URSOOL
Overview
Ursool is called the Woman of the Wood by those who respect her. Those who do not use such names as hag, demon spawn, or simply witch. Once, she was beautiful, a young woman with prospects and a future. But she ran afoul of another—a malignant creature, from Ursool’s perspective—who offered her a choice: become the Woman of the Wood or watch everyone you love die.
Before the creature presented this choice to Ursool, folk knew her by another name. But once she made her decision to take up the mantle of the Woman of the Wood—for what other choice did she have?—she surrendered that name, along with every other aspect of her prior life. Without even the chance to say goodbye to her friends and family, she was transformed from a simple woodswoman into Ursool and forced deep into the Dormont Forest, where she dwells in solitude to this day.
Her life is a lonely one. Few know the location of her home in the woods, and even fewer choose to visit her there. The eslar mercenary, Ensel Rhe Alon, is one such person. He offers her companionship from time to time when the opportunity and his mood align, and sometimes trappers or hunters will come seeking a salve or potion, but Ursool spends the remainder of her time alone.
Folk avoid her for good reason. Ursool is a witch of great power, and while she is not overtly evil, her disposition grows fouler the longer she carries her choice. She disguises this well most of the time, but the curse, as she calls it, drives her to make dark choices. More than anything, she seeks a way to free herself from the dark magic taken hold of her, even if the price is a terrible one.
Little is known about the one who left Ursool with the heavy burden of her curse. It is rumored, though, that Ursool’s decision saved the folk of her town and all others in the Dormont.
Appearance
By her own account, Ursool was beautiful once. Not the most beautiful, she would say, but she turned men’s heads, and she was charming and courageous and strong besides. Nothing of that survived the mantle.
What the power left her with is a body misshapen and deformed—an ugly hag, in her own unsparing words. Her hands are warty. A lump formed years ago at her neck, half inside the flesh and half out, and it aches when pressed. She goes about in a simple homespun gown, the only garment she owns, and smooths the wrinkles from it by habit even when it hangs dirty and torn. She moves with a hobbling, shuffling gait.
The reaction she draws when the concealment fails is not merely revulsion. Faces appear in windows and their curiosity turns to disgust in the space of a breath. Guardsmen would sooner bar her passage or kill her outright than let her walk by—and some have tried exactly that, not from fear of her power but to purge the sight of her from their minds. A demon who tormented her judged her worse-looking than the pit devils of Barathrum. A crime lord greeted her by asking why she had brought her hideousness into his establishment. Ursool lets such things pass. She has been dealt far worse.
Her concealing magic projects no single face. It shows each viewer something drawn from that viewer’s own wants, which means no two people meet quite the same woman. One man passing her in the street sees someone pleasing and lets his gaze linger. Another sees a matron and calls her mother. Ursool herself has never known what any of them see. The spell works outward only, and she has grown used to reading strangers’ expressions to gauge whether it is holding.
Hold it does not always. The magic draws on the same source as the rest of her power, and away from the Dormont it thins. Ordinarily she lends it her own strength, and all is well, but weakened or far from the woods, the guise slips. In those moments she ducks her head, keeps to alleys and shadows, and covers herself with whatever cloak or hood she can find. She believes this is the best and only way she can exist now, and she nurses one small private wish alongside the larger one: to look into a mirror, just once, and see herself rather than the creature she has become.
Abilities & Witchcraft
Ursool commands powerful eldritch magic. As the Woman of the Wood, she can control the forest and everything within it, including the vegetation, animals, and insects. She is also familiar with the spirits, though mastery of them is often fickle, as their demeanor suggests. When her and their dispositions align, they become a powerful ally, granting Ursool near sorcerer-like powers.
Witchcraft is neither as precise nor as finite as spellcraft. Its power is drawn from the moon, the alignment of the stars, and the very earth, and it answers imperfectly—a fact Ursool has long since stopped resenting. Only druid magic eclipses it in sheer force, and there are no druids left in the world. What remains are sorcerers, witches, and the tribal shamans and witch doctors who practice the low magic, and among them Ursool has few peers.
