Kestrel has advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks to track elementals and humanoids, and on checks to recall information about them. He has chosen fire elementals (the Cinderhounds and their master's magic) and bandits — the marks of the Shroud of Ash.
Kestrel knows the Ashen Wilds like the back of his hand. He cannot become lost in the region, always knows the direction to the Ashen Grove, Mirror Lake, and the Echoing Caves, and can find safe shelter and water within 1 hour of searching.
Kestrel adds his Proficiency Bonus to Initiative rolls and can swap Initiative with a willing ally after rolling. Years of ambushing — and being ambushed — in the Ashen Wilds have made him impossible to surprise.
Kestrel can expend a spell slot to commune with nature, gaining knowledge of the surrounding territory — the Ashen Wilds' burnt trails, water sources, and the movements of the Shroud's bandits.
Once per turn when Kestrel hits a creature with a weapon attack, if the target is below its hit point maximum, he can deal an extra 1d8 damage of the weapon's type.
Kestrel can cast Invisibility on himself without a spell slot, as a Bonus Action. He must end the spell before casting another with this feature.
Kestrel is proficient in one additional skill (Sleight of Hand from his criminal past) and has Expertise in Survival and Perception.
Kestrel's walking speed increases by 10 feet (35 ft.), and he gains a climbing and swimming speed equal to his walking speed.
Kestrel can use the mastery properties of two weapons: Longbow (Slow) and Shortsword (Vex).
Kestrel gains Expertise in two skills he is proficient in: Survival and Perception.
Kestrel can attack twice, instead of once, when he takes the Attack action.
Kestrel gains a +2 bonus to attack rolls he makes with ranged weapons.
Kestrel gains a +3 bonus to Initiative rolls.
Dexterity increased to 18.
Wisdom increased to 16.
Ranger prepared spells = 5 (half level, rounded down) + 3 (Wisdom). Hunter's Mark is always prepared and castable without a slot at 1st level once per short rest.
For 1 hour, Kestrel has advantage on attack rolls against a creature he marks and deals an extra 1d6 damage to it on each hit.
A creature Kestrel touches regains 1d8 + 3 hit points.
A touched creature's speed increases by 10 ft. for 1 hour.
For 1 hour, Kestrel and creatures within 30 ft. gain +10 to Stealth checks and can't be tracked except by magical means.
A touched creature gains darkvision out to 120 ft. for 8 hours.
For 10 minutes, no sound can be created within a 20-ft. radius sphere; creatures within are deafened and immune to thunder damage.
The next ranged weapon attack Kestrel makes this turn becomes a bolt of lightning: on a hit the target takes 5d8 lightning damage, and other creatures within 10 ft. take 2d8 (half on a successful DEX save).
Kestrel summons fey spirits in the form of up to four ash-grey hounds (beasts of CR 1/4 or lower) that obey him for up to 1 hour.
Behind the character
Kestrel the Ranger is a lean, weathered human in his forties, shaped by a decade of survival in the Ashen Wilds. Scorched brown leather armor covers a faded grey cloak; a dark yew longbow and grey-fletched arrows ride his back, two worn shortswords hang at his belt. His gaunt, sun-blackened face carries deep lines around hard grey eyes, and a short beard is streaked with ash that never quite washes out. A small silver crescent pendant — his wife's — hangs at his throat, touched like a talisman when he thinks no one watches.
He is a guide first and a hunter second: no one alive knows the burnt trails, hidden springs, and safe hollows of the Ashen Wilds better. He cannot be lost there, cannot be ambushed there, and rarely can be surprised anywhere. Years as a smuggler and poacher gave him quick, light fingers and a criminal's instinct for reading people; the wilds burned the greed out of him and left only patience and a cold, patient fury aimed at the Shroud of Ash.
Kestrel speaks little and wastes no words, but his loyalty, once earned, is bedrock. He will lead the player through fire and shadow to the Ashen Grove and beyond, and he fights like a man with nothing left to lose — because until recently, he was. Chaotic Good at core, he protects the helpless he finds in the burnt forest and gives his rations freely, but mercy for the Umbral Court's agents is a lesson he is still, painfully, learning. The campaign may be the thing that teaches it to him.
