Grandfather
Human Druid of the Land 2
[sblock=Stats]Str 8
Dex 15
Con 14
Int 12
Wis 16
Cha 10
HP
AC
Prof Bonus +2
Init +
Race
Human
+1 Wis, +1 Dex
Bonus Feat
Bonus Trained skill
Bonus language
Class
Druid
Druidic Language
Spellcasting
Wild Shape (CR 1/4, No fly or swim)
Cirle of the Land (Grassland)
- Bonus Cantrip
- Natural Recovery (recover 1/2 lvl in spell slots on short rest 1/day)
Proficiencies
Armor: Light, Medium, shields (only nonmetal armor)
Weapons: Clubs, daggers, darts, jevelins, maces, staves, scimitars, sickles, slings, spears
Tools: Herbalism Kit
Saves: Intelligence and Wisdom
Background
Inheritor
Skills: Survival, History
Tools: Musical Instrument
Bonus Language:
Feature: Inheritance
Traits
- When I make up my mind, I see it through
- I judge actions, not words
Ideal
- No one and nothing can turn me aside from my calling
Bond
- Balance must be restored if the land and its people are to heal
Flaw
- Delusion: I act like a cranky old man even though I'm clearly not
Feats
Bonus - Resiliant (Constitution)
Skills
Insight +5
Medicine +3
Perception +5
History +3
Survival +5
Languages
Common, Druidic, ?, ?
Spellcasting (Save DC 13)
Slots 1 - 3
Cantrips
- Shillaghle
- Guidence
- ?
Prepared (5)
1 -
Equipment
Cash: 15
Weapons
Scimitar +4 atk, 1d6+2 dmg
Armor
Leather, +1 AC
Wooden shield, +2 AC
Gear
Traveler's clothes
Musical instrument
Herbalism Kit
Explorer's kit
Druidic focus
Pouch (coins)[/sblock]
[sblock=Story]In the sanctuary, shaped from the bole of one of the Old Trees, the strange light of the spirits died out, leaving only a faint and fading gleam in the object cradled in a rough-hewn stone altar in the center. An old man, dressed in brown wool robes that were stained and disheveled, reached down to pick it up with a hand that trembled slightly just as he did. He planted the end of his staff more firmly in the bare earth and pushed himself upright again.
It was a rank betrayal he'd done here. It left a foul taste in his mouth, and a deep and abiding guilt that he would carry for...well, for a very long time. But he hadn't done it lightly. He knew with the cursed burden of long years that this was the only way to continue the fight.
They wouldn't thank him...but he knew that in a way, they were coming out far better than he in this arrangement.
There was a muted rumble from outside, and the ground shook slightly.
One of the initiates...no, he'd been raised that morning, and far too soon, but initiates did not fight in war...came bursting in. The fear on the boy's face wasn't panic. There was a manic sort of hope that broke the old man's heart to see. Yes, the youth might hope. When old 'grandfather,' took up his great staff and went into the sanctuary to conduct a ritual, the youth might have visions of nature's wrath called forth in howling tornados of fire, and hurricanes that would dash the armies of the warlords beneath mountains.
They didn't understand yet...this was not how nature worked. Oh, the heirophants could do some things of that sort, certainly. Many of the Mysteries commanded forces that were spectacularly destructive. But in the end, the earth took the long view. Ages of men came and went, and were of no consequence to mountains and hurricanes. No Mystery yet had been found to rouse those spirits to the call of men. And the wise would never seek such things.
"Master," the boy said breathlessly. "The outermost circles are breached! The sleeping trees have awoken, but Nyssimer says they won't last long...the invaders have fire! They sent me here...to...I'm to ask..." he swallowed, for a moment not sure whether he feared the ravening hordes outside more than even the appearance of issuing a demand to the archdruid.
Another hour and he might have enjoyed the irony of it before setting him at ease. Not today.
My boy...I'm so sorry. I would tell you all I know, but the only difference is that you would meet your end in despair, instead of with hope still in you. I am cruel, but not that cruel.
"Don't bother," he grumbled. "I know what you're to ask. Go back. Tell Nyssimer and the other six to meet me here. I must speak to them."
Relieved, he whirled and scampered out...and it was only minutes before the Seven arrived. Seven students he had personally trained. Each brilliantly strong in the ways of the Green. Nyssimer was an elf, with nut-brown skin and dark green hair, his face always seeming to look down from a height his body couldn't quite offer him. Yves, a human woman with fair complexion and a sunny disposition. The halfling twins, Tarnass and Triessa prowled in just behind them, nearly feral in their keen perceptions. An awakened bear named Comet...slow and methodical of mind, but absolutely unstoppable once he made it up. Renine and her pixie friend Silvershard. And of course, Edragan...the half elf who fretted so about his love of cities and civilization, and how that seemed so at odds with his love of the natural places and the wild.
They formed a semicircle around the archdruid automatically, as if attending one of his lessons again. Their faces were bleak, but he saw an echo of that initiate's hope in their eyes. They thought he could save them. He was the one who always had a plan.
And he did. But it wasn't what they thought.
Nyssimer started. He was always the one to seize the initiative...the one who felt he would be next to carry the staff and bear the mantle. The one who wanted it. "Master, there's something very wrong. We've tried activating the wards to keep their mages at bay, but they aren't working."
