...He had a mate who loved him and trusted him to always return to her... He had four children who he was raising and training to serve the tribe...
...After a particularly grueling battle against some creatures from the Lands Beyond, Vigil and the rest of his patrol were ambushed and captured by a band of humans, who took Vigil and his surviving comrades away from his home and all the way to a city in the Dale Lands. Here, they were put into servitude, forced to participate in gladiatorial matches for the entertainment of cruel nobles and whoever else had enough coin to bet on such fights... his desire to one day hopefully see his family again kept him from giving up. Over time, he became more and more savage, brutal in taking down his foes, and gained some notoriety.
This came to a head he was put up against one of the warriors from his own tribe, leading to a very brutal fight that lead to his tribe mate dead and Vigil near-fatally wounded... managed to escape by playing dead and managing to sneak out. He had spent the last few months simultaneously trying to make his way home to his tribe and dragging his paws out of shame for the terrible acts he had committed while in the arena... Hoping to redeem himself and wanting to stop anything that might threaten his tribe, far away as they may be, Vigil heads towards Fenhall
You may add to your notes or to the backstory however you see fit that his time in this arena it was...
Underground, he had no real way of tracking time while down there. His escape may have been hectic or endangered, and so while he would be able to recall or revisit the general area he escaped from it's best for the purposes of gameplay if he can't directly recall or trace his steps back to it for whatever reasons you see fit. Perhaps it was a relatively long time ago and time has faded the memories of its precise location? Maybe he was too injured, escaping while under threat, that it all became a blur? Perhaps he willingly repressed it in his shame? Just think on this, let it be a trauma to be healed and revisited later rather than something you have a direct path back to from the get-go. Knowledge of something nefarious beneath the crumbling world, but not a ribbon-tied plot thread ready to be finished from the start.
The people who came all wore masks and robes, hiding their identities, but he could have assumed or guessed that they had to have access to great resources or wealth to maintain that sort of arena and gleamed that there was a hierarchy and deference to their society. His having regularly interacted with/seen certain individuals may give rise to interactions down the line or create interesting possibilities with Plot Points. Feel free to be creative with this, just don't try to use them to modify or implicate any NPCs that I make with this ordeal; I'll be tying it into some of my Lands of the Dale notes already. Certain symbols, voices, or phrases, may indeed be 'triggering' and reveal that some people are not what they seem to be to Vigil and I will make those things clear.
You have a family. Excellent.
DM cackling.
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