Theris Mossbeard

Level 6 Wood Elf Druid (Circle of the Land (Forest))

Available with DM subscription

STR

12 (+1)

DEX

16 (+3)

CON

13 (+1)

INT

WIS

16 (+3)

CHA

8 (-1)

Defense

Armor Class 17 (hide armor + shield (12 + 3 Dex + 2))

Hit Points 38 (8 + (5x5) + (1x5) +1)

Speed 35 ft.

Proficiencies & Skills

Saving Throws Intelligence, Wisdom

Skills Arcana +3, Nature +3, History +3, Insight +6, Medicine +6, Survival +6, Perception +6

Features

Wild Shape

Druid Level 1

2 uses, regained on Short/Long Rest

As a Bonus Action, Theris transforms into a beast he has seen: a Beast of the Land or Sea (per the 2024 rules). He can remain in shape for up to 6 hours. While shaped, he uses the beast's game statistics but keeps his mental ability scores and can cast spells with no material components if the form permits.

Keeper of the Burned Acres (custom)

Campaign: Ashes of the Accord Level 1

Theris has walked every burned grove of the Thornwood since the orc war. He automatically knows the age, cause, and direction of travel of any fire damage he examines, and he has advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks to track anyone who used fire as a weapon in the Sundered Marches.

Circle of the Land: Land's Stride

Druid (Circle of the Land) Level 6

Theris can move through nonmagical difficult terrain at normal cost, and nonmagical plants do not impede him. He also has advantage on saving throws against plants magically created or manipulated to impede movement.

Druidic

Druid Level 1

Theris knows the secret language of druids and can leave hidden messages in natural sites. He can also identify potions and herbal remedies with a DC 10 Intelligence (Nature) check.

Sage Background: Researcher

Background (Sage) Level 1

If Theris does not know a piece of lore, he knows where and from whom he can obtain it, usually the oldest trees of the Thornwood or the Accord archive.

Spellcasting (Druid)

Druid Level 1

at will (cantrips) / spell slots

Theris prepares spells from the druid list using Wisdom. He can swap prepared spells after a Long Rest, and always has his domain spells prepared.

Circle of the Land: Circle Spells (Forest)

Druid (Circle of the Land) Level 2

Theris always has Pass without Trace (3rd level) and Plant Growth (5th level) prepared; these do not count against his prepared spell limit.

Mask of the Wild

Wood Elf Level 1

Theris can attempt to hide even when lightly obscured by foliage, heavy rain, falling snow, mist, or other natural phenomena.

Circle of the Land: Natural Recovery

Druid (Circle of the Land) Level 2

1 use per Short/Long Rest

During a Short Rest, Theris can expend no spell slots and recover one 1st- or 2nd-level spell slot.

Fey Ancestry

Wood Elf Level 1

Theris has advantage on saving throws against being charmed, and magic cannot put him to sleep.

Spellcasting

Wisdom DC 16 +6 to hit Level 1: 4 slots Level 2: 3 slots Level 3: 3 slots

Prepared count = 6 (level) + 3 (Wis) = 9 chosen spells; the two Forest circle spells are always prepared and not counted. Ritual casting available for spells with the ritual tag.

Druidcraft

Cantrip Druid Cantrip

Transmutation 1 Action 30 ft V, S

Whispers of nature magic: predict weather for 24 hours, bloom a flower, create a tiny sensory effect, light or snuff a flame, or create an instantaneous harmless sensory effect.

Thorn Whip

Cantrip Druid Cantrip

Transmutation 1 Action 30 ft V, S, M

Melee spell attack: on a hit, the target takes 1d6 piercing damage and is pulled up to 10 feet toward Theris. Damage increases at levels 5 (2d6), 11 (3d6), 17 (4d6).

Produce Flame

Cantrip Druid Cantrip

Conjuration 1 Bonus Action Self V, S

A flame appears in Theris's hand, shedding bright light 10 ft and dim light 10 ft beyond. He can hurl it as a ranged spell attack (60 ft) dealing 1d8 fire damage; the flame returns each turn while the spell lasts (10 minutes).

