Orrick Fernwhistle – Rock Gnome Druid-Inventor

Name: Orrick Fernwhistle
Race: Rock Gnome
Role/Class: Druid Level 8 (Circle of the Land – Forest) / Inventor
Appearance: Orrick Fernwhistle looks like a gardener who tripped and fell through an artificer’s workshop. He’s short and sturdy even for a rock gnome, with a round, weather-browned face framed by a wild beard of mossy-brown curls that seems to catch every leaf in a ten-foot radius. His hair is an unruly thicket pulled back into a stubby tail, stuck through with quills, twigs, and a tiny copper windmill that spins when he’s thinking hard.

His eyes are a bright, leaf-green flecked with gold, constantly darting between sprouts, gears, and anyone’s boots that are dangerously close to fragile seedlings. He wears a layered outfit of forest-green and umber: a simple tunic under a patched leather vest, knee-length coat with too many pockets, and trousers rolled to mid-shin, all stained with dirt, sap, and the occasional oil smear. A belt of tools and pruning shears circles his waist next to a pouch of seeds and a small, hinged metal “planter box” that occasionally wriggles on its own. His staff is grown rather than carved—a living length of wood with embedded bronze fittings and tiny rotating leaves that click softly when he channels magic.

Backstory

Orrick was born in a rock gnome enclave carved into the roots of an ancient hill, where the community split its time between tinkering with clockworks and tending fungi-gardens in subterranean plots. From early on, he showed equal fascination with both: he’d build little wheeled carts to move compost, then stop to whisper thanks to the mushrooms sprouting from it. His elders found him odd but harmless, and occasionally useful when a machine refused to work unless someone “asked nicely.”

His life changed when a wandering forest druid visited the enclave and asked, politely, if they might stop polluting a nearby stream with coolant. Orrick watched this stranger speak to trees and insects with the same matter-of-fact tone the enclave’s engineers used on gears and levers. Something in him clicked. Nature wasn’t just a resource or a backdrop—it was a system, complex and responsive, that could be understood and collaborated with.

Orrick left with the druid, apprenticing in the forests of the Ardent Woods. He learned the language of roots and streams, the way light and soil decided which seeds thrived. But he never abandoned his gnomish instincts. Instead, he started asking dangerous questions:
What if irrigation systems flowed like streams?
What if compost sorted itself?
What if gardens could defend themselves when no one was home?

Those questions eventually led him to a forest outpost where gnome inventors were already pushing the limits of what “responsible innovation” meant. Orrick saw an ideal testbed: a place that needed food, medicine, and defenses, surrounded by wild magic and restless woods. He built his first self-tending garden there—an array of raised beds with rotating planters, drip lines fed by a clever network of carved channels, and tiny clockwork bees to pollinate it.

It worked beautifully… until the roots overgrew their boxes, merged with the irrigation gears, and lifted half the garden onto squeaking, rooty “legs.” By the time Orrick and the wardens corralled the wandering plot back, it had uprooted two fences, chased a very offended bear, and tried to plant itself in the middle of the supply road.

Since then, Orrick has doubled down on building gardens that grow, adjust, and sometimes wander. He consults with local druids and wardens to avoid outright disaster, but he’s convinced that the future lies in systems that take care of themselves—and you, if you stand too close to the compost auger.