Before the adventure
Kestrel was born in a woodland village in what is now the heart of the Ashen Wilds, the son of a forester and a moonwell pilgrim. As a young man he was restless and light-fingered, running contraband between Silvercourt's docks and the mountain hamlets — first for small smuggler crews, later for the Veiled Market itself. It was honest-adjacent work, and he was good at it: he could move anything through the old forest paths without leaving a track.
Everything changed when the Umbral Court's war reached the wilds. Kael, a decorated ranger of the Lunar Concord who had taught Kestrel the bow and the trail, fell to shadow and was remade as the Shroud of Ash. To prove his worth to Queen Nyxara, Kael tested his new pyromancy on the woodland villages — including Kestrel's. Kestrel returned from a smuggling run to find his home a field of embers, his wife and mother-in-law dead, his young daughter vanished in the smoke. A one-eyed bandit named Orin, sickened by the slaughter, let Kestrel crawl from the killing ground alive.
The man who crawled out was not the man who went in. He burned his smuggler contacts, took up the longbow Kael had trained him with, and vanished into the burnt forest. For ten years he has lived in the Ashen Wilds — shadowing the Shroud's bandit patrols, mapping every trap, marking every Cinderhound pen, and learning the Shroud's habits the way a wolf learns a herd. Oracle Mira pulled him from death's door early in those years and has been his only confidant since; she told him the Shroud's true name and has tried, without success, to teach him that vengeance is a fire that eats its keeper first.
Now the eclipse has come, and with it a Guardian of the Lunar Concord crossing the wilds. Kestrel sees in the player both a weapon pointed at his enemy and a purpose larger than his own grief. He offers his services as guide to the Ashen Grove — and quietly hopes that walking beside a champion of light might teach him what to do with his hands after the killing is done.
His knowledge of the wilds is absolute: he cannot be lost in the region, always knows the way to the Ashen Grove, Mirror Lake, and the Echoing Caves, and can find water and shelter within an hour of searching. He carries a pouch of silver flower seeds from the Moonwell Glade and plants them wherever the fire spared the soil — a small, stubborn act of faith that the wilds, and he, might grow back.
Threads to follow
Beneath the surface
What haunts them
What drives them
Personal quest · 1
Kestrel knows the Shroud of Ash was once a Lunar Concord ranger named Kael — the man who trained him before the fall. To kill him cleanly, Kestrel wants proof of his identity: a ring Kael wore, lost in the Ember Crypt beneath the Ashen Grove. Retrieving it means facing a Cinder Wraith alone in the dark.
Track the crypt entrance beneath the ruined altar using Kestrel's knowledge of the pre-fire forest.
Personal quest · 2
Kestrel survived his family's burning because a bandit named Orin, one-eyed and drunk with conscience, let him crawl away. Orin now sells trinkets at the Night Bazaar and owes Kestrel a debt neither speaks of. Kestrel wants Orin's bandit ledger — the Shroud's patrol routes and trap placements — before the assault on the Ashen Grove.
Travel to the Night Bazaar and find Orin among the lantern stalls.
Personal quest · 3
The silver crescent at Kestrel's throat belonged to his wife. Oracle Mira has told him the lake's reflections can show the dead one last time — but the water is the Shroud of Mirrors' domain, and every vision there is a potential trap. Kestrel must decide whether seeing his wife's reflection again is worth walking into illusion territory.
Escort Kestrel to Mirror Lake's shore under cover of darkness, avoiding mirrorlings.
The Shroud of Ash is defeated and at Kestrel's mercy, revealing under questioning that he burned the village on Umbral orders — and that Kestrel's daughter may still live.
If killed: Kestrel gains 'Vengeance Unbound' — +2 damage with longbow and shortsword permanently, but loses all ability to gain Inspiration and refuses to enter the Throne of Night if Nyxara's redemption is attempted. If spared: Kestrel gains 'Cold Clarity' — advantage on Wisdom saves and can retry one failed Insight check per day, and the Shroud's testimony reveals Kael's full network of Umbral spies.
