As your eyes open you are in a cold, stone room, strapped down on a bench. Memories of a horrible past floods your mind. Taken against your will. Your mother, screaming. This room, strapped down, unable to move. Pain, immense, mind breaking pain. Change, growing muscles, breaking skin, growing bones, different teeth. A slaughtered village.
Your heart starts to race and your breathing becomes short as you struggle to free yourself from your restraints with fear welling up inside you. Not here! Not again! You can’t go through that again!
No matter how hard you try, the restraints are not budging. You realise you have no idea how long you have been here as the fear subsides somewhat and you stop struggling. Anxious, your eyes dart around the room looking for something to help you. The room is sparsely furnished. Behind you, to your right, stands a chair and a desk in the corner, a bookshelf covering the wall behind the desk. By the wall to your left stands a workbench. It is littered with knives, vials, syringes, scissors and other tools. Some are clean but some have some stains of something brownish red on them. In front of you is a closed wooden door. To its right is a small table with the only light source in the room, a small wax candle.
On the wall above the table is something that does not fit in with the rest of the room. A painting in a decorated wooden frame. The frame looks like it is carved with a motif of many different flowers. It looks simple yet fancy. But what really catches your attention is the painting. It depicts a man kneeling in front of an open cage. It looks like the man has just unlocked the cage and is gently trying to help a creature out of it. A small creature with white and grey and black fur, a fluffy tail and ears like, well, your own. A creature you recognize. An Urkin. A small, skinny, starved Urkin who almost looks too weak to stand
The man is wearing a long dark grey coat and on his head is one of those three pointed hats people at sea might wear. In his belt hangs two swords and you think you can see the hint of a kind smile as the man looks at the weak Urkin he is trying to help. On his shoulder you see an emblem depicting three lines of smoke rising from a campfire with glowing coals on a background of a rising sun.
Your vision starts to fade and slowly everything goes dark.