[His expression is unchanging as she offers her condolences, and he’s more than happy to move on for now. He doesn’t need anyone’s pity, as kind and gentle as it might be; he has enough anger about it to feed him for a long, long while and that is more than satisfactory for him.

So now. Talk of more pleasant things. Well, vaguely so. Certainly not the religion, she says, and he thinks the “religion” here is intriguing, though he can understand why Solvunn’s fervor regarding it settles unwell with some.

But he listens as she talks about homesickness. About a place he has no frame of reference for, that sounds just as fantastical as Abraxas to a man who lived in a bubble for most of his life.]

Two years? That’s a long time to be at sea.

[He can’t imagine the necessity behind that.

As for her question, it’s something of a loaded one. He hasn’t told anyone the full tale, and he’s not sure he intends to anytime soon. But she gets the truth, or at least a part of it, where the other part is nicely hemmed away for ease of conversation.]

My circumstances are strange. [the player thusly tries not to make a joke about the canon title] But I was kept… prisoner, for a very long while, somewhere underground. I was summoned here at the tail-end of an escape attempt.