Pick's page

Pick
Dwarf druid (feral shifter) 5
N Medium humanoid (dwarf)
Init +3; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +12
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Defense
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AC 23, touch 14, flat-footed 20 (+6 armor, +1 deflection, +3 Dex, +3 natural [w/barkskin], +2 shield)
hp 55 (5d8+25)
Fort +7, Ref +4, Will +8; +2 vs. poison, +4 vs. spells and spell-like abilities, +4 vs. fey and plant-targeted effects, +2 vs. death, +2 trait bonus vs. Disease
Defensive Abilities defensive training
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Offense
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Speed 20 ft.
Melee dagger +7 (1d4+4/19-20) or
. . heavy pick +7 (1d6+4/×4) or
. . 2 claws +7 (1d4+4)
. . 2 claws [Greater Magic Fang] +8 (1d4+5)
Ranged sling +6 (1d4+4)
Special Attacks hatred, wild shape 2/day
Druid (Feral Shifter, Cave Domain) Spells Prepared (CL 5th; concentration +9)
. . 3rd—deeper darkness [D], greater magic fang, resinous skin
. . 2nd—barkskin, flurry of snowballs (DC 16), resist energy, stone call [D]
. . 1st—detect aberration[D], faerie fire, longstrider, produce flame, thunderstomp
. . 0 (at will)—detect magic, mending, purify food and drink (DC 14), spark (DC 14)
. . D Domain spell; Domain Cave domain
Other 1/3 uses of extend rod for the day
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Statistics
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Str 18, Dex 16, Con 17, Int 15, Wis 18, Cha 10
Base Atk +3; CMB +7; CMD 21 (25 vs. bull rush, 25 vs. trip)
Feats Aspect of the Beast, Combat Expertise, Deadly Aim, Fey Foundling, Ironhide, Natural Spell, Power Attack, Steel Soul, Toughness
Traits blight-burned, darklands delver, outcast's intuition, slippery
Drawback Loner
Skills Acrobatics +0 (-4 to jump), Appraise +2 (+4 to assess nonmagical metals or gemstones), Climb +5, Craft (gemcutting) +7, Fly +4, Handle Animal +8, Heal +8, Knowledge (dungeoneering) +9, Knowledge (geography) +6, Knowledge (nature) +12, Perception +12, Profession (miner) +9, Ride +4, Sense Motive +13, Spellcraft +7, Stealth +10, Survival +14, Swim +5; Racial Modifiers +2 Appraise to assess nonmagical metals or gemstones
Languages Common, Druidic, Dwarven, Sylvan, Terran
SQ animal focus (5 minutes/day), cavesight, finesse weapon attack attribute, nature sense, stonesinger, trackless step, wild empathy +5, woodland stride
Combat Gear lesser extend metamagic rod, wand of cure light wounds, wand of mage armor (50 charges); Other Gear +1 lamellar (horn) armor, heavy wooden shield, dagger, heavy pick, sling, sling bullets (10), cracked pale ruby trillian ioun stone, druid's vestment, ring of protection +1, backpack, belt pouch, box of fishing tackle (2 lb), climber's kit, coffee pot and 1 pd of ground beans, fishing pole, simple (1 lb), gemcutting tools, holly and mistletoe, pot, spell component pouch, twine (50'), 184 gp, 1 sp, 1 cp
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Special Abilities
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Animal Focus (5 minutes/day) (Su) As a swift action, gain bonuses from emulated animal(s). If no companion, +1 slots.
Cavesight (8/day) (Sp) Touch grants 60 ft darkvision to willing target for 1 min, 1 hr on self.
Combat Expertise +/-1 Bonus to AC in exchange for an equal penalty to attack.
Darkvision (60 feet) You can see in the dark (black and white only).
Deadly Aim -1/+2 Trade a penalty to ranged attacks for a bonus to ranged damage.
Defensive Training +4 Gain a dodge bonus to AC vs. monsters of the Giant subtype.
Fey Foundling Magical healing works better on you
Finesse Weapon Attack Attribute Finesse weapons use on attack rolls.
Greed +2 to Appraise to determine price of nonmagic goods with precious metals or gemstones.
Hatred +1 Gain a racial bonus to attacks vs. Goblinoids/Orcs.
Ironhide Your skin is thicker and more resilient than that of most of your people. You gain a +1 natural armor bonus due to your unusually tough hide.
Loner -1 to AC and attack when adjacent to ally or using aid another.
Natural Spell You can cast spells while in Wild Shape.
Nature Sense (Ex) A druid gains a +2 bonus on Knowledge (nature) and Survival checks.
Power Attack -1/+2 You can subtract from your attack roll to add to your damage.
Steel Soul Hardy's save vs. spells and spell-like abilities becomes +4
Stonesinger +1 effective level for [Earth] spells and earth-related class abilities.
Trackless Step (Ex) You do not leave a trail as you move through natural surroundings.
Wild Empathy +5 (Ex) Improve the attitude of an animal, as if using Diplomacy.
Wild Shape (5 hours, 2/day) (Su) Shapeshift into a different creature one or more times per day.
Woodland Stride (Ex) Move through undergrowth at normal speed.