Entangle

Level 1 Druid 1

Conjuration 1 Action 90 ft V, S

Grasping plants sprout in a 20-ft square. Each creature there must succeed on a Strength save or be Restrained. A creature can use its action to make a Strength check against the spell DC to escape.

Cure Wounds

Level 1 Druid 1

Evocation 1 Action Touch V, S

A creature Theris touches regains 1d8 + 3 hit points. Regained hit points increase by 1d8 per slot level above 1st.

Faerie Fire

Level 1 Druid 1

Evocation 1 Action 60 ft V

Objects in a 20-ft cube are outlined in colored light. Creatures in the area make a Dexterity save or are outlined; attack rolls against them have advantage, and they can't benefit from invisibility. Lasts 1 minute (Concentration).

Goodberry

Level 1 Druid 1

Conjuration 1 Action Touch V, S, M

Up to ten berries appear, each providing a day's nourishment and restoring 1 hit point when eaten. Berries last 24 hours.

Pass without Trace

Level 2 Circle Spell (Forest)

Illusion 1 Action Self (30-ft aura) V, S

For 1 hour (Concentration), Theris and allies within 30 ft gain +10 to Stealth, can't be tracked except by magical means, and leave no tracks or scent.

Spike Growth

Level 2 Druid 2

Transmutation 1 Action 150 ft V, S, M

The ground in a 20-ft radius becomes difficult terrain covered in spikes for 10 minutes (Concentration). A creature moving through takes 2d4 piercing damage and 2d4 poison damage per 5 ft traveled.

Call Lightning

Level 3 Druid 3

Conjuration 1 Action 120 ft V, S

A storm cloud appears over a 60-ft radius, 100 ft high, for 10 minutes (Concentration). Each round, Theris can call a bolt on a point below the cloud: 3d10 lightning damage, half on a successful Dex save. Damage increases by 1d10 per slot level above 3rd.

Dispel Magic

Level 3 Druid 3

Abjuration 1 Action 120 ft V, S

Ends one spell on a creature or object, or automatically ends spells of 3rd level or lower in a 30-ft cube; higher-level spells require an ability check with the spellcasting ability (DC 10 + spell level).

Plant Growth

Level 3 Circle Spell (Forest)

Transmutation 1 Action or 8 hours 150 ft V, S

Enriches crops in half a mile or, in battle form, makes thickets in a 100-ft radius: the area becomes difficult terrain, and plants can be shaped to create walls, tunnels, or passageways.

Behind the character

Character Information

Theris Mossbeard is an ancient wood elf druid, his gray beard heavy with living moss that flowers in spring and browns in grief. He moves through the Thornwood like a slow weather front — unhurried, inevitable, impossible to divert. His bark-brown robes are woven with living vines that bud when he is calm and close their leaves when he is lied to, and he leans on a staff of living oak cut from the eldest grove three centuries ago; its leaves stay green even as ash drifts through the canopy around him.

Around his neck hangs a wooden leaf amulet, the last gift of a student he could not save. His sharp green eyes have watched groves burn and treaties crack, and they hold both in equal measure: centuries of grief balanced on a stubborn, almost foolish hope that things planted can outgrow things burned. He speaks for the forest in the Concord's councils and remembers every burned acre by name, season, and cause — a ledger of losses he carries in a bark-bound book and in his bones.

He is patient the way roots are patient, courteous the way old trees are courteous, and utterly immovable once he has judged a matter. He will help outsiders stop Malrec's ritual, but he does not forgive easily, and he does not forget a single torch. Those who earn his trust find in him a teacher of rare depth; those who betray it find that the forest has long memories, and so does he.

Before the adventure

Character Background

Theris was born under the eaves of the Thornwood when the eldest grove was already old, and he was chosen by the druidic rings before his hundredth winter. He trained in the old ways — patience, planting, the slow reading of root and rain — and rose to become the Concord's voice in matters of the forest's health. For two centuries his life was measured in seasons: groves tended, students taught, borders walked.

