Alone in the Dungeon — Stories

Rollo

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Rollo was born in the stone-buried stronghold of Kraaz’Duun, a remote Svirfneblin settlement carved into shimmering caverns far beneath the surface of the world. His people lived among crystal-lit halls, winding tunnels, and the ever present chorus of murmuring stone. Most deep gnomes felt an unbreakable bond with the dark places of the world, trusting in shadow, silence, and ancient earth-magic.

Rollo, felt called by something else entirely.

From childhood, he would gaze upward toward the unreachable ceiling of the caverns, imagining a great world of open space, wind, and light. While his kin feared exposure and wide horizons, Rollo found himself yearning for them. He believed that somewhere above, a life of clarity, courage, and honor awaited him, even if no one else in Kraaz’Duun understood.

He crafted makeshift shields from rotten wood, drilled with polished stones shaped into practice blades, and modeled himself after half-remembered tales of surface heroes passed down in whispers. His elders found his aspirations eccentric. His peers thought him strange. Yet Rollo held fast to a code that came from somewhere deep within. Tell the truth, protect others, stand firm against wrong, and seek the light wherever it may be found.

A vortex of magical power rent a jagged crevasse in the heart of Rollo’s homeland, plunging downwar from the surface world. Through that wound spilled something few Svirfneblin had seen:

Sunlight. True, golden sunlight.

It poured downward in a beautiful, terrifying column, scattering dust in glittering motes. The people of Kraaz’Duun recoiled, fearful of the unknown radiance. But Rollo stepped forward, entranced. The warmth on his skin felt like a blessing. Like a calling.

In that moment, he knew with absolute certainty that the light was meant for him.

Determined to reach the surface, Rollo traded nearly all he owned: family keepsakes, glowstones harvested from sacred caverns, tools he had shaped with his own hands. He acquired the two things he believed marked a defender of justice:

A sword and a shield.

Simple. Iron. Surface-forged. And to him, priceless.

He strapped his remaining possessions to his pack: a bedroll, a simple leather sac, his favorite cast iron cooking pot that was his only remaining family heirloom, and a small polished stone to remind him of home. Though his people tried to dissuade him, Rollo climbed toward the crevasse, ascending through broken stone and twisting fissures that smelled of earth newly woken from sleep.

He did not look back.

The surface stunned him. The sky stretched endlessly overhead. The air tasted alive. Colors were too bright, too sharp, too real.

He made camp in the forest where he emerged. Towering trees filtered the sunlight into shifting patterns he could watch for hours. The forest creatures eyed him curiously, and though they differed from the burrowing beasts of his homeland, he found he could still sense their emotions, still communicate in quiet, druidic ways learned from the spirits of stone and earth.

Here, in this strange new world, Rollo practices with his sword each morning, reciting the virtues he swore to uphold. He prays to the sun in awkward, earnest whispers. He listens for guidance in rustling leaves and chittering animals.

He waits for a quest worthy of his heart.

Because deep in his soul, Rollo believes the world fractured so that a single beam of light could reach him. And now he must become worthy of it.

Thorek Duskworn

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

He was a young priest tending to a fevered child. He prayed, begged, reached for the divine. Yet nothing came. The heavens had gone silent. The child died in his arms, and with her death, his faith.

He cast aside his vestments, denounced the gods, and bound the child’s doll around his neck as his only symbol.

For decades he wandered as an apostate, healing through herbs, poultices, and stubborn will. A healer without blessing, a priest without faith. He donned sword and shield and survived as best he could.

He walks the broken world as both heretic and healer, haunted by the child he failed and guided only by the fragile flame he has found in himself. It has led him to the forests, where he meets a badly injured Svirfneblin. In the face of death, his hands burn with light again.

Not from any god, but from within.

He now believes divinity was never the gods’ alone. Mortals have always carried it.

Garreth Vale

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Garreth Vale now moves through live with uncertainty. He came from an ordered world where every dawn brought a command and every night brought another name to remember. Now he lives in the spaces between those memories, drifting from place to place with only his hound for company.

The dog, Barrow, follows at his heel with easy loyalty. Garreth talks to him more than he talks to anyone else. Some days Barrow feels like the last proof that Garreth is still connected to the world at all.

The weight of his chainmail rests on his shoulders with the weight of regret. It is familiar, grounding, and impossible to fully set aside. He wears it not out of duty, but because he no longer knows what he is without it.

He is no longer sure what he lives for, and the forest seems content to let him wander until he figures it out.

Except that he is not entirely alone, not really. Triste finds him whenever she wishes, appearing in his camp or on the trail walking in the rays of moonlight. Barrow greets her with a thump of his tail, and Garreth feels the same tug he always does. It pulls him toward motion, toward purpose, toward a world he thought he had left behind.

She never explains how she locates him, and he never asks. Some things are better left unspoken.

