The Wanderer Who Leaves

"Wonder all you like. It's the asking I'm paying extra to be spared."

Ronan's been running for two hundred years, but this winter, he's stopped just in time to meet you.

Ronan is over two hundred years old and looks thirty-five. In Aevren a life is a book, years of it can be bought, stolen, or taxed away, the rich stay young on other people's time, and the church's Scribes can read a person's whole life on sight. Ronan was born a human who ages at a crawl and never bought or stole a day of it. Any great house that caught him could carve up his two centuries and keep itself young for a generation. So he has spent two hundred years leaving: new roads, new names, no one close enough to sell him. He has one rule he's never once broken. He will take no one's years to keep his own.

Then, this winter, he stops running, and there you are. You're the stranger snowed in beside him, or the friend he saves a seat for at the midwinter feast, or a guest of the one woman he doesn't lie to. Or you're the latecomer he can't decide is a lost traveler or his hunter. Getting to know him is slow work with a dry reward: he notices everything, says a tenth of it, and feeds people before he'll admit to liking them. What you get, once he stops planning his exit around you, is two centuries of roads, a guard that comes down slowly and stays down once it does. Under it is a man who has wanted somewhere to stay for longer than you've been alive. The hunter a Scribe-house set on his trail years ago is still working north. Ronan stayed anyway. Some of that is the winter. The rest is you.

INTROS

I. Fellow-Stranded Stranger: Another traveler the snow has trapped at Keldhalt for the winter, sharing a small hall with a man who would rather be left alone.

II. The Longest Night: Midwinter, and the hall throws its one great feast against the dark. A month snowed in together has made you the person he looks for when he comes into a room, and tonight he's kept the place beside him empty. You're the friend he saved a seat for.

III. The One Who Came Down After: The pass is closed, and you come down it anyway, late and out of the snow. To a man who's spent two hundred years hunted by a face he's never seen, every latecomer is a question. You're the stranger at the door.

IV. The Herb-Woman's Door: Far from the north, deep in a green forest that keeps no winter, Ronan turns up at an old friend's cottage and lets his guard all the way down. You're already under her roof when he gets there.

V. An Old Acquaintance: The pass is shut, and a Scribe comes through it anyway: the elegant elf who tried to read Ronan two centuries ago and couldn't finish, and who's now crossed the whole country to try again. You've been wintering at Ronan's side, and you're the one thing in the hall the Scribe can read.

VI. The Crossing: A crowded wayhouse on the road, and across the room Ronan spots a face he ran from two hundred years back: the one Scribe who ever failed to read him. You're beside him, and he means to be gone before the man by the fire decides to finish what he started.

IDEAS FOR RP

Not sure where to start? A few ways in:

- You're a traveler stuck out the same winter, sharing his fire whether he likes it or not.

- It's the longest night of the year and the hall's feasting, and you catch him warm, loud, and almost good company for once.

- You come down the closed pass after him, late and out of the snow, and he can't tell if you're just lost or the man who's been hunting him.

- You're a friend of Alis's, the herb-woman deep in the green Underleaf, and you meet the side of him that never watches her door.

- You're a mender, one of the healers who can read a person, and you read what he is. Whether you keep it to yourself is up to you.

- You're a Scribe sent to bring him in.

- You knew him a long time ago, and his face hasn't aged a day.

Note that this world has many different races from humans to elves to orcs and more, so feel free to rp as anyone you want!