Malrec Thorn was his finest student, a boy who could coax dead branches to bloom, and Theris believed the old ways were safe in such hands. Then the orc war came, and with it human soldiers, and fire. The eldest grove burned with Malrec's family inside its sanctuary ring, and Theris arrived too late to do anything but carry bodies and speak rites over ash. In the years since, he has walked every burned acre of the Thornwood, recording each fire's age, cause, and direction of travel in a bark-bound ledger — the work that earned him his title, Keeper of the Burned Acres.

He argued against the Concord's retaliatory raids and was outvoted three times; each raid cost him a grove and a friend, and each defeat hardened the young rangers against his patience. He watched his finest student curdle into the forest's most dangerous extremist, and he blames his own silence as much as the torches. Now, with the Ashen Choir manipulating both humans and elves toward a war that would make the orc invasion look small, Theris has done something he has not done in decades: he has asked outsiders for help.

He knows Malrec's ritual will corrupt the Forest Heart — the stone at the Thornwood's center, where the forest's oldest memories live — and he knows he cannot stop his student alone. He will guide the party through the deep paths, vouch for them before the Concord, and teach them what the forest needs them to know. But he carries his own secrets: the fire-marks in the eldest grove's ashes that no human torch could have left, the bone whistle from a farm his own people burned, and a corruption growing in his own body through the living wood of his staff.

He has perhaps three winters left. He intends to spend them making sure the forest outlives its mourners — and he will hold every outsider, every elder, and every student to the same standard: the forest does not ask who lit the fire. It asks who will plant.

Threads to follow

Unresolved Plots

The eldest grove's true arsonist has never been named. Theris's Keeper senses whisper that the burn pattern does not match human soldiers' torches — the fire was set from inside the sanctuary ring, by someone who knew the grove's paths. Finding that person could save Malrec's soul or damn the Concord.
A druidic message Theris left in the boundary oaks two years ago has been answered — in a hand he does not recognize, using a dialect of Druidic dead for two hundred years. Someone old, or something old, is walking the Thornwood's deepest paths and knows the secret language.
The Forest Heart stone has begun pulsing out of rhythm — once at dusk, once at midnight, once at an hour with no name. Theris believes the stone is counting down to something, and that Malrec's ritual is not the cause but a symptom of a deeper corruption beneath the Blight-Rooted Crypt.
Theris's staff of living oak flowers out of season — a single white blossom every time someone lies to him within ten feet. Someone in the party's orbit has lied to him repeatedly, and the staff has begun budding continuously whenever a certain name is spoken.
The burned acre ledger contains one fire Theris cannot classify: a grove that burned green, not black — the trees consumed without ash, as if the fire ate memory itself. The grove's site is now a circle of perfectly healthy grass where nothing will grow taller than a hand's height.

Beneath the surface

Secrets

Theris knows the eldest grove was burned from within — he found elf-made fire-marks in the sanctuary ring's ashes and has told no one, not even the Concord elders, because the truth would shatter the Concord's unity and hand Malrec exactly the martyrdom his rage feeds on.
Theris carries a human child's bone whistle, taken from the ashes of a burned human farmstead that Concord raiders — elves he called friends — destroyed in retaliation. He has never told anyone the raid happened, and he keeps the whistle to remind himself that his people's hands are not clean.
Theris is dying. The Forest Heart's slow corruption has taken root in him through his staff's living wood; each year his body grows stiffer and his Wild Shape shorter. He has perhaps three winters left, and he has told no one — he is spending them on the party's mission because a cleaned forest is worth more than a mourned grave.

What haunts them

Fears

That Malrec's ritual will succeed and the Forest Heart — the last unburned memory of the old forest — will be corrupted into something that hates as blindly as the orcs did.
That the truth about the elf-set fire will surface without his control, shattering the Concord into factions and triggering the very civil bloodshed he has spent years preventing.
That he will die before the burned acres are replanted, and the Thornwood's next generation will inherit only his ledger of griefs instead of his seedlings of hope.

What drives them

Aspirations

To see the first Heartwood Seed bloom in the eldest grove's ashes, with humans and elves planting it together — the living proof that the Accord meant something.
To reach Malrec before the ritual does, and to hear his student say the burial rites for his family one more time — correctly, in the old tongue, without hatred in the words.
To train one final student in the old rings' patience — Theron, or Nyx, or one of the party — so that when he falls, someone remains who can read the forest's slow language and speak for it in the councils of the quick races.