Chronology notes -

Game year - 1373

Death of the clan champions - 1267 DR

1104- flight of the Tethyamar dwarves to Daggerdale, Pick born in the new society

Dwarven ages - 200-300 years old , 50 years maturity

The Much (Much) Longer Version:

Beneath the earth, a dwarven boy sat against a rough cave wall, covered in rock dust and bruises from a tunnel collapse that had dropped him into an unfamiliar cavern. His ankle hurt, and his throat as well, raw from shouting for help earlier. Every few minutes, he lifted his pickaxe (a recent gift from his parents, to celebrate his thirtieth year) and struck the floor with the three-strike pattern he had been taught– the signal for “Help.” After each series of blows he listened, ear pressed to the stone, hoping for any response.

Nothing. It was silent, and dark.

The darkness was not the worst thing for a dwarf, but the silence was deep and absolute, and the boy was struggling not to cry. His cheeks were still smooth and unbearded, speaking to his youth– still a child by dwarven standards, barely on the edge of adolescence– but old enough to tell himself that he was too big to cry. All the same, the occasional frightened tear leaked out from his closed eyes, trickling down through the gray rock dust and bloody scrapes on his cheeks.

His ankle hurt. He thought it might be broken. And nobody was coming. Nobody was near enough to help. He’d been looking for beryl deposits, because he’d just learned this week the signs of what to look for, and beryl meant emeralds… and in his absorption, he had left the worked areas of the caves well behind, and now he was too far from other dwarves to be heard. Perhaps even too far for the collapse to have been heard.

He was alone. Alone in the dark, the cold, the silence. The last felt strange, to a child of the clan-caves, to a boy whose ears had always been filled, day or night, with the ring of hammers, the roar of bellows, the deep voices of his kindred raised in chant to Moradin or Dumathoin (or in bickering).

Alone. Alone. He’d never really been alone, in any way that mattered, for more than an hour. He had three siblings and countless cousins, crammed together in caverns that had been designed to hold half their current population– his own family were some of the many refugees from Tethyamar’s fall. At times, he’d thought that having a space to himself, or a room of his own, would be as valuable as gold.

Now, he would have given anything for the sound of another dwarf’s voice– even his most annoying cousin, Khraik.

Another hour passed. He swung the pick, dutifully but with increasing despair, and at some point exhaustion overcame him and he hovered on the edge between dreams and waking. Strange music haunted his sleep. When he woke, he ached with thirst and pain and the cold… but he could still hear the music.

Was he going mad? He’d heard stories of the hallucinations that could result for too long in the deeps…

The music stopped. Then started again.

There was nothing to do but to pull himself to his feet and limp towards it…

Using the rough stone wall for support, the boy made a slow and painstaking way into uncharted tunnels… For what could have been hours (it certainly felt that long) he stumbled forward. At last he rounded a corner– and stopped to stare at a strange figure ahead. The creature was small, knobbly, gray as granite, with eyes like topaz, and playing a small flute. On seeing him, it froze as well, and the two of them stood still for a long moment.

They both lunged into motion at the same second; each raising their pickaxe and brandishing it defensively. They stared at each other.

“You– go away!” the strange creature said.

“I can’t,” the child answered, his voice shaking.

The little rock-man waved his pickaxe threateningly. “Go back! Go back fast to you place!”

“But I CAN’T,” the boy repeated. The other swung its pickaxe, more in warning than in true attack, but while trying to dodge it the boy lost his balance and fell to the hard ground. It was too much for the exhausted child, who began to sob. He was going to die here, all alone, and his parents would never even find his body!

But no final attack came. For long minutes nothing much happened, then the boy felt his shoulder nudged. He looked up through his tears to see the strange creature awkwardly proffering him a handful of emeralds.

