Level
7
Experience
28,875 XP
He was twenty eight years old when he sat down at the wrong table.
He didn't know it was the wrong table. That was the thing. He read the room, he weighed the players, and he decided the odds were favorable. He was right about the odds. He won cleanly, fairly, without a single dishonest move. And then the man across from him — or someone acting on that man's behalf — decided that was unacceptable.
The last thing Gideon Cross remembers clearly is a hand. A Drow's hand, and on the back of it a tattoo in white ink. A coffin. Simple, deliberate. Then nothing.
He was dead for one hundred years. To the day.
Whatever brought him back did not do it halfway. He returned with everything intact — his skin, his muscle, his memories, his taste in coats. What changed was the surface of him. His complexion had gone the color of old ash. His hair came back white. His eyes, once dark, returned milky and pale, catching light in a way that living eyes don't. He looks like what he is, if you look long enough. Most people need a moment to place what's wrong. He's learned to smile before they figure it out.
He woke with no explanation and no obvious source. No altar, no bargain he could remember striking, no deity with an obvious claim on him. Just alive again, in a world that had moved on without him, on the exact anniversary of the night he died. When he finally pieced that last part together — counted back the dates, confirmed it twice — he laughed. Long and quiet and genuine. Then he poured a drink and wondered what game he'd been dropped into.
He hasn't stopped wondering. He just doesn't let it show.
Two years have passed since then. He found his feet, learned what had changed and what hadn't, and eventually made his way to Springreach and the Adventurers Guild. The guild pays well. The work is dangerous. That suits him fine — a second life he doesn't particularly feel he deserves is house money, and house money is meant to be played. He takes the jobs, collects the coin, and finds what pleasures are available. Cards when he can. Good whiskey when the cards aren't running. Conversation, company, the particular pleasure of a room that doesn't know what to make of him yet.
He is charming and self-interested and not especially burdened by guilt. He has standards — he despises a man who can't lose gracefully, finds excuses contemptible, and pays what he owes — but he doesn't pretend to be good. He is what Rikevist made him and what death left behind.
Somewhere in Thornmire, or wherever a century has carried them, there is a Drow with a white ink coffin on the back of their hand.
Gideon looks at hands. He doesn't talk about why.
