Whether it came from army training, time with a mercenary band, a military education, or some less-conventional source, you’ve been taught the art of war. Battle is far more than just swinging a sword, after all, and you likely spend as much time with tactical manuals and maps as you do conventional weapons.

Where did you gain this level of tactical ability? Do you hire your skills out to the highest bidder or did you take jobs on moral grounds? Or do you just seek out excitement and adventure to test your skills?

While most shadowcasts prefer not to contemplate their counterpart, you are deeply curious about them, even going as far as finding a portal to the Material Plane, planning to find and observe them—perhaps not unlike a naturalist studying a rare animal. However, something happened along the way that led you to adventure.

You’ve had to make a living with your fists, but you’ve never had time to develop a particularly attractive style of fighting. The world is a rough place to make it in, and if that meant breaking a chair over your opponent’s head or taking them down with a grapple, then so be it.

With this brutal fighting style at your disposal, did you seek out excitement and opponents or was fighting for pay merely a grim reality? Did you leave a trail of broken bodies or reluctant admirers in your wake?

You are aware of your counterpart, of course. But more than that, you loathe them. You have started your adventures, at least in part, in order to find this person, remove them in some fashion, and take their place.

Have you located your counterpart yet? Why do you seek to replace them? Are they repugnant and you would right their wrongs? Do you seek to balance the universe? Or do they simply have the life that you were meant to have? What if you do eventually find them—and realize you have no wish to fulfill what was once your burning ambition?

You have done what few have managed: you have aged gracefully out of adventuring. Maybe exhaustion overtook you, maybe you had accomplished all you had dreamed. Whatever happened, you have done exceedingly little since then. Maybe you drank yourself into darkness each night, or maybe you’ve been content to just watch the flowers glow on a small plot of land you’ve bought yourself.

What pulled you back into a life of adventure? Do you want to go back to retirement? What drives you, and what beckons you to stop?