TPK

You start in a tavern.

Because where else would you start? Ever since Magyn left you for that fucking cleric you’ve spent practically every evening here at the Slaughtered Dog Inn trying to forget the way it felt to wake up beside her. 

“The usual,” Nifkin the innkeep says more than asks as you sit down at the bar. You grunt and he fills your tankard with ale. It tastes like somebody pissed in a bee hive but it gets the job done so you don’t mind so much.

By your fifth drink you can’t remember if this is Skyrim or Scandinavia. Somewhere in between? Whatever. Either way there are nordic men in fur and studded leather all around you and everything smells vaguely of shit.

“You listening to me?” You weren’t but now you are. Nifkin gestures to a table at the other end of the tavern. “These damn crypt-kickers and rat-catchers have been hanging around looking for work. They’re bad for business.”

Business doesn’t seem any worse than usual to you but you turn and look anyhow. It’s a party of three: a broad shouldered dwarf with a +2 battleaxe leaning against his stool, a wispy little wizard leafing through a spellbook, and an elf who makes you feel funny.

His features are angular without being severe. His long white hair cascades down his back and you wonder what it would look like spread out around his head on a pillow. Beneath the chainmail you can tell that his chest is small in just the right way. Lithe.

He looks just like Magyn.

Before you know it you’re clomping across the floor in your shit-kicking farmhand boots. The tavern seems blurrier than usual but that’s okay. You’re okay. “Hey,” you say to the elf/Magyn. Something plastic clatters against a table somewhere.

You botch the check and he rejects your advances. You laugh it off. Then you tell them about a goblin warren but give them the directions to a wyvern rookery instead. They never come back and neither does Magyn.