The Wild One
Raised by the forest, or at least by people who weren't really people. Cities confuse you. You're fine with that.
You notice things in the wild two beats before anyone else. Tracks. A shift in the wind. Something watching from the tree line.
Your Story
You are [name], and you were raised in a forest near [hometown] by people who weren't quite people. A druid circle. A mentor with too many teeth and a kind heart. A family of wolves, if you want to embellish. You learned to read the weather before you learned to read words. You don't like cities. Cities don't like you.
Your mentor kept you hidden. You didn't know that at the time — you thought the deep woods were where children grew. You were [age] before you figured out that most people grow up somewhere with a roof. You still don't trust roofs. Under open sky, under leaves, in a barn — fine. In a stone inn with windows you can't reach — difficult.
Your mentor is not with you anymore. Either they died, or they sent you out with a kiss on the forehead and a task you haven't yet worked out. Either way, when you came down out of the wood and onto the Trade Way, an owl followed you for three days and then left. You are pretty sure it was saying goodbye.
If filling in the blanks feels like homework, just play this version. Andreas will mail you a finished sheet.
Faolan, of the Ash Grove
Raised in the edge of the Cloak Wood, in a small mossy clearing the maps don't show, by a druid named Old Sael and his rotating circle of people who weren't quite people. Doesn't remember being a child anywhere else — the deep wood was where children grew. Old Sael kept Faolan hidden, though Faolan only understood that fact at fourteen. The morning Faolan came down the forest path onto the Trade Way, an owl followed for three days. Then it left.
Hero prop a small slip of parchment with a name written on it in dried river-mud. Held to firelight, the letters are still faintly there, as if the parchment itself remembers.
Before your mentor sent you down the old forest path, they wrote a name on your palm in river-mud. The mud dried and flaked off by the next morning. The name is still there, very faintly, as if the skin itself remembers. You haven't looked at it in daylight. You're not sure you want to.
Click below to draft Andreas an email — you can edit it before you send, or just skip the fields you're not sure about and we'll fill them in together.
This one is me →A week before we play, a letter will arrive at your house. Open it alone. Do not compare notes with the others until you reach the Trade Way.