Numi. The Numinous one. Numinous the Frozen Green Heart. Human. Druid Honorary Priest of the High Cold. Honorary Priest of the Clerics of Beory.
I was once on the path to be a bard warlock. People called me Gideon back then. A name I don't answer to even if anyone knew of it any more.
I was a party animal and especially loved fey in those days.
I fell in love with a fey touched human and we were going to have a baby. We were engaged to be married. She was kidnapped! I couldn't find her anywhere!
I searched the forest for months. It is what started the druidic shift. I began speaking with the trees and the fey and all of nature to find her. I even learned primordial and spoke with elementals (though I have the scars from those encounters).
One owl had seen her body lying lifeless in the snow before the winter storm buried her. As I dashed to the place where she had been spotted, for the first time I could almost FEEL myself changing into the fastest creature I had ever seen with my own eyes on the ground, a Crag Cat. I looked and used every skill at my disposal. I played our song in hopes she might her it and call to me even as the snow storm raged on. I bargained with the fey and I prayed. I prayed to Mother earth to bring her back to me. She was never seen again.
When my prayers went unanswered I went to the realm of the god of fury and ice, Auril. I requested one kiss to be able to be with my beloved again. She denied me. I still don't remember how I arrived at the Temple of the Priests of the High Cold, but ever since then I am a revered honorary member of their clergy. They delivered me, delirious, to the good clerics of Beory. The ice priests dare not allow one that Auril spared to die on their watch. They feared retribution from her if I was harmed, as most who worship Auril have come to follow. Every winter on the anniversary of her death I hike up the mountain in only a pair of boots with a snowflake falling on a grey heart painted on my chest.
My only offering is myself and a rose made of my frozen tears. I squeeze it with my broken hearted rage and the thorns cause it to be covered in my blood by the time I get to her. The good clerics of Beory that nursed me back to health invite me home every spring at the bottom of the mountain in the valley where they live at the edge of MY forest. 3 seasons of the year I am a worshiper of Beory, but every winter my mistress is one of cold fury.
I abandoned my bard music (though I still have my pipe pipe, but only ever use it to smoke) and I lost my connection to the particular fey I had once been in pact with. Her stipulation was that I never kill in malice. The story behind THAT is:
Years after I lost my love a man in a tavern had heard the sad tale, but instead he had postulated that my fairy princess had merely charmed me, put me under her spell and then went invisible, taking my child with her, as fey were known to do. He died before his blood wet the tavern floor and I have never used a metal weapon again. I was exiled from the town thereafter and forced to live in the forest, MY forest. I became a druid. During the winter I stay in the mountains with the priests of the high cold. They have given me the honorary title of 2nd level cold priest. They try every year to get me to stay in the mountains with them. They always want to know about Auril. Some even come with me from time to time, though none ever return. They all worship her out of fear. I don't worship. I only ask for one thing from her and it has been that way for many years. My TRUE home, when my heart thaws each spring, is the forest, with the fey and the good warm clerics of our Mother. I am a level 1 priest or cleric (honorary title) of Beory.
The winter after I killed a man I truly began my druid path, when the Clerics of Beory saved me that spring they said that the Ice priests were genuinely concerned that this was my last winter with them, I was changed when I awoke that spring. Since then, I spend as much of the 3 seasons in the forest if I am not alone with the trees and the fey then I stay with the clerics of Beory. My winters belongs to Auril. I long for a kiss from Auril so that I may be at peace and returned to my one true love forever. But she never attends my prayers to her. The first year when my fiance died in the snow I went fully prepared for the weather, to face the cold harsh mistress herself and demand my beloved back or for her to take me to her at once. She saw me at 1 HP and held my HP at one. She didn't let me die, she let me continue to crawl onward to her until I was clawing at the ice with bloody stumps of fingers. I do not remember any of this, I only remember waking up in the straw hut village of the kindly Beory clerics. At first they had let my body lay unconscious in a pile of hay for days and nights on end. They say I sweat the hay soaked and dried it up with fever twice over before I finally showed signs of turning the corner. None wanted to come near me for fear of being cursed by Mistress Winter's cold kiss of death. I've never really felt any warm emotions like love since then. I am kind and I don't enjoy bad feelings. I still feel THEM just fine, ALL THE TIME...
