Junior Initiate of the Circle of the Verdant Veil
"Coincidence is just a pattern that hasn't been watered enough."
Cedric Mossbrook is a young druidic initiate assigned to the outskirts of Goldcrest, where his official duties include monitoring wildlife populations, investigating unusual plant growth, and filing reports nobody reads. While intelligent and genuinely skilled at reading natural signs, Cedric has developed a reputation for seeing connections where others see chance.
Armed with an overstuffed leather notebook labelled "Mossbrook's Observations, Vol. VII", Cedric spends his days documenting strange happenings throughout the city. Missing cats. Unseasonal flowers. Pigeons gathering in unusual numbers. A baker who always closes on cloudy days. To Cedric, these are rarely isolated incidents.
Most of his theories are ridiculous.
Some of them are alarmingly accurate.
He firmly believes there is a secret society of awakened raccoons operating within the city walls. He has mapped their "territory" extensively and claims they communicate through carefully arranged rubbish piles. While his superiors dismiss this as nonsense, Cedric occasionally uncovers genuine smuggling operations while investigating these supposed raccoon conspiracies.
Among his more famous theories:
- The city's crows are conducting a census of the population.
- Certain ivy growths are deliberately spelling messages across rooftops.
- The fish in Goldcrest's river know more than they're letting on.
- At least three statues in New Velarim move when nobody is looking.
- A druid somewhere in the city is teaching squirrels military tactics.
His greatest frustration is that every time he uncovers a genuine mystery, it becomes harder to convince people he's serious because of everything else he believes.
Cedric possesses a remarkable talent for tracking and deduction. He notices broken twigs, disturbed soil, unusual bird calls, and subtle changes in local ecosystems that others overlook. Given enough time, he can reconstruct a surprisingly accurate account of events from natural evidence alone.
Unfortunately, he often presents his findings by unfolding twelve pages of diagrams connected with red string.
Appearance
Cedric is a human in his early twenties with messy brown hair perpetually full of leaves. His robes are practical rather than ceremonial, covered in pockets stuffed with feathers, seed pods, sketches, and hastily scribbled notes. He carries a satchel overflowing with journals and refuses to throw any of them away because "you never know when an old observation will become relevant."
He constantly smells faintly of damp earth and fresh grass.