Personal quest · 1

The Ledger of Ash

Theris has spent years walking every burned acre of the Thornwood, recording the age, cause, and direction of each fire in a bark-bound ledger. He asks the party to help him follow the burn patterns of the worst grove-fires back to the human arsonists who set them — men who now hide behind Crown uniforms and Accord seals. Each recovered name is a name the Concord can demand justice for instead of a village to burn.

Current Stage

Survey the burned groves along the Thornwood Edge and reconstruct the arsonists' path using Theris's Keeper ability.

Choice

A surviving arsonist offers to name his paymasters in exchange for amnesty.

The name leads to the Choir's courier network and gives the Concord its first hard evidence against the Crown.

Mechanical Rewards

Theris's Keeper of the Burned Acres feature expands: he can now sense the presence of fire magic within 1 mile (as detect magic attuned to fire only).
The Thornwood Concord's attitude improves to Friendly, granting safe passage and scouts throughout the forest.

Narrative Rewards

The ledger becomes formal evidence in the renewed treaty council, and Theris is named Voice of the Burned Acres at the final signing.

Personal quest · 2

The Seed That Remembers

Beneath the Forest Heart stone lies the Blight-Rooted Crypt, where the oldest oak of the Thornwood — the tree Theris's own staff was cut from, three hundred years ago — is being strangled by Malrec's corruption. Theris cannot enter the crypt himself; the spectral elves who guard it remember him as the druid who failed to stop the war's first burning. He needs outsiders, unburdened by his guilt, to reach the heartwood root and cut the blight away without killing the tree.

Current Stage

Enter the Blight-Rooted Crypt, survive the spectral elves and the treant Oakenmaw, and reach the living root.

Choice

Destroy Oakenmaw the blighted treant, or attempt to cleanse it with the Forest Heart stone mid-battle.

Killing the treant frees the crypt but severs the ancient root, weakening the Forest Heart permanently; cleansing it risks the whole party but preserves the grove's oldest memory.

Mechanical Rewards

Theris's living oak staff is renewed by the cleansed root: his Thorn Whip cantrip now pulls targets 15 feet and his spell save DC increases by 1 while he stands in any forest.
Theris gains the ability to cast Plant Growth's 8-hour enrichment form in half the time within the Thornwood.

Narrative Rewards

The crypt yields the first seed of the Heartwood line, which Theris can plant in any burned acre the party clears.

Personal quest · 3

The Third Fire

Theris's Keeper senses tell him the truth he has buried for two years: the fire that destroyed the eldest grove — the one that drove Malrec Thorn to hatred — was not set by human soldiers. It was set by an elf. A Concord scout named Vaelis, working for coin, lit the blaze to force the Concord into the war. Theris has kept this secret because revealing it would shatter the Concord and hand Malrec a martyr's cause. Now, with the Accord's investigators at hand, the truth can finally be aimed: not at elves or humans, but at the Choir that bought the torch.

Current Stage

Track Vaelis through the Thornwood Edge using fire-traces only Theris can read.

Choice

Tell Nyx Thorn the truth about her uncle's defining grief, or keep her ignorant until Malrec is confronted.

Telling Nyx early gives her time to turn against Malrec willingly; hiding it preserves the party's leverage at the Forest Heart but risks Nyx dying loyal to a lie.

Mechanical Rewards

If the truth is aimed at the Choir, Theris unlocks a new custom feature, Voice of Reckoning: once per long rest, presenting his evidence forces one hostile humanoid to make a Wisdom save or lose its next action, shaken by undeniable truth.
Vaelis's testimony becomes the single strongest document linking the Choir to the war's first atrocities.

Narrative Rewards

Malrec, if turned, kneels at the Forest Heart stone and asks Theris — not the Concord — for judgment, healing the druid's deepest wound.

Major Decision

Context

At the Forest Heart, with Malrec's ritual half-complete and Nyx Thorn's arrow trained on her uncle's back, Theris holds the Forest Heart stone — the one object that can either disrupt the ritual or cleanse the corrupted artifact in Malrec's hands, but not both in time.