I'm not really sure WHAT happened to me. All I know is the next year I went back ready for her to finish the job in only boots and I have been going back every year making the same offering. They say I am carried down each year with the first thaw. Carried down as if by the wind itself. The priests of the cold consider me one of them as I have lodged with them in their holy attire of nothing but boots and paint in the middle of the God forsaken winter. I was an INSTANT legend once I came back for seconds from Our Lady of Perpetual Coldness, (may her bitter lips never touch your houses). They gave me an honorary first year priest status that year and begged me to stay and train with them full time. There have been fools follow me to her and never even return as a popsicle. That stopped after the 4th or 5th year, I think they may have been forced to MAKE them stop because they were becoming zealots about it and the Arch priest wouldn't have it. They made me an honorary 2rd level priest of the high cold and call me a Storm Brother, as an honorary title for my annual summit to the peak of Frost's Fury, beyond that no priests or priestesses are allowed to follow me any further. I stopped keeping track of how many times they ask me to join full time. They only ever wanted to intice me to join them so I could scare people with my first hand encounter with a death god. They peddle fear for fear's sake. I seek her kiss of cold death as a release from my curse. She denies me and lets me suffer another year. After the second year when she denied me is when I cried a rose made of tears and squeezed the thorns and bled with my OWN fury, offering her the rose and still no kiss. And since then that has become my secret annual offering to the ice cold queen of my heart. A red frozen rose made of my tears and blood. She finds it delicious and I know she does, though she never shows it. The fact that she DOESN'T kill me MEANS something, I just KNOW it! I know after all these years, there HAS to be a reason I am spared. When I give her the rose every year now, somewhere, DEEP inside, I feel that moment cause the slightest spark of something inside me. For just a flash it feels like there might have been something warm in my heart, or less cold than the rest of my heart at least. But it always fades as I realize that yet again this year she will not send me home to be where I belong. We have twin hearts now, she and I, the Goddess of Ice. Until I can be with the only one I TRULY love, she is my twin frozen flame, frozen forever in our icy morbid yearly dance.
But when my heart thaws again each spring, it is always Mother with whom I seek refuge. It is always her quiet wisdom, Her warmth, Her assurance that reminds me that I made it through another winter for a reason and now it is time to find out why and to protect the balance of mother Beory's beautiful creation and especially those things in it that I find the most beautiful and that most NEED someone like me to help them. I will always come back to Beory. While I am not a cleric, I would gladly serve her if she called upon me and I do often follow my intuition when I feel she is speaking to me. It causes me to find myself all too trusting of the Feywild population for most people's comfort level. The woman carrying my child I was about to marry before she was kidnapped and murdered in the snow, was a feytouched human and I have a long standing history with the fey.
I searched for my beloved after her kidnapping with the help of the fey. I discovered much about the land along the way and overlooked many treasures and relics because I was laser beamed focused on finding her. I was so focused on one thing but I DO remember where the areas were that I saw everything of value and interest. I have seen a LOT trying to find my manic pixie dream girl and since then I have seen even MORE on my pilgrimages through arctic and mountain realms. I still have many fey allies. When I met my long lost fiance, I wasn't the least bit concerned that she was feytouched. Feytouched creatures often get rejected by BOTH worlds. We met when I let her stay in my tree house when some wolves caught her scent and heard her crying. She thought I was fey touched at first myself! Back in those days I was a wild chaotic warlock/bard. I was chaotic good, but I was after power and one way to do that is to control territory. I had finally started accumulating properties when she met me. Though I didn't really care about the physical value of any of it, I just saw it all as a means to an end. Like nature, life needs to feed on life otherwise it could end for ALL life.
I only ever really made one deal with a fey and it was basically for protection while I lived in those trees all those years ago. Other than that I totally worshipped the earth goddess, even back in those days, and at one time vowed to eventually become a cleric or a true holy warrior paladan for her.
- Skill Proficiencies: Resistance to cold
Druid circle of the elements: All elements path
Feats: magic initiate cleric; spare the dying, guidance and bolt
Human determinism
Meditator
- Tool Proficiencies: Staff of the Woodlands
Home in a little cove in the woods next to a cave opening of an absolutely gargantuan mountain.
I have spent years there casting druid groveling with other druids and my cleric brothers of Beory. Together we have spent years awakening everything from rocks, boulders, plants and beasts of ALL variety. All who wish no harm can seek quarter in the woods around my tree house if they know the secret phrase to get by my awakened tree guards.
- Languages: My extensive background with fey and elementals of many varieties has given me fluency in the various dialects from the respective realms.
- Equipment: I have a staff of the woodlands that remains in tree form that I sleep in at the center of my druid grove and one that I carry with me.
Haunted one?
Spell List
Druid Grove
Awakened
Many many Scrolls of feeble mindedness
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Suggested Characteristics
Haunted one
Contacts
Priests of the High Cold
Clerics of Beory