“Here, see, fleshy? Gift. Don’t cry, is okay, gift. Don’t cry. Now go away.”

This caused another round of confused sobbing. At length, the creature padded away, leaving the dwarf child alone in the dark again. But when the monster (?) returned, it was in the company of a lady whose hair was long and red just like his own mother’s, and whose smile was kind, and who had a fox’s tail peeking out from behind her green gown.

“Why, he’s just a child, Chalcedon. And he’s hurt,” she said. Her hands were cool and soothing on his swollen ankle. “Here, boy, let me help you. Would you like to come to my house? There is sweet milk there, and honey, and climbing roses…”

And so it was that the boy entered the Feywild, through a fey crossroad deep in the earth, on the 19th of Ches, 1130 DR.

***

What to say, of years spent in the Faerie realms? The poets have described it as a waking dream, an eternal song and rainbow– whatever that might mean. In the Feywild, memory of one’s past life is often veiled in fog, and what came before means nothing to the eternal, vivid, brilliant now. There are caverns studded with singing rubies – waterfalls that plunge a thousand feet to shed diamonds along with their foam – moss carpets to cradle a weary head – conversations with winged deer and grinning cats and gallant badger knights - flowers whose perfume causes dreamless sleep for weeks…

It pleased the huldra, Dellabrynna, to have a mortal guest, something between a pet and a child. She taught him how to survive in the Feywild, how to avoid the most terrifying and less kindly denizens of that otherworldly realm, how to borrow the shape of an animal, and of the wild trees and the sweet berries and the powerful herbs. Sometimes the pech, Chalcedon, continued the boy’s education in rocks and earth. Yet the two fey also often disappeared for subjective lengths of time, and the boy was left to fend for himself in the alien beauty and splendor of fairy-land. He lost many things in his time in the Feywild, not least among them the clear memory of his name, his people, and his home, which became distant as though a dream. For the boy, the strongest tether to the life he’d left behind was the pick he still carried with him, a plain and utilitarian thing, mundane as nothing else in the Feywild was. Sometimes he would look at it, and try to remember where he’d gotten it, and recall a different world– but then a nightingale would sing with the voice of a woman, or will o'wisps would dance an aurora over the eternal twilight sky, and those comparatively drab and colorless memories would fade again.

For the dwarven child, time was impossible to track. The seasons of the Feywild are fickle and inconstant things. Summer might turn to winter in the space of a few hours; a year’s worth of stars could pass overhead in the time it took to sing a song.

Yet time was passing, even in the strange way it does among the fey. Its first sign was the sprouting of a beard upon his face. As he aged from childhood to adulthood, Dellabrynna increasingly lost interest in her mortal refugee – as some people lose interest in a puppy when it becomes full-grown dog. The dwarf began to spend more time with Chalcedon, and either with the pech or alone he often wandered the caverns of the Feywild.

On one such expedition, the dwarf found a cave he hadn’t been in before, and set himself to exploring it in hopes of new prizes for his collection of gems and rocks and fungi. As he traversed it, the cavern became less spectacular, more mundane. He assumed there might be some blight affecting the moss and mushrooms, and proceeded onward to investigate. Of course, it was no blight, but merely a return to the Prime Material.

He emerged, blinking, confused, into true daylight for the first time in a long time. If he could have seen himself as an outside observer would have, he would have seen a wild and disheveled dwarf, barefoot, dirty, clad in a motley of furs and leaves, an untamed but short beard indicating he had just reached physical maturity. For the dwarf, it had been physically thirty-odd years– enough time to go from boy to young man.

But on the Prime Material, a hundred and seventy years had passed.

Away from the haze of the Feywild, the memories of his life before resurged in a painful and confusing flood, washing over his time in the Feywild just as the wonders of the Feywild had previously displaced his mortal life. It took days for his disorientation to clear, during which he wandered away from the crossroad and through the wilderness of Daggerdale’s high hills in a haze. When he finally stumbled to lucidity, one thought held precedence: he had once had a family. Parents. Siblings.

Where were they? Were they alive?

He set out from the area where he had emerged towards the old clan-home of Anathar’s Dell. In the journey, he began to learn how much the world had changed during his strange sojourn: the once-respected Brightblade Clan had been declared the enemy of the current human lord, Colderan Morn (who hadn’t even been born when the boy had entered the Feywild). Morn had slain Dorn the Grim and Elshar Kurl, the wise leaders of Clan Brightblade. The dwarven survivors had been pushed back to the Dell where they stubbornly held on. Facing anti-dwarf hostility from the humans of the region, it took him several weeks to reach home without using the roads… there to receive more shocks.

