Does an Elf Live in the woods?

Nitendae’s beginning

You wake up with a start. Despite the small, warm grey kitten curled up beside you, you’re shivering with the cold and when you attempt to sit up, horrible stabbing pains wrench through your stomach. Your mouth is parched and your throat feels like sandpaper.

Through squinting, gritty eyes, you scan the immediate area around you. An unsettling, fine white mist carpets the ground and guessing from the bare trees surrounding you on all sides, it seems like the end of the winter solstice.

Feeble beams of sunlight penetrate the leafless forest canopy but offer scant warmth.

You’re grateful when you see your open backpack close by. You crawl over the mossy ground to it and rummage through it with stiff fingers. You’re frustrated however to find nothing but used grease-paper wrappings and an empty water-skin within. All your rations already consumed or lost.

That’s crazy; You always pack enough food for the journey!

The little cat gazes with you and you sense its concern for you.

It’s only then, when you collapse back onto your grubby groundsheet, that you start to question where you are and how you got there?

You mind seems as foggy as the forest floor and you can’t seem to recall where exactly you are or how you got here. It even takes you a few moments to recall your cat’s name… Cogitari!

How on Fissa, could you forget that? 

As if you’d hurt its feelings, the little grey cat uncurls itself, arches its back and wanders off into the thicket to hunt.

Judging by the pangs of hunger and the dirt ground into your leather armour, you’d estimate that you’ve been lost in these woods for a while. Maybe weeks?

A Half-elf lost and starving in the woods?

An image of you wrestling over a mouse with your cat, makes you bark out an ironic laugh but you instantly regret it as your laugh turns into a hacking cough in your burning throat.

Your slightly upturned elven eyes widen in fear.

Maybe you should have paid more attention during your time at that snobbish, elven, tree-top school?

It seemed ridiculous at the time; a grown man sitting at a tiny desk, surrounded by children but it’s a frightening possibility that you’re really going to starve to death here!

Status: Fatigued -2 Strength, -2 Dexterity, + 3 Non-lethal damage.