Hesk Quietfeather, the Night Gardener
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Class: Ranger (Herbalist), 4th level
Race: Bugbear
Role: other
Stats Ac: 14
Stats Cr: 1/2
Stats Hp: 45
Status: alive
Description
Brother Hesk Quietfeather keeps the poison garden at the Cloister of the Pale Vigil, the walled physic garden where the order grows the wolfsbane, nightshade and hemlock it uses for antitoxins — and he keeps it at night, because the abbot would rather the pilgrims not see a bugbear with a pruning hook. Thirty-one years of that work have made him the best herbalist in the Duskvarren Marches and the most invisible person in the cloister, which means he sees everything and is asked about none of it
Appearance
Seven feet of stooped bugbear in a mud-coloured habit two sizes too small, moving with the particular quiet of someone who has spent decades not stepping on seedlings. Grey-flecked fur, one ear notched. His hands are permanently stained green-black at the fingertips and he wears gardening gloves only when handling the poison beds — never otherwise.
Motives
To find out who is sending the child before anyone else notices the child at all. He does not want the thief caught; he wants the hand behind the thief. Everything he has done — the swap, the silence, the food left on the wall — buys him time to work that out.
Personality
Speaks to the plants more readily than to people, and apologises to them before cutting. Deeply uncomfortable indoors and worse in conversation — he answers questions by handing you something. Quirk: he keeps a tally of every living thing that has died in his care on a strip of birchbark in his pocket, and he can recite all of it, going back thirty-one years, including the wasps.
Voice
A rumble pitched deliberately low and soft, as though he is always worried about being too loud for the room. Long silences that are not hostile. Uses plant names as units of time — "since the foxglove", "before the second thaw" — and has to be asked twice to translate.