{ "character": { "id": "d32d09d9-bbbd-4c3f-a8f1-29ce8f7105d5", "slug": "wren-davenmour", "name": "Wren Davenmour", "race": "Half-Elf", "character_class": "Druid", "jan_favorite": false, "is_ff_portrait": false, "profile_url": "https://framedfantasy.com/pages/hero?h=wren-davenmour", "character_url": "https://hall-library.framedfantasy.com/characters/wren-davenmour", "character_json_url": "https://hall-library.framedfantasy.com/characters/wren-davenmour.json", "character_markdown_url": "https://hall-library.framedfantasy.com/characters/wren-davenmour.md", "original_image_url": "https://obadckrukccwkjgpbsxa.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/portraits/1778712542678_7hb2q8.webp", "image_url": "https://hall-library.framedfantasy.com/images/wren-davenmour", "thumbnail_url": "https://obadckrukccwkjgpbsxa.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/portraits/1778712542678_7hb2q8_thumb.webp", "crop": { "x": 50, "y": 50, "zoom": 100 }, "story_excerpt": "For a change, I would like to submit here a hero that isn't mine but I feel is worthy of it. This is one of the PC's in the game I'm DMing that's currently been on hold since I got deployed…and then had twins…and then got deployed again. 🥴🔫\n\nThere's two others that really deserve it for the level ", "story": "For a change, I would like to submit here a hero that isn't mine but I feel is worthy of it. This is one of the PC's in the game I'm DMing that's currently been on hold since I got deployed…and then had twins…and then got deployed again. 🥴🔫\n\nThere's two others that really deserve it for the level of detail that they have but, honestly, I don’t even know if I’m posting them since I drew them in speed sketches and one was already supposed to be ugly but it just made the art look a lot worse. I gotta have *some* standards. 😅\n\n\n\nThe druid you found seems kind-hearted enough, even if he looks like he might smell–though he is quick to deny that he doesn't bathe regularly despite his choice of attire–he remains handy at a moment's notice for either lending a helping hand or searing an enemy's off. Not to mention his adorable, little flame elemental fox spirit, ‘Nova’, has been great for porting you out of hairy situations.\n\nIf you get past his relaxed attitude and sarcastic banter, he seems like a surprisingly well-spoken and at least partially-educated individual, saying nothing of the time he stood up for one of your friends and even got into a brawl over it. There aren't many who would do that for anyone these days…\n\n(https://open.spotify.com/track/154Kvz7UJ5A2dvD7sTjsEM?si=e42Q311iQcak-yoxKrmzbQ)\n\n\nWren Davenmour was the youngest born of two sons of the Count, Sir Aemon Davenmour. Though he was raised with the intentions of having a typical nobleman's upbringing–going away to serve as a page and squire in another household until a knighthood at his coming-of-age of sixteen–at age seven, he was investigating where he should not have been with his elder brother, Sir Henry, in his father's treasury and touched a gem which he never should have…\n\n>\"...And here,\" continues Henry. \"110,000 Oileáin secured…The sacking of Falcon Reach…one fathom of valuable treasure and a…\"\n\nYou step up onto the chair, not even hearing the further creaking of wood as you lift the case of glass from over the fiery red jewel…\n\n\"WREN, DON'T TOU-\"\n\nThe sound of wood snaps beneath you, you feel the glass cover slip from your grasp as your arms reel, hands grasping for whatever they can find to right you again and they find it, the front edge of the pedestal. You instinctively pull yourself to it but instead find it coming to you. You fall, helpless to catch yourself, and land among the pile of coins, your father's life's work catching you hard on your back. Just in time to look down to see a burst of fire from the shattered remains of the crimson jewel. Flame licks at the heels of your prone body as the pool of energy consumes the wooden floor beneath it and birthing what appears to be the shape of a head, arms, and body. You can't help but question your sanity when a boy-no, a man now-of elemental fire emerges from the bed of flame, quickly growing as he consumes the fuel before him. A hunger, ravenously devouring the supporting beams of the floor above you.\n- Excerpt of my prepared ‘flashback’ telling of the great burning of Déorset\n\n\nWren would awaken something that none could simply control, and it rapidly consumed its fill, growing larger and larger as it rapidly enveloped the inside of Davenmour Hold without warning, chasing Wren and Henry all the while. Eventually, the circumstances of what needed to happen became clear to Sir Henry.\n\n>\"Wren, this thing is chasing us.\"\n\n\"Thing?? You mean you saw that too?!\"\n\nHenry draws his sword, its reflective steel flickering in the fire light. His voice was quivering…but resolved.\n\n\"I need you to run. Run as far away from here as you can and don't let it find you, okay?\"\n\nYou grasp at his sleeve, pulling him back by his doublet as fire began licking its way up the walls around you. He had to come with you to the next floor or he would be consumed. Surely the militia had to have been mobilized! They had to be! What would happen to the people under your father's protection if your family's keep was destroyed?