[center][img]http://i.imgur.com/Oi5F2P2.jpg?1[/img][/center]

[center][b]Oglaff the Mighty[/b][/center]

[center][b]Somewhere in the forests north of Galuntrung Keep...[/b][/center]

The storm had moved away an hour ago, and the life of the forest was returning. Birds began chirping in earnest, the flutter of insects buzzed through the low lying shrubbery and somewhere off the beaten trail, an elk whined. The vast woodland's interior was still dark though, and would remain so, thanks in most part to the think canopy. 

Oglaff stopped to take the weight off his feet, and threw himself against an overturned tree. His bulk caused the rotted wood to creak and sink a little, but he paid it no heed. Instead, he cast cautious glances this way and that, as if expecting to be ambushed at any minute by whatever horrors lurked in such greenery. 

But nothing was coming, and it never did. 

The ancient barbarian despaired for the millionth time since setting foot on the civilized continent. He hadn't found so much as a starved bear that could give him an honorable death, and the heavy beating of his heart spoke volumes of how long he might've had left in the realm of the living. A month of traveling the wilds, and so far his only kills were a bunch of hares and rodents that he'd hunted for sustenance; though even they tasted limp and devoid of flavor compared with their cousins in Oglaff's homeland.

"So why did I come?" He mumbled to himself in the harsh tongue of his peoples, "to walk myself to death?" 

Oglaff reached into a leather pouch fastened to his waist, and pulled forth a silver-handled hairbrush. The beauty tool wasn't his, but a woman's - a blind woman, no less. She was a civilized lass that he'd bumped into about four miles back the way he had come. She had herself a little farmstead just outside of the forest, but it turned out she wasn't alone, and that her father dwelt there too. However, she hadn't seen the old man since the day before, when he went out to hunt. She'd pretty much begged Oglaff to death for his assistance in the matter, and he reluctantly agreed. 

The hairbrush was his payment. 

"Oglaff the Collector," he groaned. "Oglaff the Hairbrusher. I bet the boys would be killing 'emselves laughing about this. A lifetime of battle and glory reduced to hairbrush funded mercenary work."

Still, he couldn't go back on his word; that would be heinous. He'd have to find that woman's father, for better or worse - and who knew, maybe some forest wolf would get lucky and kill him in the process. Wouldn't be the best way to go, but at this point the old warrior wasn't in much of a position to be picky.

 And with that thought in mind, Oglaff heaved himself up, and looked around. His tired eyes fell upon trees, trees and yet more trees. There were no obvious signs of anyone having come that way, and he had no idea as to how he was even going to find the woman's father in a forest as big as the one he stood in. 

There was only one thing for it, and with a heavy sigh, he stepped off the beaten trail and began forging a path through the vegetation to look for a button in a mountain of pebbles.