Bear and Joy's ultra dirty safeties off run became very tense when they faced off against an Owlbear with 92 HP at level1 and level2 respectively.
There in an unknown forest only 34 years past the Earthkin rebellion when Joy was a mere 148 years old so 2132 on the Gregorian calendar.
Why is she only level 2 at 148 years old? It never came up. She's a Rogue, having learned her trade on the streets of a pre-rebellion city, hidden from society. As old as she was and still in a child's body, she was subject to harassment for not being in school, having false documents and all kinds of other issues as a result. Her genetic trait, once accepted by law, became a myth and a lie to modern society.
Anyway, she survived the last 34 years in the wild, living at first off the remnants of society and later off field mice sleeping in makeshift shelters in a fishing net hammock in the trees.
Bear was a post rebellion kid, a member of an Eartkin tribe who wasn't accepted because he was only half Earthkin, a child of the rebellion itself, and though he was raised like an Earthkin, they eventually made him 2nd class for not being a true Earthkin. He left when he came of age and also rummaged through the remnants of a lost society. He learned from books and became a Ranger Tinkerer.
So he had to leave the ruins due to the increase in strange creatures threatening to kill him and traveled two seasons West in search of a settlement he could join.
One morning he heard a bear and a girl yelling, investigated, and found Joy in a tree menaced by a large grizzly about to knock down her tree and have Joy for breakfast. With his makeshift bow and arrows, he harassed the bear from a sturdier tree only to end up in the same situation.
Thankfully, Joy decided to help him and after funding a new tree she threw rocks at the bear, but soon ran out of rocks and while getting more was certain to be caught by the bear. Bear risked his life again to taunt and attack the bear and the two of them managed to whittle the bear down until he was ultimately defeated by Joy's daggers.
However she fled due to stranger danger.
Bear field dressed the bear and left Joy meat and she stalked him as a curiosity as she'd not seen another person in 33 years.
Because the ruins contained hidden dangers, Joy became "virulent" and likely would have died without Bear's help. Over 6 days, he took care of her and gained her trust.
Virulence is a condition you have a small chance to get from ruins at this time. She had only a 3% chance to get it.
Bear, with a new friend, spent days making a semi-permanent shelter but with the absence of this large bear to defend his territory, an Owlbear moved in, disrupting their otherwise secure den.
So they set to work to take it down, after Joy's recovery they spent days collecting regionally, seasonally appropriate poisons including nightshade and amanita and along with a hunk of meat from a buck they hunted, they made a poisoned snack for the Owlbear.
A dozen lucky crafting, tracking and stealth checks later they managed to get the Owlbear to the bait and he ate it. The intense mixture of three poisons had three different DC and attribute checks, he failed them all and his hitpoints were cut in half.
With freshly poisoned and sharpened arrows, and blades, they attacked the Owlbear. He caught Joy first up a tree and one-shotted her with a critical hit, he could have killed her right there, and now, down to teens of health from their efforts, Bear had to fight him alone. The Owlbear was within 10 feet of Bear with a +10 to hit and huge damage, Bear was a couple bad rolls away from being disemboweled. But landed hits with just enough to down him.
It was harrowing.
So in this timeline, this is the first meeting between Joy and Bear, but since our fates are intwined it won't be the last. They will continue until Bear is killed or otherwise dies.
We're doing the whole lock merge thing so we're all enjoying being Joy alone with Bear, it's cute and funny especially with Misha (aka Freya) as the DM and storyteller.