\n\n…But there was no greater man that day than Sir Henry, for he was the sort of man who would wrestle a hurricane, slay a mudslide, or challenge the very sky to a duel for the sake of the ones whom he loved most…\n\n…and he loved you.\n\nWith a mighty shove, you find your back bursting through the fiery wooden shutters of the second story window behind you, the swirling heat tagging your cheek before pulling from your skin as the wind and splinters take you…and then darkness…\n- Excerpt of The Great Burning of Déorset\n\n\nWren would awaken a short moment later and stumble away from the burning keep only to turn around and see the man of fire burst from the top, bisecting the hold in a flurry of screams…and then deafening silence under the roaring inferno. With nothing but the raw instinct of despairing terror inside of him, he would do the only thing he could–what his brother demanded of him:\n\n*Run.*\n\nThe fire would not stop at the keep. It would catch on the woods in which Wren fled and would begin consuming more and more. Still only but a child, Wren would be enveloped by exhaustion before he could hope to escape and, upon seeing the first hint of shelter–a hollow within a great, oak tree within a grove–simply collapse inside, unable to be concerned with his likelihood of survival. \n\n>Stumbling into a small clearing, you honestly don’t know if it were from your ancestors guiding you, some kind of guardian angel, the unreasonable notion of an exhausted mind…or potentially even the simple naivety of a child’s heart seeking comfort from the monsters in the dark from under his pillow, but nevertheless, you found yourself collapsing and then crawling your way into an enervated fetal position within the black hollow of a great oak tree’s roots. You remember not the great fire which came and claimed the forest in which your family called home, only the feeling of your bated breath upon your arms as you hoped so badly to shield yourself from the growing light as you fell into the waiting arms of exhaustion…\n\nYou awaken under that tree to nothing…for as far as you could see in every direction, nought but ash and the echo of life-of the people who once called this land their home; of your home reduced to an empty wasteland under a blanket of smoke…\n\nRetreating from the mouth of your now bottom-half of a burned-out tree, you feel everything finally well up into your throat and spill into your vision as you simply return to the position which kept you safe in the back of that hollow and, for a solemn moment…you have nothing…\n\n…But, in the dark, you feel a warmth. Not of terror and destruction…but of hearth as your blurred vision gives way to the sight of a newly-born creature, a fox cub, but entirely wreathed in the gentle flicker of an unconsuming flame. Maybe it’s the trauma you’ve experienced, or perhaps the crushing loneliness you feel, but you do not shy away from it…but instead simply slide your hand across the ashen soil toward it and let it approach and, as it lays down to smell your hand, you find yourself staring at the creature…thinking…’At least something was born from all of this death…’\n\n…It’ll all come back someday…\n\n- Excerpt of The Great Burning of Déorset\n\n\nWren would grow up alone with this new spirit he came to refer to as Nova, learning how to survive in the wild under its instinct and as a stranger in civilization under his own. They would be bonded partners with nothing in this world but each other. Wren himself, through the emotional bond with Nova, would come to find a wisdom in understanding the reality of his tragedy, in that life always returns and that, even in such a great burning, life will always spring anew from the ashes. It is through this insight and Nova's own spiritual nature, that Wren would come to discover the ways of a druid on his own, fully adopting the greatest tragedy of his life as his greatest teacher on the ways of nature, becoming a Druid of Wildfire–a personal steward of renewal and rebirth.\n\n\n\nAs Wren's player is not a masochist like I am, he does not have any serious, self-imposed drawbacks or limitations and plays as relatively straightforward as you would expect.\n\nWren is level-headed and seems to carry a natural role within the party dynamic of the ‘cool uncle’. Though he is overall proficient and doesn't necessarily get his party killed, he is a bit of a trouble maker at times and can, perhaps, maybe even be considered a little bit of a bad influence upon the party and the more impressionable followers they might pick up.\n\nWren's manner of fighting, naturally, is one that focuses on offensive, fire magic. He does not abstain from aggressive, frontline combat, as Nova is at his call to retrieve him and teleport away when things get bad.\n…Honestly, probably the biggest pain in the a** for a DM that already has difficulty making encounters with difficulty. Nova's clutch. Not to mention, like the use of wildshape she consumes, when she's put down like a dog in front of everyone with the hammer-side of a *bec de corbin* (as illustrated above), she can simply reappear unharmed with the consuming of another use.