From behind you, you hear the door to the tavern swing open. The loud chit chat from fellow patrons suddenly drops to a hush. You turn around to check on what caused the shift in tone and you get a glimpse at the tallest tiefling you’ve ever seen in your life. He had to be over 7 foot tall, but you’re unable to get a closer gauge on his height as he ducks his way to make it through the doorway. You are in awe at the absolute height on this lad. You glance around at everyone else and you can just see the unease in everyone’s expressions. All eyes are on him as he awkwardly makes his way to an empty seat in the establishment... right next to you, of course. Great. Normally, you would confront someone’s rudeness for not even asking if the seat next to you was taken, but you’re not sure if you want that to be the hill you die on tonight.

That being said, he doesn’t seem dangerous. You believe the other tavern patrons have picked up on that as well as the typical chatter noise levels soon return to normal. Since he’s well, sitting next to you, you get a better look at him. He has oily, black hair that has been attempted to be slicked back, but has just made more of a mess of it. You watch him try to move his long tail into a position that wouldn’t get in the way of other people. Besides that, his looks remind you more of a goat than anything. His cloven hooves have been fastened with appears to be makeshift sandals of sorts. You could tell he was trying his best from making eye contact with anybody, but you get a glance at his sleepy looking eyes with strange goat like pupils. He has long ears that are rounded at the end and a pair of long curved horns at the top of his head. It looks like he’s been in a fight and lost at some point long ago as you notice that his left horn and left ear have been broken and torn to bits respectively.

After a minute or two, you watch him pull out some sheets of paper from inside of his robes. The papers looks old, slightly yellowed, and they look to have been folded and unfolded up again many, many times in the past. You try to sneak a peek at the content of what you can only assume to be old letters and see that they are addressed to someone named “Albedo”, and something about a farm, but you are otherwise unable to make out anything of interest. The tiefling sits there in dead silence, occasionally squinting his eyes at the letters for a few minutes. After a while, his eyes shift towards your direction, catching you trying to read the papers clasped in his clawed fingers. He doesn’t change his body position at all as he asks you “You see them, right?”

“Huh?”

“The letters I’m holding. You see them?” he questions again. His voice was oddly monotone.

“Is this some sort of riddle?”

This time he turns himself towards you, looking at you dead in the eyes. His expression hasn’t changed once since he’s entered the room, but at the same time, his eyes are filled with some sort of sadness that you can’t describe. “It’s a question.” he states bluntly.

Is this some sort of sting? You ponder to yourself. Confused, you reply with “Yeah, I see ‘em. What is this ab-”.

He interrupts you. “Thanks.” he says with a weak smile and you watch him carefully fold the letters and stash them away.

You don’t even know what to say at this point so you default to small talk, just to try to get more information out of the tall tiefling. “Do ya live here?”

“Why would I live in a tavern?” he questions back.

You’re fucking stunned. “No, no! I mean do ya live around here? Like, somewhere around town or somethin’?” You ask him yet again, trying to make yourself absolutely clear.

“Oh, no.” he answered in the same flat voice he’s used for the entire conversation. The tired looking tiefling then turns away from you, rests his chin in the palm of his hand and proceeds to zone out, saying nothing more for the entire evening. Bastard doesn’t even order a drink.

Based on that exchange, you decide against pushing him any further answers. Naw, turns out he’s not dangerous; he’s just another dimwit.

---

My stupid ass D&D character