Several others started chiming in with similar accounts, but he lifted a gnarled hand and nodded. "I know. I've taken the power from the wards. All of them. I needed it for this."
He held up the object from the altar. An acorn, much larger than normal, with a rich green color and a brown cap. It glimmered in the dim light of the glowing mosses that bedecked the sanctuary.
They all reacted with shock, but that hope seemed even to intensify. It was insane, they knew. Absolutely crazy. Which meant it must also be brilliant. How would it save them?
Yves asked, "I...why? What is it? Can it stop them?"
There was another rumbling blast, louder. The earth shook again, and dust and bits of bark fell from the domed roof of the sanctuary as the Old Tree itself was shaken.
"No," was Grandfather's reply, as heavy as his ancient bones felt. "Stopping them is not in my power. It is not in any of our powers. Not now."
"Then what is the plan, old man?!" Nyssimer shouted suddenly. Anger and frustration, driven by fear and the dawning realization that his hope was misplaced. "What is this thing you've made? That you've killed us all to make?!"
Yves went to the elf's side to try to calm him, but she and the others were still mostly focused on Grandfather. They wanted to know as well.
"A focus. For a spell. Cast into it, the focus will grow into the world, into the spirit of the world...and it will keep that spell alive. Just one spell. I will need one of you to cast it."
Pandemonium erupted...several of them demanding to know how one spell could change anything, demanding to know why this was worthwhile...others pleading with them to stop to slow down, to listen, to trust. Another explosion outside silenced them.
"Reincarnation. Spinning the great wheel. That is the spell. I will need one of you to cast it on me." He kept his voice calm, his face furrowed but hard. It would be easier if they hated him for it.
"THAT'S what this is?!" Yes, Nyssimer would understand first. "You've sacrificed our best defenses so you could come back?! Just YOU?!"
Renine frowned. "It's not just that though," she said. "It wouldn't just be coming back once. If the spell...lives, like you say, then..."
Nyssimer strode towards the archdruid, fury on his face. "Yes," he spat. "Immortality. And it only took the sacrifice of everyone who trusted you. Is your human fear of death truly so..."
"ENOUGH!" Grandfather roared suddenly, and Nyssimer flinched back even in his rage. The pain in his eyes was palpable, the anger that exploded outward also compressed inward. "I do not do this for myself! We would not be any less dead if the wards worked. It would only delay that reckoning...cost them more soldiers...but then that power would be expended and GONE. With this though...one of us can fight on. And on. And on. His every living moment can be a war against the monstrous machine that will be built on our ashes. As long as there is life in the world, he will be bound to the wheel...with none of the balm of forgetting that we enjoy. Keeping his purpose."
He took a shuddering breath. "You all know death is a door, not an end. The difference is that I will not have peace. I will shoulder the burden each time, and each time it will grow heavier. I do this because I believe...I believe that even a mountain can be worn to nothing by one man...if that man has time."
"It's done, regardless. Hate me if you wish. I do not begrudge you that. I...have failed all of you, and everyone here." Grandfather threw his staff to the floor. "Nyssimer. I will need you to kill me. Then you, or someone else, cast the spell. If you do not, you'll thwart my plan...which may come as a cold satisfaction I suppose...but I ask that...that against all your instincts and emotions, that you trust me one final time. I will find a way to make this right. Give me the time I need."
The elf, already close, scowled at him. "Why me?"
Grandfather chuckled dryly. "Because you'll feel the least guilty."
Nyssimer barked a laugh at that, then looked away for a moment. "Maybe you don't know us the way you think you do." He traced a sigil in the air and spoke a word of invocation. Grandfather felt his heart start to seize up...and rather than fight the magic, he accepted it...and collapsed to the floor.
He felt an instant of tranquility in the end, as darkness closed over him. Resolution.
Then nothing.
================
Tarquin was four, and not allowed to leave his mother's side...but he was a clever lad, far beyond his years. The Weavers, their closest neighbor, near town, often joked that he was like an old man in a little boy's body...a claim that Tarquin just sniffed disdainfully at. They were crazy. He was young and strong! And old men smelled bad.
He often slipped away from mother when she was washing clothes in the river, because there was a tree he liked to visit. A special tree, even if no one else seemed to see it...and he himself couldn't quite explain why. It had one acorn that was way too big, and it made a sound sometimes like a far off song, or voice. When he went there today though, the acorn was gone!
A moment later he found it though...it had fallen off. Seeing that filled Tarquin with a moment of near panic for some reason, but he bent over to pick it up...and when his hand touched it, he felt something take root in him. Not literally, of course. But the branches of the tree of that seed curled not in vines or roots, but in time and mind. His fingers closed around the hard shell of it, and he knew.
By the ten teats of the wolfmother though, he had a lot of work to do before he'd be ready to start this war again.
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Rin Carliyle was three, his father visiting the grave where his mother had been buried, when he heard the faint sound from an old oak on the hill overlooking the cemetary and slipped away to find a strangely big acorn on a fallen branch...
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Anton tripped over a tree felled during a storm, and his hand grabbed something as he hauled himself up...
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And the wheel turned.[/sblock]