Choice Made

Theris must decide whether to shatter the ritual and let the artifact's corruption scar the Heart, or attempt the desperate cleansing that risks the grove itself.

Impact

Disrupting the ritual saves the border villages but leaves the artifact corrupted — it must later be destroyed or sealed at the Throne of Ash, and the Forest Heart suffers a permanent wound (Theris loses his grove-attunement bonuses). Attempting the cleansing requires a DC 16 Arcana ritual the party must defend for three rounds; on success the artifact is cleansed here, Malrec loses his power source and can be turned or captured bloodlessly, and Theris gains the ability to cast dispel magic at 5th level once per day. On failure, the grove burns and the Thornwood Concord goes to war — Theris loses his Circle spells' always-prepared status until the Heart is restored.

Major Decision

Context

After Burning Ford, Theris holds enough evidence to name the human arsonists before the Concord elders — but the elders will demand blood-price, and the accused include two men who could testify against Chancellor Vaelor.

Choice Made

Theris chooses between Concord justice (the men die, the evidence dies with them) and Accord law (the men live to testify, but Theris must face elders who call him a collaborator).

Impact

Concord justice: Theris gains the Concord's unwavering loyalty (he and any party he vouches for are never ambushed by Concord scouts) but permanently loses access to the Accord archive's cooperation and Captain Eldrin's trust (Eldrin's list of Choir soldiers is never shared). Accord law: Theris keeps both avenues of evidence and gains the Researcher network's full benefit (he can obtain any lore in the Marches in half the usual time), but Concord scouts treat him as suspect — his Pass without Trace no longer conceals the party from Concord hunters.

Major Decision

Context

Theron Outcast, the young deserter, is Malrec's cousin and Theris's last tie to the druid he once taught. Malrec's loyalists have learned of Theron's betrayal and hunt him. Theris can shelter the boy at the Forest Heart — but doing so marks Theris as Malrec's enemy in the eyes of rangers who still respect him.

Choice Made

Theris decides whether to offer Theron sanctuary and open defiance of Malrec, or send the boy to the humans' Accord Hall and keep his own hands clean.

Impact

Sanctuary: Theris gains Theron as a permanent scout-ally (he can cast pass without trace on the party once per day without a spell slot) and unlocks Malrec's journal as evidence, but loses two ranger allies at the Forest Heart confrontation. Accord Hall: Theron lives but is radicalized by human suspicion, and Theris keeps his standing — yet at the ritual, Nyx will not turn against her uncle without Theron's testimony, forcing a harder fight (Malrec fights at full strength with four rangers instead of two).

Transformative Moment

Trigger

Completing 'The Ledger of Ash' with at least one arsonist brought alive.

Transformation

Theris's grief hardens into purpose. He stops introducing himself as the forest's mourner and begins calling himself its advocate. His Keeper of the Burned Acres feature evolves into Keeper's Reckoning (see personal quest rewards).

Mechanical Changes

custom_feature

Keeper of the Burned Acres becomes Keeper's Reckoning: adds fire-sense within 1 mile and once-per-rest advantage on Insight against anyone who has committed arson.

Theris has moved from recording the fires to holding the guilty to account.

Transformative Moment

Trigger

The Third Fire's truth is revealed — by whatever path the party chooses.

Transformation

Theris's certainty that humans alone burned the Thornwood collapses. Depending on the choice, he becomes either a reconciler (gaining diplomatic standing with all three nations) or a keeper of a corrosive secret (gaining Insight but losing trust). Either way, his relationship with Malrec Thorn fundamentally changes: hunter and hunted, or teacher and fallen student.

Mechanical Changes

skill_bonus

+2 permanent Insight (secret kept) or +1 permanent Persuasion with delegates of all three nations (truth told).

The truth about the Third Fire reshapes how Theris reads people and nations.

Transformative Moment

Trigger

The Forest Heart survives the ritual — cleansed, disrupted, or both.

Transformation

Theris plants the Heartwood Seed in the first burned acre the party cleared and formally takes a student: either Theron Outcast or Nyx Thorn, depending on who survived and turned. He is no longer the last druid of the old groves; he is the first teacher of the new ones.

