#cr 2

(Challenge hosted by @adorkastock)

Many druids of this circle draw their power from a particular place in the world. These sacred places, called “groves,” are lovingly tended, natural spaces where primordial magic grows free from the influence of people. These groves are typically watched over by a single elder druid called a “warden,” but all druids tied to this circle are welcome to meet, meditate, or take shelter in these sacred spaces.

After all other extraneous affairs of the Mighty Nein had been dealt with, their Captain Tusktooth asked them to help him with one more task: shut down the illegal child labour operations in the Driftwood Asylum. The Nein’s work was swift, chaotic, and startlingly effective. As the dust settled and they worked on finding new homes for the children there, Yasha ended up bonding with a sweet little Minotaur girl named Zora. Quiet, shy, and frequently bullied by the other children for being too big and too strange-looking, it took no convincing at all for Zora to leave with her and Beau and call them her new family. In the years since, her quiet nature has been broken up with bursts of rage; her mama helped her understand that anger and channel it into something positive. When Zora isn’t out adventuring as a Path of the Storm Herald (Tundra) Barbarian, her favourite place to be is with her mama in her flower garden, tending to the blossoms.

Kiri had only been staying with the Schusters for about two years when Beau and Yasha came back to Hupperdook looking to adopt. She was deeply grateful for the Schusters for everything they’d done for her, of course she was, but she was also delighted by the heroes who’d saved her from Labenda swamp becoming her new family, and by getting to live in a big city like Rexxentrum. As a Kenku, Kiri had learned early on in her life that words have power, and especially so when a person is forced to hear their specific words back at them in their own voice. This knowledge, combined with having an Expositer of the Cobalt Soul for an adoptive mom, means that she’s become quite aware of the flaws of the world and those who hold power within it. She didn’t entirely intend on becoming a College of Satire Bard, but with her music box, a smattering of spells, and her gift of mimicry, she finds that it’s the most powerful way to use her voice.

The Lionett family was never really able to recover from Thoreau’s trial and subsequent arrest. Clara divorced her husband while he was still imprisoned, but in the years that followed, her behaviour swung wildly between overly stifling and coddling, to almost entirely absent. Shortly after TJ Lionett turned 10, he wrote a letter to his older sister begging her to get him away from their mother and out of that house. It was cool, moving to Rexxentrum, and his big sister was even cooler, now that he was able to get to know her. He liked joining her during her meditations and work outs, and sometimes she’d bring him along to the Cobalt Soul archive while she worked. In fact, both of them assumed he’d follow in her footsteps at the Soul, but he stumbled ass-backwards into becoming a Way of the Sun Soul Monk instead. You see, TJ had also spent a fair bit of time with his sister-in-law, and was eager to learn about the radiant magic she possessed. It was purely by accident that one day during his warm-ups with his sister, he decimated their punching bag with a bolt of that same radiant energy. Stunned and delighted, the three of them set up a new training regimen for him as he explores these newfound powers.

When Mollymauk found an average day, as much as one existed with a traveling carnival, thrown off by the sudden appearance of a stranger attempting to rob him, a look too familiar for his comfort in bright blue eyes. Caleb had just wanted to steal one thing from the carnival and get out of there before anyone was the wiser. Too bad he got caught before he could leave, right? And yet... perhaps more will change than either of them could ever guess, just from the small chance that their paths crossed.

While her older brother isn’t the sort to sit still and listen carefully to a complicated magic lesson, Nina Brenatto most certainly is. Her favourite days are when her uncle Caleb and his partner Essek are able to take time away from Rexxentrum to come visit and share their stories and spells with her. Quiet, bookish, and endlessly curious, not a single Brenatto was surprised when she made the choice to study wizardry more seriously; instead, the question was, which school of magic would she specialize in? Evocation, transmutation, illusion, or enchantment – the types of spells that her mom and uncle had taught her? No; it was Essek’s lessons, the hints of the mysteries of the cosmos, which fascinated her into becoming a School of Divination Wizard (if only because it still wasn’t particularly safe for someone outside of the Kryn Dynasty to openly study graviturgy).

It isn’t that Luc Brenatto doesn’t like magic – magic is cool! It’s amazing! Being able to talk directly in someone’s mind or create fire or shoot someone with acid is awesome! And it isn’t like he was bad at it, either – every spell he learned, he could cast perfectly, no problem. The thing is… he’s just never been good at the whole studying part of it. Sitting around and reading books is so boring, and it’s so hard for him to focus on runes and glyphs when he could be exploring Nicodranas or doing target practice with his crossbow. He always loved when his uncle Caleb taught him spells, but it was his mom’s idea to take that magic and combine it with everything she taught him as an Arcane Trickster Rogue. Now, his pranks are even cooler, and he never gets caught when someone gets mad!