\n\nWren is a deeply reserved character and, though he has accepted and rationalized his trauma, he is still deeply affected by it when the topic comes up in-game. There is a wealth of emotional depth to him hidden beneath his outer shell that has proven entirely surprising for all of the other players at the table after all they'd been through with him being entirely put-together with rock-solid bearing until then.\n\nWren feels personally responsible for everything that happened to his family and it is a major source of his trauma.\n\n\n\nWren is single-handedly responsible for one of my favorite moments in D&D, not just as a DM. He and the party wizard rogue, Eslaf, as the party's natural storytellers, had captivated an inn with his accounts of the party's heroism and feats of valor, most recently the slaying of a vampire spawn and his necrotic party of dead mercenaries. Both men and most of the patrons were deep in their cups and River, (https://framedfantasy.com/pages/hallofheroes?hero=aed6259e-0371-44a8-ad77-b9822ac138ff) their adopted, NPC, deaf maid who had remained by the side of her two masters to ensure they eventually got to bed safe, did not notice the innkeeper talking to her and, when Wren intervened, was asked by the innkeeper, “What is she, retarded?” Which earned a slugging from Wren.\n…Now, this is the man who serves and talks to every man in town after a hard day in the fields, and it's the tail end of harvest. Meanwhile, Wren is just about the coolest man in the bar. This action thereby starts a brawl with the entire bar divided in half and thoroughly willing to throw down for their chosen hero, the new arrival, or the community favorite.\nOne blackout time-skip later, Wren comes back to coherence throwing up in the street outside with River patting his back and attending to him while Eslaf is nowhere to be found (waking up later in someone's house). \nI thought it was wholesome, the lengths he went to defend River.\n\n------\n\nAs the subject of the campaign's second major story arc, avoiding getting into explaining a large web of lore and campaign politics in an even bigger wall of text, Wren learned that his uncle, Sir George, is not only still alive but under siege of an army that Eslaf had personal ties to. He would arrive with the party to attempt to find some kind of solution and sneak in alone to meet with his uncle, running into a small number of familiar faces along the way of other survivors, the servant who was a second mom to him, a grisled knight in Sir George's service who was a young man at the time of the fire, and then his uncle himself, who developed a horrible, physically debilitating cough from the scarring left behind when he went in the fire to try to look for the family he wouldn't find. Were he not a count, he'd have long been considered unfit for service.\n\nWren would be welcomed by everyone with tearful open arms for their prodigal son, except for Wren's aunt, who questions why he never returned and became angry at his lack of a proper answer, revealing that his mother is alive before explaining that everyone grieved for him and demanded he be brought to see the state of the poor woman, who had been walking outside with Sir George during the fire and entirely lost her mind after believing her husband and sons had been killed. She could only stare through him and occasionally look at him only to speak phrases of nonsense. It was a hard lesson of responsibility that he would take to heart.\n\nThrough his druidic abilities, Wren would solve the issue of the castle's hunger, being created by the civilian population from the local town being in there too. Wren, with the rest of the party, would eventually explore the tower of his father's old court mage to find him, too, still alive as a hermit and studying the use of the teleport spell, which he provides a spell scroll of and the means for one casting of it. Though Sir George had sternly vocalized that he would sooner stay and die on his feet than let his final holding fall under enemy's hands, two 20+ persuasion roles and a heartfelt speech would be enough to convince him to leave with his men-at-arms and everyone else to rebuild near the burned, old ruins of old Davenport, the seat of Davenmour power within the county of Déorset. The land had been calling to Wren, pulling at his psyche and coming to him in his dreams, and he intended to answer it, ultimately bringing the party to the newly regrown grove where he once met a lifelong friend…but he would notice something that he hadn't as a child: the presence of long-forgotten stones, mostly buried or broken but seemingly placed with intention. After a successful history check, Wren believes he could possibly remake it with the right manpower and resources…\n\nThis was as far as his story progressed, but there was much more planned to be revealed over the course of the broader campaign story.\n\n\nIf your name happens to be Marc, you can stop reading now, you nosey bastard.\n\n\nHis story would have taken him to a place of endless rebirth within Tír na nOg (the feywild), called ‘the firewilds’, where a figure with deep ties to his mother's native ancestry and previously unknown druidic heritage would tell him all about the history and nature of the man of fire and not only its association with the firewilds but now his family, as well as what exactly happened to his brother when he challenged the elemental and how Nova came to be born.