Gwambari - Animal Friend Shaman

The southern sun and scorched savannah were the markers of Gwambari’s childhood, raised among the Druidic Circle of Brel Harmen, the Southern Pillar. Life in such circles is cloistered, and the only children he saw on rare occasions were brought by their parents on pilgrimages to the tree. Instead, Gwambari found companionship and friendship among the critters that roamed the grasslands and woods near his home, finding an innate ability to connect to the animals, befriending them as he would a peer, learning their names and stories, frolicing through the drylands with them. Yet the disconnect he felt from the greater world gnawed constantly at him, he would see pilgrims of other druids come and go, trading stories of the lands beyond his cloistered circle. He thus decided when he came of age, his trial for ascension into his circle would be his own pilgrimage to the other three Pillars of Renmaeth. Though these journeys were perilous, and not for the unseasoned, Gwambari knew it might be his only chance to travel beyond his homeland before his admittance into the Circle. The journey to Brel Alda in Draksborne was a sombering one, the circle decimated by the cataclysmic outbreak of Dragonblight a year prior, and he saw firsthand the devastation that had been wreaked onto the kingdom and its druids, with ruins and mass-graves left in its wake. He had hoped his journey to the northern Pillar of Brel Endra might be more uneventful, though the icy plains of Oldavor would prove a deadly obstacle to overcome, for such bitter cold was foreign to him. The warm savannah of Sudd Tohst never saw snow, so, unprepared, he was forced to retreat for a time into the forests of Mayreth to prepare himself for his journey ahead. It was here that he wandered into the region of Nordheim, a remote forestland nestled beneath mountains, flowing with fresh springs and icemelt. Though beneath it, a sinister force lurked, and Gwambari felt it in the trees, and through the hushed whispers of birds and critters of the woods. This place had forsaken the Tharameni, and Renmaeth. New gods ruled here, and it seemed their rule was bringing a sickness to the land, as death followed. Feeling as though Renmaeth’s hand had guided him here, Gwambari knew he could not leave until he restored the faith of Renmaeth in the people, and denounced the false gods that ruled in her stead.