Rowan Broadbough — Shepherd of the Trails
“Memories are threads—breathe, and we will weave them back together.”
Name: Rowan Broadbough
Race: Firbolg
Role/Class: Shepherd of the Trails / Druid Level 9
Appearance: Rowan Broadbough is a gentle giant, standing well over seven feet tall with a broad, barrel-chested frame softened by a lifetime of patient walking rather than war-marching. His skin is the muted blue-gray of shadowed bark, weathered and lined at the corners of his eyes from squinting into sunlit glades. Mossy-green hair, shot through with strands of silver, is pulled back into a loose, low knot, with strips of bark and feathers braided in. His beard is short and leaf-sprinkled, often bearing a few stray bits of lichen or fern that he hasn’t noticed.
His eyes are a deep, earthy brown flecked with gold, kind and perpetually tired in the way of someone who has seen too many seasons to believe in easy answers. Rowan’s clothes are simple but lovingly maintained: a sleeveless leather jerkin over a green-brown tunic, a belt of braided vines, and loose trousers tucked into soft boots. Small wooden fetishes—carved owls, acorns, and songbirds—hang from cords at his neck and wrists. He carries a sturdy, knotted quarterstaff that looks more like a living limb than a carved tool, its top wrapped in faded cloth and bound with tiny charms.
Backstory
Rowan Broadbough was born in a secluded glade deep within the Ardent Woods, part of a small firbolg clan that considered themselves the forest’s quiet caretakers. As a child he listened more than he spoke, sitting for hours with his back to ancient trunks, claiming he could hear “stories in the sap”—faint impressions of storms, bird nests, and old wounds healed over. His elders saw this as a blessing of the spirits and nudged him toward the path of the druids.
Under the guidance of an elderly shepherd druid named Maelis, Rowan learned to read the subtler signs of imbalance: mushrooms fruiting in odd patterns, streams taking on a metallic tang, birds abandoning an area without apparent reason. When he was still young, a blight crept along one edge of the Ardent Woods, tainting soil and killing saplings. While some called for fire, Rowan argued for patience and understanding, tracing the blight to a poisoned mine runoff far beyond the trees. With Maelis, he helped cleanse the stream and replant the banks—a lesson that “the forest’s pains often come from distant hands.”
As Maelis’s health failed, Rowan began to patrol the trails around the Whispering Grove and other sacred sites, acting as a bridge between awakened trees, forest spirits, and the mortal folk who lived under the boughs. He developed a reputation as the one you sought when a patch of woods felt wrong or when animals grew restless for reasons no tracker could explain. He prefers to solve problems with gentle guidance: redirecting game-trails, replanting disturbed ground, nudging settlements away from delicate roots. But when something truly threatens the Woods, he calls on the spirits in full, and the forest answers.
Rowan’s greatest fear is a creeping, subtle harm that cannot be stopped by a single heroic act: climate shifts, distant wars driving refugees to clear too much land, or slow poisoning of rivers. He worries that such wounds can’t be healed with one ritual or one brave stand—and secretly hopes the next generation of guardians, including bold adventurers, will understand the stakes better than their parents did.