\n\nIt would first be revealed that the man of fire was a great, primordial fire titan, named 'Sinnsear Teine' (\"Chin-cheer Teena\"), who was wronged by the fey. He was originally placed in the gem at the heart of the firewilds millennia ago to contain his wrath. His release has caused a perversion of the firewilds which turned it into a land of rapid growth and eternal, repetitive consumption; a fate which would have befallen the rest of Tír na nOg if not for Sir Henry's resistance against it.\n\nWren will learn that, through the willpower of his brother's heroic challenge of Sinnsear Teine for the sake of the love of his little brother, he would fight him well beyond his death, part of his soul essentially ending the great fire and unknowingly containing him within the firewilds to continue fighting him to the very present events of the campaign.\n\nWren will also learn about Nova, who is in fact a boy–it turns out…because Nova is a reincarnated fragment of the spirit of Wren's brother, now a creature known as a 'nature sprite'. Nova was formed when most of Sir Henry's soul, driven by determination, continued trying to fight the man in the flame. The little piece that broke off to pass on, unwhole and simple it was, found comfort in the familiarity of Wren and, with the magic of the hallowed fire druid's grove nearby, reincarnated into a nature sprite of fire called a ‘madadh-teine’ (pronounced “Mad-rah Che-na”). Simple of mind, but wise in its understanding of nature and the fey. The term literally translates to ‘Dog of Fire’, or 'Fire Fox'.\n\nWren's story arc was planned to intertwine with the greater story arc's coming crisis in the form of a ‘great heathen army’-inspired event. Through his involvement (and with the right choices made) he would be made heir to the county and knighted by Sir George, bestowing the pair of Wren's father's gilded spurs that he'd long only kept as a memento.\n\n>Sir Aemon's Gilded Spurs (Rare Artifact)- *A set of knight's spurs, once proudly worn by Wren's father, Sir Aemon Davenmore, Count of Derby and Lord of Davenport, and fit for just such a mighty warrior and battlefield commander as he was.* When attuned, the wearer may use a standard action to expend a charge and command up to 12 non-hostile creatures at a time, contested by a wisdom saving throw to the wearer's spell save DC (using CHA as a substitute if the wearer has no spell save DC) to follow a course of action (limited to a sentence or two) that could be arguably reasonable to them in their circumstances, even if it may put them in danger, as long as they are not being sent to certain death. The creatures must be within sight, able to hear the user, and understand their language. The spurs can hold up to six charges, to be fully recharged at the start of any combat against enemies.\n\nTo finish Wren's personal story arc, after research which would bring them across the Shaded Isles to the lands of the few remaining native cultures of the land, the party would need to follow Wren deep within the firewilds with the intention of either banishing Sinnsear Teine or finishing what the fey started. They would find an echo of Sir Henry, still combatting the titan alone, and join him in the fight Wren had forever regretted being too young to take part in.\n\nAfter the fight, though Henry is unable to speak, Sir Wren would be able to finally have the proper chance to have closure with his brother, fully healing the trauma of his past and the ‘sin’ he carries of its cause.\n\nSir Henry's spirit would pass on but another portion would further integrate with Nova, granting Wren the ability to summon a flame elemental version of the spirit of his brother in full harness and with his longsword.\n\nWren would also gain his brother's knightly spurs to wear.\n\n>Sir Henry's Gilded Spurs (Legendary Artifact) - *A set of spurs owned and proudly worn by the brother of Wren to his grave and beyond, morphed and enchanted by the fires of Hell to create a set only worthy of the most heroic of knights.* When attuned, the wearer is in command of any battle in which the innocent are in danger. When subject to initiative (to include when taking actions that would induce a roll for it) and an innocent life is in direct peril, the wearer may move their initiative order to wherever they like in the turn order but ONLY in the event of taking actions of healing or actions that are in the direct defense of others. This act can be done once per turn cycle (all involved parties have taken their turns).\n\nThe story arc of Sir Wren would reach its close with the story of the ancient druid spirit, who would relinquish his role as warden of the renewed firewilds to him, the spirit himself finally able to pass on now that a successor has finally arrived, the first since the days of when the original southern empire arrived hundreds of years in the distant past.\n\nAs for Wren's mother, she can be mentally healed by the eventual casting of greater restoration (which is available to druids like Wren at level 9)…but her heart might finally mend when the dead of her family may finally rest in peace." } }