its familiar rhythms—waves against stone, axes against wood—unable to quiet the visions that haunt him: the Abomination Vaults, a labyrinth of horrors beneath the earth, calling in the Shae tongue he learned from Jian-Zhou, the Tian Xia planes-walker. His hollowed cheeks and tanned skin, scarred faintly from years of survival, draw sidelong glances from townsfolk. They murmur of the boy who spoke to shadows, now a man who hunts them, his gaze fierce with a hunger for something more—red eyes, he once vowed, to match the fire of his ambition.
This dawn, as mist curled through Otari’s cobbled streets, a letter slipped under the door of Kaelen’s weathered shack. The wax seal bore the mark of Tamily Tanderveil, mistress of the Otari Fishery. Her words, jagged with urgency, pierced the fog of his thoughts:
Kaelen, you who’ve walked the wilds and returned unbroken, I need you. Something festers beneath my fishery, gnawing at our salted stores—a beast, or worse. The guard’s tied up with loggers in the hills, and fear’s spreading. I know your skill, your resolve. Descend into the dark and end this thing before it hungers for flesh. The shadows stir, and you’re the only one I trust to face them.
The letter weighs heavy in Kaelen’s hands, his thick fingers tracing its edges. The fishery’s basement, a childhood haunt where he’d filched scraps of cod, now harbors something vile. Whispers ripple through Otari’s taverns: a presence that slinks in the dark, its appetite a shadow of the void Kaelen senses in his dreams. The Shae tongue—taught by Jian-Zhou alongside the hornbow’s deadly arc—stirs unbidden, its whispers like frost on bone:
“To speak it is to court the void. To hunt is to become it.”
Kaelen steps into the morning haze, the fishery’s silhouette rising through the fog. His blades hang ready at his hips, his bow a trusted ally, but he carries no illusions. This is no simple task. The Abomination Vaults, whose call has grown louder since he returned to Otari, lie close—too close. This beast below the fishery could be a thread in their dark weave, a first test of the
Umbral Pact’s claim on him. His Kellid eyes, dark and resolute, fix on the trapdoor ahead. Tamily’s plea is a summons to confront the shadows he was born to hunt, and perhaps to glimpse the crimson gaze he yearns to claim.
As he descends, the air thickens, the Shae whispers rising like a pulse. The dark below waits, and Kaelen knows this is but the beginning—a step into a labyrinth that may name him hero, or devour him whole.
Kaelen trudges down the creaking stairs to the Otari Fishery’s basement, his fatigued limbs heavy, bedbug bites itching fiercely under his tanned, scarred skin from restless nights. His Kellid eyes—dark and fierce, dreaming of a crimson blaze—scan the dimness, hunting the beast that’s tearing through Tamily Tanderveil’s fish stores. The air’s thick with the sour reek of spoiled fish, biting his nose as he grips his hornbow and blades. Otari’s docks rumble faintly above, but down here, the silence is tight, like a trap waiting to spring.
Earlier, Tamily’s voice quavered in her messy office as she offered ten gold to stop the creature’s rampage. “Make it gone,” she urged, her gaze locking on Kaelen, seeing the kid who swiped cod now a wildsman with hollowed cheeks. He nodded, too worn to talk, her thanks barely cutting through his exhaustion. For a man like him, scraping by in the wilds, ten gold’s a solid haul—worth the risk. Now, the basement sprawls open, faint light glinting off damp stone pillars. Two barrels are smashed, fish spilled in a slimy pile, and a jagged hole gapes in the east wall, its darkness thick, like it’s got a pulse.
Kaelen steps forward alone, ignoring the burn of bites and the drag of fatigue. The hole pulls at him, a dare he can’t back down from. The gold’s good, but it’s the chance to prove he’s more than a drifter that lights a fire in his gut. His dark eyes fix on the hole, sharp, hungry. Whatever’s hiding in that dark, he’ll take it down, bugs and all, to claw his way to something bigger. He moves toward it, steady, ready.
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Ok so as oposed to normal games you are more like your characters coach than behind the wheel. you need to plan his plan of action significantly into the future not knowing what awaits not just the present
@TenzenT
