Grandmush

Grandmush

Relatives	None
Aliases	Grandmush
Place of Birth	Forests of Isonhound
Species	New Dryad

Grandmush is a New Dryad druid who harnesses the power of their slain ancestors to help them in their endeavors. Grandmush frequently goes by other names such as Aman-Tia, Morrie, Belle, etc.

Physical Appearance

Grandmush has a shambling, stooping form. However, the bark-like skin that one might expect of a New Dryad is dark, rotting, and covered in various fungi and mushrooms so that hardly any of the bark beneath is visible except on the traditional mask that they wear. While most new Dryad frequently stand at above seven feet, Grandmush's bent form rarely crests five.

Personality

Grandmush is a quiet, constant presence in any space that they inhabit. Their shambling, mushroom covered form is impossible to ignore, but their quiet love of anything that thrives in the forest, or lives of the land is evident.

History

In the year 692, Keckless Racoba unleashed a plague designed to wipe out the Old Dryad race. During this year, the dryad now know as Grandmush was being developed in one of the few remaining Old Dryad settlements in Isonhound. As the plague wiped out their race, it took the livewood tree that Grandmush was being born of as well. The tree fell with their bretheren, Grandmush within it.

Some time later, the clearing that once buzzed with the peaceful life of millions of creatures, insects, and Dryad lay quiet - the once proud livewood tree that stood at its center, felled and rotting. The clearing had now been overtaken with the numerous mushroom and fungi species which thrived in the soft, shaded loam created out of the remains of the previous inhabitants. The surrounding trees were now covered in creeping, crawling vines and thorn bushes skirted the clearing's edge - the last attempt of the dying inhabitants to keep the invading and infected at bay.

Out of this death, the dryad now known as Grandmush came to be. Their low and stooping, fungus covered form didn't quite match that of their New Dryad bretheren, nor that of their Old Dryad ancestors - but with the last memories and moments of their fallen family engrained in their very being. The last vestiges of their lives and the plague that took them surround Grandmush in a haze that eats at anyone who comes too near.

After they came to be, Grandmush took the rotting, crumbling bark of their once livewood tree, as is tradition, and formed their mask and armor, so that they may travel beyond the limits of their birthplace. One look past this mask will reveal the haunted eyes of one born from death itself.

With no family left to guide them, Grandmush spent the next decades traveling the forests of Isonhound, seeking the power that might bring their family back to them. Eventually, they resigned themself to the fact that this power was outside of the material realm of possibility and accepted that although they were gone, they live on through the forest - through themself - as is the will and power of Mielikki.

This lifeforce - the blood of the forest - could still be used, however, and Grandmush taught themselves to call upon the remnants of their family to feed and shape their magic. The fungus and other life that have since formed from their family's remains grasp at Grandmush's enemies, stealing their senses to give them a sense of their mortal existence, and calling them to their final resting place.