Tusker doesn't have a family. His first memories are from when he was about 4 years old, picking food out of garbage cans and sleeping with the rats in the darkest corners of the Warrens. He was just one more street urchin among dozens, though more unusual in that he had no family at all that he knew, no real name, and of course, he was a half-orc. The other kids he ran into on the streets gave him the name he carries now - Tusker Tall, and as is the way of such things, no one, not the kids who gave it to him nor Tusker himself, entirely knows what it means.
Tusker committed all the usual crimes you have to commit to survive on the streets - he stole food, begged in the streets, sometimes helped other kids run cons - but he never quite got swallowed up in it as so many of the other urchins did. He avoided the Pale Dogs, kept mostly to himself, content to build something resembling a life out of the scraps he could manage to pull together on his own.
The reason for this, he now believes, was his connection to the Green. From those very first memories of deprivation and squalor, Tusker has always felt the pulse of the world around him, and it somehow kept him focused on the world beyond his immediate surroundings. When he was 10, he spent two days carting dirt from a construction site a few block away to the roof of a half-collapsed tenement so he could plant himself a garden. He always had a pet or two around - rats, mostly, but dogs, cats, pigeons, and even a snake or two at times as well. The other kids thought it was mostly weird and occasionally neat, but a snake wrapped 'round your neck and a mangy mutt trailing your heels tends to buy you a little extra space if you want it. The garden produced a few vegetables that he could eat and sell for coppers; the animals watched his back at night while he slept. Tusker grew up with the nature of the city all around him.
It wasn't until Venz found him that he really understood what was going on, however. When the squirrel ran up to him one day two years ago with a note on its leg that read, "Come with me, and learn about the Green," it was the start of Tusker's initiation into the ways of the druids - but though Tusker came to respect Venz, an aged, grumpy, harsh, and incredibly caring mentor, a great deal, the two of them never saw eye-to-eye about how the city fit in with the Green. Venz would always insist that Ptolus, and all the other cities like it, were blights on the face of nature; Tusker would always shake his head and reply, "Tell that to my garden." When he finished his apprenticeship last month, Tusker wasted no time in returning to the so-called "blight," and all the life it holds.
Tusker has now resettled in the Warrens, near where he grew up, and though he was not surprised to find that his old garden had been torn up at some point during his two-year absence, he has started another one, and takes care to keep an eye on it. He has bigger plans now, though. His experience with Venz has taught him that too many druids cannot see the city for what it is: a part of nature, another zone of life like all the others, where many species die but where others thrive. He has begun looking for others like him, druids who might form a new Circle with him, whether they be elders or new arrivals who he might take on as apprentices himself one day. And he will act to protect his city, as any druid will in their grove. He has also made contact with several of his old friends or contacts from before his departure: FunCat, the half-elf thief with an astonishing tolerance for alcohol; Stefanie, his first girlfriend, a human who now runs a small bar on the edge of the Warrens; Mikki Machete, a scrappy fighter who hopes to win his way out of the Warrens through the arena fights and one day join the Order of Iron Might. People who've had his back before, they might one day do it again - or he might return the favor. That's how you build a Circle.
Tusker Tall
Male half-orc druid 2
NG Medium humanoid (human, orc)
Init +1; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +7
