Once there lived an outsider on the fringes of the High Forest, keeping to himself and living a simple life. He carved fallen wood into pieces that he traded for the few necessities he could not grow or gather for himself, content that the best way to make the world well was to have no part in it. The fates of great kingdoms or the threat of orc hordes were of no concern to him for they were far away and the problems of others, and the world would live on regardless.
And so he lived for three score years until a traveller sought shelter from him one winter's night, pursued by brigands who knew the hermit would not dare not stand in their way. Yet in that moment, when he could have sent the traveller away, he realised a truth of the world - that all it took for dark deeds to succeed was for good people to do nothing. And so he hid the traveller and stood before the brigands, carving knife in hand, and dared them to step across his door to harm someone under his hospitality.
The brigands dared. They spent their wrath upon the hermit when they could not find the traveller, such that when he emerged from hiding he saw the hermit lying in his life's blood. And the traveller wept for on the hermit's cold lips was a smile. In his grief the traveller called upon great magic to call back the hermit's soul, yet the Art may be fickle and it was a young maiden who awoke from death, elf-touched by the traveller's primal magic and filled with a life and energy the hermit had never known. She took the name Talindra to honour her traveller-savior and vowed to live by the truth she learned in the hermit's last breath.
Half-Elf Paladin of the Ancients and Beastmaster Ranger
Folk Hero
Autumnreaver of the Emerald Enclave
Lady of the Fey
The Chapters and Cast of the Ballad
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