Both of his parents had perished during his absence, either to age or to the battles with Morn. Two of his siblings were still alive, but were dwarves of stout middle-age now, each of them over two hundred. It was a strange reunion indeed: his brother and sister both now white-bearded, resembling his parents, staring agape at a brother that had been given up as lost as a child and who now looked barely out of his youth. Karthen, they said, in disbelief, with shaking voices– Karthen– and he remembered that, yes, that had been his name.

It was distant as if something he’d read in a book, long, long ago. He knew that he should answer to it, yet it fit him as poorly as a stranger’s tunic. Dellabrynna had called him many pet names over the years, changing per her whim of the moment, but Chalcedon had stuck to just the one: Pick, after the tool he still carried.

Though reunited with his surviving family, it was difficult to resume “regular” life in Anathar’s Dell. His nature had been irretrievably changed by his time in the Feywild. By the standards of the remaining clan, he was something nigh-savage, a strange and decidedly un-dwarven creature, given to singing to the rocks, eating hallucinatory or poisonous fungi indiscriminately, and showing not the slightest bit of care for his horribly matted beard (scandalous!). His siblings took him in hand as best they could, trying to re-integrate him into civilized life.

It was hard to say whether or not he was happy. At times he missed the Feywild with an intensity so deep that he wept. At other times he recalled the terrors that had often haunted him there– cruel fey pranks, or the thoughtless indifference of even the nicer inhabitants to his pain or fear, thirst or hunger. Dellabrynna had at times been a doting surrogate mother– and at other times treated him with capricious neglect. This world, the real world, was safer (greyer), steadier (quieter), more predictable (duller).

He tried. He tried to become a good dwarf again. But aside from his siblings and their children, few dwarves truly accepted him. He had become too Other. It was this that led him to wander from Anathar’s Dell to the surrounding hills and forests, to learn the flora and fauna of the Daggerdales, and even to confront threats that lurked there. A traveler on the road saved from a wild beast’s claws… a bandit lair, scouted while he wore the form of a badger… a small group of roving undead, crushed by a rain of rocks…

At first, he dealt with humble threats, but as years went by, he grew more confident of his abilities, and faced larger troubles. He also gained something like a reputation as a local adventurer (to his bemusement). Still, it was nice to be appreciated– his clan was grateful when he dealt with an ooze infestation, after all, and that was better than their wariness. He helped humans and others, not just dwarves– it was also nice to feel that he had some sort of purpose, a worthy distraction from what might have otherwise become obsessive searching for another fey crossroad.

More time passed. His siblings each died at a respectable age, and once they were gone, he stopped attempting to use the name Karthen again, and asked people to call him Pick. Under that name, he has become a self-appointed guardian of Daggerdale’s forests and valleys, a defender of travelers, and a foe of unnatural monsters. That said, his idea of what is and isn’t monstrous may not always jibe with the perceptions of civilized folk; he has been known to take the side of the beasts or the plants over that of people. Woodcutters and farmers often resent his ‘meddling’ and frequently blame him for things like their axes going missing or an overabundance of weeds (not actually his doing… most of the time). His ability to take on animal form is rumored locally – and has led to many a rock hurled or arrow loosed at an innocent raven or black bear.

There is a great deal of mystery and misinformation surrounding him in local gossip, which isn’t so much intentional on Pick’s part as that he is still fairly uncomfortable with social situations, and often departs the scenes of his ‘heroics’ as soon as feasible, rather than stay and offer explanations for his deeds. He spends more time out in the wilds then under a roof, but still maintains a lodging in Anathar’s Dell with one of his nieces, and at least sometimes he deigns to return and live within four walls. Those seeking his aid tend to start there, and if nothing else his niece can usually get a message to him.

Appearance:
Many years have passed since Pick returned to his native plane. He is now physically a dwarf of about a hundred years of age, what might pass as “in your thirties” for a human. For a dwarf, he is tall– a whopping 5’2”-- and just-a-bit lanky (which would still register as ‘stout’ to human perceptions, to be clear; only another dwarf would feel that he could probably use some ‘good home-cooked meals’). He has very thick, wavy hair of a reddish-gold hue and a full, vigorous beard; these are usually braided or (in the case of his hair) tied back but still give the impression of trying to burst free of these imposed constraints. Compared to other dwarves, his beard-and-hair styling is pretty basic-b&@~@. His unusual height and wild hair may both be souvenirs of his time in the Feywild, a place known to encourage vibrant, unchecked growth.

