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[indent][indent][indent][color=gray][sub][right][color=#dc143c][b]Location:[/b][/color] Wayfarer's Retreat -- The City of Thorinn, Aetheria[/right][/sub][/color]
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A lone hunter stumbled into Thorinn with a great weight upon his back. He was a mighty figure built like an oak tree-- tall and broad and ever sturdy-- yet it seemed his strength was failing him. The burden he bore was several times his size. It was a mass of sickly pale scales, hanging bits of gore and ligaments and broken bone. Two great eyes like red orbs stared back at those who walked behind the hunter, unblinking, empty. Chains wrapped about the severed head bound it to the man that carried it.

He had pursued the thing through the wilderness for three weeks. It had struck the killing blow against the hunter twice throughout their game, yet he kept up the chase all the same. Such was the endurance of wayfarers: not even death could stop them. Not permanently. The beast could neither hide nor fight by the end of it; it was too bloodied to do anything more than whimper in its nest as that wicked nodachi relieved its shoulders of its head. 

In whatever afterlife Pariah provided its monsters it could look down with some irony-driven revenge as its corpse harried its killer. The head's weight had collapsed the man's horse three days earlier, forcing him to bear it all on his own. What should've been a short journey to a just reward transformed into a perilous, monotonous trek up the main road to Thorinn, where every day there came the risk of someone coming along to steal the proof of his triumph for themselves.

By the grace of lady luck that never came to pass. There were even some that stopped on their own journeys to offer the hunter help in carrying his quarry home. It annoyed him. More annoying was when they insisted that it was no trouble, not understanding that he wasn't being polite. He wasn't going to be climbing into anyone else's cart with such a valuable bounty chained to his back; their hearts would only stay good until they realized the value of what he carried. Regardless, he didn't need the help.

Or so he told himself every time he fell to knee along the road, his legs nearly buckling under him each time.

But the ordeal was over now, for he'd made it into Thorinn and the bounty office was a mere hop and skip from the front gate. There, he dumped the now-rotting carcass into the hands of some poor denizens schmucks that worked for the acquisition officer, who paid Graves handsomely for his trouble.

[color=dc143c][i]'Good Lord do I need a break.'[/i][/color]

Tired feet carried him back across town, toward his favorite little drinking hole: the Wayfarer's Rest. It didn't have the best drinks, or the best beds, or the best people. The work there was usually interesting, though not consistent. No, it was his favorite because of the one thing it [i]didn't[/i] have. 

He beat his boots against the door frame to rid them of the dust of the road before pushing the door out of his way, stepping inside.

The front room was more crowded than usual, and not with the same do-nothings he was used to seeing around here. They were well-armed and gathered 'round for what sounded like talk of business. There was one woman in particular who reminded him of a mammoth who was making particularly [i]loud[/i] talk. Was she actually taller than him? [color=dc143c][i]'Tch.'[/i][/color] 

Graves pretended he wasn't intrigued by it and walked up to the bar to order himself a drink. He'd keep his eyes toward it, but his ears were focused elsewhere. 
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