"Of course, of course.", he mutters.
He looks to say something more, but a voice rings out.
"Father Matthias! Where are you?"
He turns around, smiling.
"Come on. Come enjoy the food."
The two of you walk out, and you eat better than you have in weeks. You feel grateful to him, coming to find you even though you very well might die in a few years. You shake your head. No, others might die. You'll push through and survive, and you'll defend the city against the Darklings as well! When you scraped your knee or got hit by the butt of a spear by an angry guardsman as a child, you'd come to your mother crying. She'd hold you in her arms, and once you'd finished crying remind you that you were still alive, and that as long as you lived, you could always do better. Even when you were hungry, digging through garbage for scraps, she'd smile at you, telling you gaily not to give up as she passed you the only crust of bread she'd found for the day. The orphanage was only for orphans, after all, and for as long as she lived with her useless arm, the city would not feed her or her child.
Eventually, though, disease took her. Infections found her more easily since she entered the Lighthouse, and medicine - let alone a Fleshcrafter - was well beyond your capacity to pay. You remember when she died, her corpse thrown onto a burning pile of them, and afterwards - smouldering skeletons sold to the Fleshcrafters for the use of apprentices to practice. It was a horrible sight, but you didn't give up. You cried for days, but eventually you found your way to the orphanage. It wasn't inner strength, but the idea that things could be better. No matter how horrible things were, you somehow knew you could do better, even if only a little bit, day by day. Holding onto this centered you, allowed you to deal with the jabs from the other orphans, the hunger when you didn't make it downstairs fast enough. Even the others remarked on it, though often in a cruel way - you were a Hopeful child, untouched by the despair of those around you.
After Father Matthias left, you lived in relative peace, until the Siege. On your fourteenth birthday (you think, though your knowledge was hardly perfect), the Darklings came. At first, great crows of black with pulsing veins of red blood wrapped around the outside of their bodies, swooping at the militia on the walls. Behind them, thousands of Spinewolves, doglike things covered in spikes and hooks of hardened, blackened bone, eyes glittering from every direction on their misshaped bodies. They spat out poisoned spines from inside their mouths, and lastly stood the Greatspiders, spiders eight feet tall and twice as long, glimmering rainbow colours as they scuttled up the walls and butchered the defenders in their hundreds.
In this time of great danger, you...
[ ] Helped the Wounded
You saw men dying of poison, women with great chunks of flesh torn off them. Boiling rags gathered from the bodies of the slain, you wrapped those you could in makeshift bandages, and used fire where you could to burn the blackened flesh touched by the Spinewolves. The cries of the wounded echo with you still, and you cannot bring yourself to face the results of the Darklings again. Not easily, at least.Maybe in the future as a mage, but not immedaitely.
Become more Compassionate. Your fear of what you faced means you will not cross the Shadowlands to enter the Violet Lighthouse.
[ ] Armed Yourself and Fought
You knew the odds, but you didn't care. You'd fought against life, struggled this much so far, and you'd be damned if something like a horde of deadly beasts was going to stop you. You found a spear and shield on a corpse, and went to fight. To be honest, you accomplished very little. You jabbed at a Spinewolf, which tripped you and was about to kill you, if another militiaman hadn't charged it at the last second. You were on the wall for a day, before the Tremorfeet finished their trap, consuming two-thirds of the Darklings in the earth. You saw men die around you, and only at the end did the cowards appear - the Shaderunners and Spellthieves turned up to finish the fight, when so many had died to hold the wall for them. Despite their power of magery, you felt contempt growing for them. If you were to become a mage, you would not be one of those sorts, who left good men and women to die.
Become more Stubborn. Gain a bias against Shaderunners and Spellthieves - as such, you will not enter the Yellow Lighthouse.
[ ] Scavenged From the Fallen
Others fought, but you knew the truth. If you had money, if you had things, you might survive. Fighting would be foolish - getting enough to leave the city would be fine. You stole from the dead, skulking around and hiding as you could. You were caught, at the end by a Shaderunner, who drew his blade on you and threatened to kill you if he ever saw you again, forcing you to give up most of your ill-gotten gains. You managed to squirrel some away, though, hiding them in the rubble of abandoned buildings.
Become more Greedy. Gain a purse of 100 silvers and a shortbow. Due to the Shaderunners spending a great deal of time at the Orange Lighthouse, you will not risk death going there.
