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"My story? Well, it is long in the telling, but I have not told it in an age and so it would give me happiness to share it in remembrance of those I have outlived.
When I was a young lady this region was part of the Taldor frontier. I settled here with my husband, Arturus, a handsome military man, after deciding we would jump on the opportunity to make our own place out here. We had a daughter, a lovely girl. The meaning of love was not known to me until I held her in my arms. My husband was called away for a military campaign against the Centaur tribes. He never returned.
When my daughter was 5 years of age, we had a very harsh winter, and she became gravely ill. I rode north for 2 days through a blinding blizzard, trying to reach the town where now the ruins of the old fortress still dwell upon the lakeside. We sheltered in a wooded grove, in a circle of great fir trees, where a small spring flowed. I was lost, she was burning with fever, and we were both bitten by frost. I wept there in the snow, holding my girl, and cried out to the gods, to the sky, to the very trees and the soil. I swore that I would give anything if my child could be saved. I swore to the wind, and felt a desperation I had not ever known. My strength waned, and I fell asleep from exhaustion.
When I awoke, I was in a sunlit glade, and it was as if it were a warm autumn day. Of the snow, there was no sign, and the air was filled now with a blizzard of bright autumn leaves drifting from the treetops above. There, in the clearing before an immense tree, I met the wood lady. She told me that she had heard my pleas for help, and had taken pity on me. She told me that a great curse had been placed upon her, by a jealous nymph, a being named Nyrissa. The curse was a blight that would kill her tree. She explained to me that her kind, the Dryads, have a soul which burns brightly but requires another soul to sustain it, and that in ages forgotten the first of her kind had made a pact with a powerful tree spirit. The trees of this great spirit are ever renewing, growing, and gaining life from the very earth and the light of the sun, and so in exchange for protection and companionship from the dryads, they would bind their souls as one, so that each may benefit and thrive.
Her tree was dying, a creeping black mold of some corruptive nature clung upon it, and rotted it from within. She explained that without her tree, she too would die. She proposed a pact, and I listened raptly, for I was in no place to negotiate terms.
She explained that she could save my daughter, but that I would have to save her in exchange. I agreed, not knowing the cost, nor caring.
She spoke to her tree there, in the glade, and wept. Where her tears landed on the trunk, a branch began to grow, and she trembled and cried to look upon it. From the branch, a marvelous fruit took shape, its color I could not describe, but it was like looking at warm sunrise on a summer morning. She whispered with the tree, plucked the fruit, and we both watched as the tree withered, rotted, and died. She grew palid, and I wondered if she were already a ghost. The glade darkened, and I could feel a cold wind blowing. The birds had fled, and there was only cold wind, and the sound of the Dryad weeping. She gave to me the fruit, and said "Your daughter must eat the flesh of this fruit, but not the pit. You must swallow the pit and in so doing it shall bind our souls as one. Within you I shall sleep and my spirit will burn low so that I do not drink too deeply of your essence, for if I should awaken you would burn as a dry leaf in a forest fire. You will live here until such a time that a great mortal practitioner of magic shall come to you. I have seen his coming in the pool of sight. His skin is the color of the night and the earth, and his hair is the hue of the winter storm. He is mighty, and will know how to reawaken me. I have foreseen it. Do this, for you have made pact with me and of your word there is no undoing."
And so, I knelt quickly, chewing the fruit and placing it into my daughter's mouth, carefully, one piece at a time, giving her water from the pool and slowly she consumed it. It felt an eternity, I shook like a leaf, and was in a dreadful hurry though I forced myself to feed her each tender chunk of the fruit carefully. I waited and looked to the Dryad. She glared upon me until I realized I still held the pit. I forced it down, a rough pulpy thing, and once it was swallowed, I pitched once again into darkness.
I wakened within the snow covered fir circle that I had fallen in. My daughter was crying over me, her tears pattering down on my face, as she shook me. She kept calling for me to awake. I sat up, and felt renewed. My energy had returned, as had my daughter's. We came back to our home, overjoyed to have each other.
Over time we found that we could speak with the animals, call to the spirits and fey of the forest, and other stranger things. Our skin changed to the greenish hue you see now, no doubt a sign of the Dryad's power which had saved us.
For many years we lived happily together in the forest. The land provided for us, and our powers grew with each passing season. Eventually she met a woodsman, a kind man whom she married. They moved to the city and were happy for many years. She wrote letters to me often. One year, I received a letter from her eldest son that an inquisitor had found her guilty of witchcraft and burned her and her daughters at the stake. Her husband was killed trying to save them from the flames.
The years have been long and lonely. I have waited for this day for many decades. It brings me great joy to see you here, because it means that I can finally fulfill my promise. "
Likely Inquiries:
Husband? "Arturus, Handsome, brave. He treated me like a friend and equal, not like most men of that age. Born a farmer's son, he was lifted to minor nobility by proving himself in battle against the Tiger Lord barbarians in the Taldan campaign to the west. He never treated me like the peasant girl I was, and I always felt like his queen. Sometimes in my sleep I can feel his hands running through my hair, and hear his deep kind laughter. I miss him terrible."
Daughter? "Glorianna. Her hair was golden as mine was in my youth. Her laughter was sunlight in a dark room, and she had a spirit that could melt ice."
Fruit Taste? "It tasted like hope, and peace. The kind of serenity you have when you hear the laughter of someone you love."
Grandchild? "His name is Arturus, after his grandfather. Though I have never met him."
Time? Age? How long have you been out here? "I stopped measuring the years long ago. I had nothing more to look forward to but this moment, and simply lived season to season here, with very few visitors or news from the outside world. Most people fear me. Perhaps they are right to do so."
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Feedback and additional ideas welcome. Hope you like it or gain some inspiration for your own game.
This is a wonderful piece. Do you mind if I use it?
Wonderful!
Do you mind if I use it too?
IMC Old Beldame will have witch class levels, and this is a perfect way to have her retain a green skin without fey bloodline sorcerer levels.
USE IT! Yes! That's what it's for!
Let me know how it works out. If you make any changes, share them with me since I might like your version even more!
Thanks :)
Edit: I plan to have a PC spellcaster perform some kind of ritual to regrow a new tree that the Dryad will then be reborn from and bound to. The Old Beldame will have to die to complete the ritual, but she does so gladly, having spent many long lonely years without her loved ones. She dies with a smile on her face and thanks the party. A sapling will grow in the place where the ritual takes place, and in time a Dryad will be born of it.
This is gold.
I will use it. Thank you very much.