A former foot soldier in the crusades who had a panicked war horse fall on his legs in a skirmish somewhere on the way to Antioch and was left behind in Bulgaria by a retreating supply train on his way back.
His shattered leg never healed well and he is in constant pain he has mostly learned to live with, does not speak the language and is edging out a small existence as a gravedigger in a bigger city, dragging his twisted limb through rain-soaked earth, muttering prayers in a foreign dialect to saints no one there worships.
Somewhere between Neutral Good and Neutral Bitter, depending on the day.
I know it is a bit hammy.
Alternatively, it turns out the noblewoman who has hired the adventuring party for a string of missions is effectively destitute and extremely in debt.
Neither able to pay the adventurers nor pay her outstanding credit debt toward several influential and unscrupulous banking houses who have thrown some gold together to pay a mercenary troop to collect the gold from her or alternatively take natural goods (speak plundering her holdings).
Now, with a small mercenary army bearing down on the pastoral villages and crumbling castle, what will the party do?