Cordelia the Homestead HermitHalfling Druid

Cordelia the Homestead Hermit – Halfling Druid

The land of Grans, home of the small-folk, is renowned across central Tharador for its lavish and vibrant gardens. Seemingly ordinary to its locals, the well-tended and quaintly packed gardens of Grans provide a contrast to the cobble-stone and mortar cities that most surrounding lands have become used to. Brilliant hedges wreathed in thousands of different vines of flowers act as natural walls and barriers around the land, as well as the fencing between blocks of houses as well. This was the land that Cordelia grew up in, and always she was fascinated with the majesty of these sights. Never did Grans appear in the adventure books she would read as a child, and only as a footnote in most historical books about the Draksborne Empire. Often she would explore the woods beyond her house near Grans’ outskirts, frolicking in the wild beauty that sprung there too – so different from the tamed gardens of her home.

It was here that she discovered her penchant for fungi, able to quickly and easily identify them at sight from her encyclopedic knowledge gathered from her many days and nights in the Grans Library. She came to know what went great in a stew, what would be great to brew a remedy of health, or death, and the many different affects that they would have. Spending so much time around them she came to notice that those she had planted in her house seemed to grow at exceedingly large rates, and her curiosity piqued. With more reading she discovered that she may have the innate powers of a Spore Druid, and finally confirmed it when she grew a mushroom to the size of a child right in front of her eyes.

Her parents, astonished, sent applications to Draksborne’s University of Canos and Belfrie’s University of Ardris. Belfrie came back more than willing to accept the young druid-to-be, so Cordelia at the tide of her youth left home to attend the University. There, she learned of her Druidic capabilities, guided by loremasters and wizards, yet seldom by a master druid, for the University had few to offer. Thus she sought tutelage in the form pilgrimages to the Four Pillars, the trees of Brel Alda, Brel Harmen, Brel Vardra and Brel Endra. Yet her trip to Brel Vardra in Alimroth was plagued by danger, the tree besieged by an Alimrothi war host shortly after her arrival. She endured fire, surrounded by death, yet prevailed, barely. The experience haunted her, returning to Belfrie soon after where she returned to her studies, completing her education. For several years she tried to forget her brush with war by beginning an alchemy practice in Velandria, yet the hustle and bustle of the city only left her feeling more isolated, more on edge.

When the Liturium War ended, a wake of destruction was left in Formen’s Woods, including those near her childhood home. Cordelia moved there, to Steinved Forest, a place that had suffered greatly as a casualty of war, and even after by the cataclysms of Leacianus. Anomalies haunted the woods, and Cordelia aimed to live within them, using her knowledge to try to bring life back to a place that had lost so much of it. From her abode carved within a giant living mushroom, she treks out each day, tending to the plants and creatures of the woods, nurturing what she can. Yet it seems a strangeness has taken the woods in recent weeks, as the creatures grow mad with rage.