Standing at a stout four feet high, Izithrael is tall for a gnome. While his mother is fully gnome, his father is half gnome, half elf, which explains both his height and his elven name, handed down to him from a grand father or great uncle, he can never remember which. What he
does remember is his childhood in the Fangwood. His parents had tried to leave civilization behind, transplanting themselves into a commune nestled among the towering pines and ancient stone ruins of the forest. They were still occasional visitors to Phaendar, however, as the need arose to barter for supplies and attend festivals. But they were a free spirited people, worshipers of the sky spirits known as agathions, animalistic angels that blend divinity and nature through their affinity for all things that crawl, swim, climb, and fly.
His first true encounter with one was when he was only a boy of 15 years. He had wandered downriver from that week’s camp and crossed a natural log bridge formed from a freshly fallen tree, only to see it swept away by the river’s current. He had only just begun to return on the far side when an owlbear mother had come upon him. She was with a cub, and enraged at his presence. Filled with incomprehensible fear, the gnome child had frozen, waiting to be mauled or eaten. But there appeared a glowing stag, its brow crested with an elegant spray of golden antlers, which swept him away.
Izithrael returned to camp two days later, in perfect health and full of stories of his fabled ride through the forest upon his new friend, a stag whose name he could not remember. He carried a golden mask bearing the face of the stag. On that day, his druidic powers appeared.
Izithrael always loved their visits to Phaendar, as infrequent as they were, for he was exceptionally interested in the doings of the humans who lived there, their curious obsession with coin, their systems for farming and animal husbandry, and their passion for life. Although they lacked the free-wheeling ways of his family and extended family, there was something so inexplicably passionate about them, and he loved them for it.
As an adult, he took up residence on the outskirts of town, in a treehouse with a lopsided, birchwood roof, and a series of weighted pulleys. An herbalist and a healer, he visits town often, to barter and to gossip, always sporting his golden mask. Some whisper that he is a witch, or a demon, but some know the story of the golden stag, and the golden boy he saved.