Pick is muscular and his skin is deeply tanned from years in the sun. During the warmer months he rarely wears a shirt (and sometimes feels that trousers are also unreasonable). He has a number of tattoo-like markings, but they are not the usual runes and clan-markers of dwarvenkind. Instead they are patterns of vines and leaves, with occasional paw-prints interspersed, done mostly in green. His eyes are also green– a pale green like new spring leaves, an unusual color for a dwarf.

If clothing is necessary and non-negotiable, Pick wears simple, utilitarian garb of leather, wool, or cotton depending on the weather, in earth tones primarily (adjusted for the season). Shoes and boots are another necessary evil; in fair weather he prefers to be barefoot, and the tough soles of his feet handle rocks as easily as grass. A simple pickaxe hangs from a leather loop at his waist, along with a utilitarian belt knife. The leather strap of a sling is wrapped around one brawny forearm. He carries nothing more than this unless expecting a truly long or arduous journey or combat.

One other detail: his fingers end in sharp, long, sturdy nails that would more accurately be called claws. He is a little self-conscious about this.

Personality & Motivation:
As a riff on the Rip van Winkle myth, Pick is a man somewhat adrift in time and place. The world he grew up with as a dwarven boy is largely vanished– everyone he knew as a child has died, from clan leaders to immediate family. The matters that concerned his family when he was a boy– the reclaiming of Tethyamar, dwarven lines of succession for the fallen throne, and similar matters– are no longer of primary importance to Clan Brightblade, which is concerned more with recent history regarding the human Morn family– history that Pick missed, at least partly. (It is perhaps akin to someone who grew up in the Cold War getting transported to the mid 1990s and trying to grasp that nobody cares that much about Russia right now, we’re at war with Iraq, dummy.) Pick struggles to catch up with the changed political landscape and with the enmity of the surviving Brightblades towards Randal Morn– it has been explained to him what Randal’s grandfather did to his people, but he didn’t live it firsthand, and at any rate he might feel that the sins of the (grand)father should not be visited upon the current lord– a viewpoint which is one of the many where he is not in sync with traditional dwarven culture anymore.

If he had been an older dwarf when entering the Feywild, Pick might have been more set in his ways, more stubborn, and more at odds with Faerie’s fundamentally chaotic nature. This could have caused severe psychological stress for a more mature dwarf. Pick was young enough to be malleable, however, and depending on your point of view this might have saved him or doomed him. He adapted, but at the cost of becoming in some ways essentially undwarven.

Home, tradition, family, stability: things most dwarves center their lives around. Yet in the Feywild it is impossible to cling to these as anchors. Pick had to overcome his instincts and be able to embrace relentless change to survive. The closest entities he had to ‘family’ in the Feywild were fickle; he learned in the Feywild that he could rely on nothing (and nobody) except his own abilities. ‘Home’ might be a burrow in the earth one day and a nest of branches in the trees by the next, and ‘tradition’ meant nothing at all, especially to fey who created new ‘traditions’ at a whim.

Pick learned to be sensitive the moods of powerful fey and to know when it was wise to steer clear of them– at odds with the stereotypical blunt dwarven approach. Pick learned that stealth was often better than ‘a fair fight.’ Pick learned to fight with tooth and claw rather than axe and shield.

This is not to say that nothing dwarven remains in him at all. On the contrary- more of his life has been spent among his people than out of it, and all the old drives still remain: the longing to belong, to be a credit to the clan, to create things of lasting worth. These were not erased by his time in the Feywild– but rather give him an ongoing sense of conflict. His tragedy is not that he is not dwarven at all anymore, but rather that the dwarf part of him and the fey-influenced parts sit uneasily with each other. He is too fey for the dwarves– and yet he strongly suspects that if he could ever find another fey crossroad and go back through it, he would be too dwarven for the Feywild.

He wants to find the place that he belongs, and a family of which he is wholly a part, and not merely tolerated as an eccentric relation. But a certain fey-induced flightiness and wariness of others will make this dream an uphill climb.

