Swamped

"So... wait. Who exactly picked the name?"

"Doc suggested it when she told me where I'd been found. I didn't really care, so I just went with it. Then I spent a few months getting kicked off squads and assigned to new ones before I got stuck with the boss."

"Kicked off?"

"I was picking fights all the time. Couldn't stand being told what to do, mostly. Seems our whole squad was made up of troublemakers like me... well, except Starling, she was just new. Doesn't seem all that fair to her, now that I think about it."

You find yourself a little lost on where to continue. You opt for something that's hopefully a little less emotionally charged.

"What did you do in the Marshguards?"

Rivers shrugs.

"We didn't have a lot of people with specific jobs. Instead we did whatever needed to be done. Scrubbing floors, fixing holes in the fortress, chasing beasts out... we did it all. Not much fighting, though. Starling and me, we weren't ready for that yet. Our first real fight was with some Bogknights on their barge, I dunno... about a week ago? And we lost, real bad."

"That would have been when I arrived in the swamp," you say. "Um, I was hiding below deck, I didn't really know how to fight either."

"You're kidding me," she says. "We nearly ran into each other back then and had no idea? Life's weird, I guess."

"So... what about leisure time? Your fortress seemed, um, sparse compared to the Bog Hill base."

"I dunno what most of 'em do," Rivers shrugs. "But me, I spend my downtime reading. Because there's not a damned thing to do besides that."

"Oh, what did you read?"

"Nothing good, really. There was an okay field guide to swamp animals. Everything else was a load of rubbish. But I read it anyways, because I was bored as hell."

You're not sure where to take the conversation from here.