Garreth does not know what she sees in him, or why she keeps returning. He only knows that when she steps out of the shadows and smiles, he feels the faint spark of something he thought had burned out long ago.

And so he packs his things, gives a quiet command to Barrow, and follows her into whatever comes next.

Because when Triste calls, he answers. It is the closest he has come to meaning in years.

Triste

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Triste is a young elf whose presence always seems to drift a half-step ahead of anyone trying to understand her. She moves like moonlight slipping through branches, soft in voice and impossible to pin down. Although she has been alone for as long as she can remember, and not a member of the various Elf families of this world, Triste carries that same quiet strangeness, as if she is listening to things no one else can hear.

A Seeker of Experience.

Curiosity rules her life. She seeks experience for its own sake, not gold or renown. Old ruins, whispered legends, forgotten relics, and reckless journeys appeal to her far more than comfort or safety. For reasons she has never explained, she often chooses to bring a companion along, tugging him into danger with nothing more than a smile and a spark in her eye.

That companion is Garreth Vale, a grizzled hunter and former soldier whose past has been carved into him by hard years and harder choices. Garreth is steady, practical, and slow to trust, but Triste disarmed him from the start. Somewhere along their shared travels, his loyalty grew into something deeper. He has not spoken of it, and she has never asked, but their closeness is evident in quiet glances and the way they move in step without thinking.

Whether she returns his feelings remains a mystery. Her affection is gentle and constant, but her inner thoughts stay carefully veiled.

Recently Triste learned of torrent of magical power that ripped a chasm deep into the earth. Something about it calls to her, singing her name as if beconing her home. Instead of revealing her true interest, she discovers that a traveling mage is also searching for the source of the magical outburst and is looking to hire protection for the journey. Triste convinces Garreth to take the job, offering nothing more than the promise of a curious path ahead. Garreth agrees because when Triste asks, he rarely says no.

Now the three of them walk beneath the tall boughs of the forest. The mage mutters over his notes, Garreth keeps a hunter’s watch, and Triste guides them with unobtrusive nudges whenever the forest seems to shift around them. She knows they are drawing closer to what she seeks.

Their path changes when they encounter two figures in a woodland clearing: a dwarf with the look of someone carrying old burdens, and beside him a small wanderer gazing upward at the sunlight with childlike wonder. Thorek and Rollo seem as surprised as anyone, though Triste feels a faint stir in the air, as though the world itself has begun stitching their stories together.

She steps forward with her usual serene smile, Garreth only a half-step behind her, ready for whatever comes next.

Eloryn

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The mage calls himself Eloryn, though few know whether that is his true name or simply the one he offers to strangers. He carries the reputation of a wandering scholar, soft-spoken and endlessly curious about ruins, civilizations, and the ebb of history across the ages.

He dresses the part well. His robes are worn at the seams, his books heavy with notes, and his voice calm enough to suggest a life spent in dusty libraries. To most people he seems harmless, a man more interested in forgotten lore than the raw practice of magic.

This version of himself is a lie he has cultivated with care.

The Hunger Beneath the gentleness lies a mind consumed by hunger. Eloryn does not seek knowledge for understanding, only for leverage. Every relic, every glyph, every fragment of arcane theory is another step in the hidden work of his life. He is shaping a path toward something far beyond the reach of ordinary mages.

His staff, which he calls a tool of study, is in truth an anchor for a ritual he has been constructing for years. With each each shard of magical essence he gathers, the staff draws closer to becoming the key to his final transformation.

Eloryn intends to ascend. Not as a metaphor or spiritual ideal, but as a shedding of mortality itself. He wants to abandon the limitations of flesh and take a place among the greater forces of creation, no matter the cost to himself or anyone else.

He hides this ambition behind mild manners and thoughtful smiles, but the truth sits coiled beneath every word he speaks.

The forest holds something he needs. A component tied to a disturbance in the weave of the world, potent enough to fuel the next stage of his work. He cannot retrieve it alone. He also cannot reveal its nature.

So he hires an escort under the guise of a research expedition, presenting himself as a harmless scholar with too many books and not enough survival skills.

Triste, with her effortless charm and wandering spirit, makes the perfect front. Garreth, steady and sharp-eyed, completes the illusion of a simple scholarly trip. Neither knows that Eloryn watches them with the same quiet calculation he applies to his runes and diagrams.

He studies people too, learning how to move them, how to use them, and how to keep them unaware.

For now he walks with them through the tall trees of Ruhar, polite and inquisitive, thanking Garreth for every small act of vigilance and listening with interest to every observation Triste offers. But behind his eyes the truth remains unchanged.

He is not here for discovery. He is not here for history. He is here to gather the final pieces that will allow him to rise beyond the world they know.

And when that time comes, no one in his company will see it coming.