Also, he’s an inveterate collector (read: hoarder). His collections include but are not limited to: gemstones and semiprecious stones, cool rocks of all sorts, feathers, flowers, leaves, bones, soil samples… His room back at Anathar’s Dell is overflowing with his ‘collections,’ to Kharva’s despair. His desire to collect and keep things is probably a manifestation of his dwarven need for something stable and enduring during his years where little enough was.

Other unprocessed traumas include the fact that he never really got to say goodbye to his parents and mourn them properly.

According to Pick, the best thing about civilization is coffee, a drink he has developed a passion for since his return.

Flaw: His broken ankle was healed by Dellabrynna, but fey magic and dwarven nature do not play well together. Occasionally it causes him phantom pain, burning sensations, and other discomforts. Sometimes he can account for it ‘acting up’ due to the presence of nearby evil fey or aberrations (see Blight-burned trait). At other times, it’s not remotely clear what’s causing it. At least once, that leg has tried to go walking off in a specific direction, as if it had a very clear mind of its own.

Allies & Associations:

Kharva, his niece - The proprietress of Anathar’s Hall, the inn that serves as the social center of Anathar’s Dell. Kharva is actually rather older than Pick and their relationship is more like big sister and little brother than uncle and niece. Kharva is fond of her ‘uncle,’ though frequently mystified by him, and sometimes worried for him. She keeps a standing room for him at her inn and wishes that he would settle down with a good dwarf-wife, which would clearly help sort him out. She occasionally tries to matchmake for him. Kharva also insists that any time he is in the common areas of her inn, he is to be fully clothed.

For his part, Pick is also fond of Kharva and mostly tolerates her attempts to manage him with resigned affection– it is nice to know that someone cares about him, though if she pushes it too far he can find it stifling and his usual response is to vanish into the wilds for a month.

Chalcedon, a pech - This fey creature has served as intermittent mentor and friend to Pick. The two share an abiding passion for gemstones and interesting rocks, and sometimes they have spent entire days in each others’ companies with no words being said, companionably picking through rocks in a streambed to find “the prettiest”, showing each other their finds, and nodding approvingly. Pech was serving as a fey crossroad guardian when they first met, but now is free of that duty. Though they see each other rarely since Pick’s return to the PMP, the pech makes occasional sojourn in search of Pick– sometimes to carry a message, sometimes just to show him a cool rock. Pick has only asked Chalcedon once if he might accompany the pech back to the Feywild; his only answer was a single headshake of ‘no.’ The matter has not been brought up again. Chalcedon speaks poor Common and prefers to talk in Sylvan (if it must talk at all).

Dellabrynna - The huldra was at one point immensely important to Pick as his surrogate mother and his teacher in druidic magics. Her approval as he took his first steps in nature magics was enough to make him smile for a full day, and she could be very affectionate and validating when in the right mood– a marked difference from the more subdued maternal affection he had received from his dwarven mother as a boy. He sought to impress her and please her, but paradoxically, the older and more skilled he became, the less Dellabrynna cared. For her, getting to be the teacher and protector of an innocent child had been a fun game, but it got boring once he wasn’t those things anymore. They have not seen each other in about seventy years, though sometimes Pick sends or receives a cordial but distant message via Chalcedon. He is probably much more hurt by Dellabrynna’s behavior than he has ever admitted to himself: after all, he lost his own mother when Dellabrynna (arguably) abducted him to the Feywild, and latched on to her in turn, only for her to eventually wander away once he ceased to be interesting. She was both his protector and his kidnapper (for in the beginning, he did ask to be taken home, before his memories faded). Even now he feels very conflicted about her, further complicated by his knowledge that this was and is simply…. her nature. Even if he were to try and explain that she had caused him pain, she would only be confused. Fey gonna fey, y’all.

Soren Treespeaker - The leader of the Circle of Seven Daggers, a druidic circle that loosely considers itself responsible for Daggerdale and the Spiderhaunt woods. The Circle seeks to pacify angry or corrupted natural spirits of the region. Soren is an aged half-elf who first met Pick in the Dell after his return to the PMP, and managed to gently wrest the story of his time in the Feywild from the (rather agitated, at the time) young dwarf– if not the details, at least the broad strokes. He took an understandable interest in Pick and has since tried to offer him wise counsel– as well as considering him for the Circle. However, Soren feels that until Pick finds peace within himself, he cannot effectively preserve peace between nature and mankind. Soren is getting pretty old and hopes that Pick would get on with that enlightenment business soon, cuz the Circle’s gonna be down a member sooner rather than later, kid.