Mechanical Changes

custom_feature

Gains 'The Next Ring': his Natural Recovery feature now recovers one spell slot of any level 3rd or lower on a short rest, reflecting renewed purpose.

A teacher draws strength from the forest's future, not its past.

Ally

Nyx Thorn

Relationship ally (tenuous)

Influence 3/10

Loyalty 6/10

Shared History

Theris taught Nyx's mother in the old rings of the Thornwood, and when the girl showed the first green spark of druidic talent he begged the Concord to let him train her. The elders refused — a ranger's daughter belonged to the rangers, they said — and so Nyx grew up under Malrec's harsh tutelage instead of Theris's patient one. Theris has never forgiven himself for that lost student. When Nyx began doubting her uncle after the burning of the Reed farm, it was Theris who left a druidic message scratched into the bark of the boundary oaks: 'The forest does not ask who lit the fire.

It asks who will plant.' She has never answered him directly, but she has never reported the messages either. Now, as Malrec gathers his followers for the ritual at the Forest Heart, Nyx stands at a crossroads her teacher never got to teach her about — and Theris, watching from the grove's edge, knows that the arrow in her hand will decide the Thornwood's future as surely as any treaty. He will spend every favor he has left to make sure she fires it at the right target.

Potential Breaking Points

If the party kills Concord scouts during the Thornwood Edge ambush, Nyx refuses all contact and reports Theris's messages to Malrec.
If Theris reveals the Third Fire's truth carelessly, Nyx may side with Malrec out of grief before evidence can sway her.

Enemy

Malrec Thorn

Threat Level 4/10

Conflict Type ideological and personal

Personal Stakes

Malrec was Theris's student once — the most gifted druid the old rings had seen in a century, a boy who could coax a dead branch to bloom. Theris taught him that the forest endures by patience, that fire is a tool of renewal and never of vengeance. Then the human soldiers came in the second year of the war, and the eldest grove burned with Malrec's family inside its sanctuary ring.

Theris arrived too late, carried the bodies out himself, and spoke the burial rites with ash still falling. In the years since, Malrec has twisted every lesson Theris ever taught him: patience became the long preparation of revenge, renewal became the ritual that will burn the human borderlands, and the forest's endurance became a creed that only a forest with no humans in it is safe. Theris knows he cannot fight his student — not truly, not without breaking something in the forest itself — but he knows with equal certainty that the ritual will corrupt the Forest Heart and kill thousands.

Their conflict is the campaign's tragic heart: the old teacher who must stop the student he failed, using the very patience he taught him, hoping against hope that somewhere beneath the hatred the boy who bloomed dead branches still exists.

Possible Resolutions

Turned: present the Third Fire's truth and the Choir's letters; Malrec surrenders and testifies against Vaelor.
Captured: defeat him at the Forest Heart and deliver him to Concord judgment.
Killed: the forest loses a powerful druid, and Nyx inherits his followers' rage.

Faction

The Thornwood Concord

Standing 3/10

Influence

Theris is the Concord's oldest living druid and its conscience — a role that has grown heavier and lonelier as the war's ashes cooled into hatred. He sat on the Concord council when the first groves burned, argued against the retaliatory raids that killed human farmers, and was outvoted three times. Each defeat cost him standing with the young rangers, who see his patience as cowardice, and each raid cost him a grove he could have saved.

He still speaks for the forest at Concord councils, and the elders still listen — but the rangers like Riel follow Malrec's fire, not Theris's water. His influence is real but fraying: he can grant the party safe passage and a hearing before the elders, but he cannot stop a Concord ambush once arrows are loosed, and he cannot promise the Concord's formal alliance without proof that the humans who burned the groves are named and punished.

If the party brings him the arsonists' names, the forged orders, and the Choir's letters, Theris can deliver the Concord to the peace table — the one achievement that would redeem his three failed votes and make him the forest's voice in the renewed Accord rather than its mourner.

Obligations

Theris must present any evidence of arson to the Concord elders within a season of receiving it.
He is sworn never to raise his magic against a Concord ranger except to disarm.

Benefits

Concord scouts will not ambush the party while Theris travels with them.
Access to hidden grove paths that cut travel time through the Thornwood in half.

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