Her strength is bound to the Dormont, which is both the source of her power and the seat of her curse. Within the forest she is formidable beyond reckoning. Pressed to the loam, she can draw on the woods to dull pain and knit injury. Her working takes the form of a hummed melody, soft and sweet, and at the sound of it the trees shake, the roots erupt from the forest floor, and what she sets them upon does not survive the encounter. Away from the woods her magic thins, and the further she travels, the more of herself she must spend to sustain what should come without effort.
Beyond the forest she has subtler arts. She can befuddle a room of men into a standing trance and walk out past them. As a witch, and a woodswoman before that, she has extensive knowledge of herbs, roots, and crystals used to create potions and elixirs. While she crafts few love potions, it is not unusual for her to trade a healing elixir, a potion to ward off drowsiness, or a solution to calm the nerves for supplies not so readily available in the forest.
Personality & Demeanor
Ursool is courteous in ways that surprise those expecting a hag. She thanks strangers who help her, offers a smile even knowing she cannot be certain what that smile looks like from the other side, and takes pains to spare people the sight of her—not from shame alone, but from a conviction that no one should have to see her as she is. The consideration is genuine and costs her something every time.
Beneath the courtesy is iron, and beneath the iron something harder still. “I am angry and bitter,” she has said plainly of herself. “I am vengeful.” She answers cruelty with defiance rather than pleading—spitting at those who torment her, laughing when laughter is the only weapon left to her—and when the opportunity for retribution comes, she takes it without hesitation and without excess. She settles a score to even and stops there, and she will tell her enemy so before she leaves him alive.
Trust comes hard. She has been befriended before by people who repaid her with deceit and ridicule, and the memory of it makes her hesitate even in the face of plain kindness. Old habits die hard, as she puts it. She accepts help slowly, and asks why it is offered before she takes it.
And the curse works on her. Her disposition sours as the years accumulate, and the dark choices come easier than they once did. She is aware of this, which is perhaps the worst part of it—watching herself erode and knowing what she is becoming, while the one thing she wants above all others remains a way out that no one has ever offered her.
Notable Relationships
Ensel Rhe Alon is the closest thing Ursool has to a friend. The eslar mercenary knows the way to her home and comes when the opportunity and his mood align, offering a companionship that is intermittent and undemanding and, for someone in Ursool’s position, immeasurably valuable.
Sonya belongs to another life entirely. Ursool once loved her as a sister, and Sonya repaid that love with deceit and ridicule. It was long ago and Ursool rarely speaks of it, but the wariness she carries toward anyone offering kindness traces back to that betrayal as much as to anything the mantle did to her.
The creature who gave her the choice remains the defining presence in her life, though she has neither its name nor its nature to give anyone who asks. Whatever bargain was struck bound her, and undoing it is the pursuit that organizes everything else she does.
Her remaining ties to other people are transactional and deliberately shallow. Trappers and hunters find their way to her door seeking a salve or a potion, trade for what they need, and leave. She surrendered her family and friends when she took up the mantle, without so much as a goodbye, and has made no attempt to build anything comparable since.
Role & Affiliations
Ursool is the Woman of the Wood, a title that functions as an office as much as a name—bound to the Dormont Forest, drawing her power from it, and unable to stray far without paying for the distance. She answers to no coven, hall, or crown. Whatever obligations the mantle carries were imposed on her rather than chosen.
She lives deep in the Dormont, a woods of dense ash and pine frequented by hunters, trappers, loggers, and others who dwell in one of the many woodland towns found here and there throughout its wide expanse. Her home is a place of ultimate solitude, hidden from most by its remoteness and the occasional spell Ursool casts for the times she truly wishes to drown in her sorrow without prying eyes intruding. The dwelling is small but more than adequate for her modest needs, with a sleeping area, a hearth for warmth and cooking, and a table she uses for eating and working.