Celedor MacGarren

An Archdruid on a verdant island in the Sea of Death, met during the Superheroes campaign.

From the notes:

Descending a treeless and powder dry slope along a dried out creek bed, you arrive at the shore of the lake or sea. A slightly sulfurous breeze blows onshore at this pebbly beach. The water is clear, the one-foot waves lapping gently at the stones.

A couple miles out to sea, there is a high-cliffed rocky island. Even from this distance, you can make out yellow and green trees atop it, and a slender whisp of smoke slanting upwards in the breeze.

As you get closer, you can see birds all over the trees. Occasionally they glide into the air in groups, like silt swirling about in the sea, and then land in different trees.

The barbarian (wisdom check) might notice that none are water birds – all seed-eating tree birds like sparrows and chickadees and cardinals and finches.

The interior is dotted with groves of bushes (barbarian will recognize huckleberries, raspberries, blackberries -- already picked, now barren and mostly leafless) and trees – apple (covered in red apples), walnut, pecan. Brown and leaning giant sunflowers grow in open areas, and mistletoe hangs like vines from the limbs of towering oak trees, further decorated by the bright colors of fall.

Birds flit from tree to tree, watching you as you come upon a field of golden wheat, ripe for harvest. A few hundred feet away, on the other side of the field, a white-haired man stands in the field dressed in brown, with a sickle on his shoulder.

Celedor's camp consists of a small stick hut, a hammock hanging between two trees, a rather large outdoor clay oven, and a few barrels and wooden bowls. The grass at your feet is incredibly soft and incredibly green.

Celedor will go about retrieving a few big loafs of hot bread from the smoking clay oven with a long wooden paddle.

Celedor has been here a couple hundred years. He doesn't know about Luma Stones or curses. But, he does know:

• The Keep of Hashir, about 50 miles away, was once a great fortress owned by an emperor of what was then known as The Golden Basin. At some point, Hashir asked his grand sorceror Zalshir to conduct his research outside the keep, as he was toying with dangerous forces. Zalshir relocated his research 200 miles out into the dusty plains.
• At some point, a cataclysm struck Zalshir's underground laboratory, an explosion that rocked the world to its foundation and blotted out the sun for years. In the laboratory's place is now a 200-mile long chasm in the earth, called Zalshir's Crevasse.
• The Golden Basin became barren in the following decades, and renamed the Endless Waste. And the great inland sea eventually renamed, The Sea of Death, for it supports no normal water creatures. As the land and waters were so blighted, the keep was abandoned.
• Only a year ago, extra-planar beings called GITHYANKI began rebuilding the ruins of the ancient keep. They haven't bothered me though...

At some point, a bright red cardinal will sail in and land on Celedor's shoulder and tweet a few times. His face goes pale, and he glances up at the party.

After a pause, the grizzly bear bellows loudly.