The hidden path through the Ashen Wilds bypasses all three Shrouds — but abandoning the sigil hunts means the Shadowed Gate opens weaker and Guardian Selene must hold it alone.
Shortcut: the party arrives early but Selene is gravely wounded holding the gate alone; Kestrel's 'Ashen Wilds' Own' feature is lost (he cannot forgive himself for abandoning the Shrouds' victims). Full hunt: Kestrel ascends to 'Master of the Wilds' — his Primeval Awareness no longer costs a spell slot, and he can guide the party through the Umbral Depths' mirrored wastes.
In the Obsidian Spire, Kestrel finds his daughter — now a veiled novice of Nyxara, her memories rewritten. She does not know him, and raising the alarm would doom the princess rescue.
Abduct: Kestrel must guard her, splitting his combat utility (loses Nature's Veil uses while she is in tow) but she later purges the corruption and fights beside the party at the Throne of Night. Reveal: she screams — a hard fight — but if subdued nonlethally, she remembers and becomes Kestrel's redemption made flesh, granting him permanent advantage on saving throws against shadow magic. Leave: Kestrel gains 'Numb Purpose' (+1 AC, hardened studded leather refit) but is broken; he will not survive the campaign's end.
Witnessing the player spare a defeated enemy
Kestrel's dialogue shifts from bitter to reflective; unlocks the mercy branch of the Shroud decision.
The daughter revelation at Mirror Lake
Kestrel reorients his entire purpose from the past to the future.
Ally
Mira read Kestrel's fortune in Mirror Lake's waters the week before the burning, and warned him a 'fire with a man's heart' was coming. He did not believe her. She found him half-dead in the reeds three days after the Shroud's pyromancy consumed his village, and nursed him through the fever in her hut by the shore. For ten years she has been the only person Kestrel speaks to freely; she is the one who told him the Shroud of Ash's true name, Kael, and the only soul who knows he still wears his wife's pendant.
Her blindness does not fool him — she sees him more clearly than anyone. He runs her errands, guards her hut when mirrorlings prowl, and brings her moonpetals from the deep marsh. In return she gives him truths no one else will: that vengeance is a fire that eats its keeper first. Her fading sight terrifies him more than any Shroud, and he has quietly begun gathering silvermarsh moonpetal for her tincture.
Enemy
Kael was the Lunar Concord ranger who trained Kestrel in the bow and the trail before the war, a father figure whose fall to the Umbral Court Kestrel never saw coming. When Kael turned Shroud, he tested his new fire magic on the very village where his old student lived — whether by cruelty or by design, Kestrel cannot say. Kestrel's wife and mother-in-law burned in the Ashen Wilds' first great fire; his young daughter vanished in the smoke.
Kestrel has spent a decade shadowing Kael's bandit patrols, learning his trap patterns, his Cinderhound breeding pens, and his habits. Kael knows Kestrel lives and hunts him — he leaves scorched crescent marks on trees as taunts. For Kestrel, killing Kael is not justice but surgery: removing the rot that wears a teacher's face. The discovery that Kael may know where his daughter is makes every planned killing stroke a potential lost answer, and Kestrel hates that hesitation in himself.
Faction
Kestrel's criminal background — years of poaching, smuggling, and guiding fugitives through the Ashen Wilds for coin — made him a natural asset to the Veiled Market's smuggler network long before the eclipse. He still runs contraband along the burnt trails for them when he needs information, and they in turn keep his name off the bounty boards that the Shroud of Ash's bandits would happily collect. The relationship is transactional and laced with mutual wariness: Vex has twice tried to sell Kestrel's location to the Umbral Court, and Kestrel has twice made it painfully clear what happens to those who try a third time.
He distrusts their neutrality — he has seen Veiled Market couriers trading with bandits who burned his home. Yet Orin, the one-eyed bandit who spared his life, now works their stalls, and through him Kestrel maintains a fragile line of intel. He will deal with the Market, drink in the Night Bazaar, and never once turn his back on a Veiled cloak.
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