Russum Consiliare - As a Consiliare, he is a communicator and leader - he enlists his people to help. Responsible for a diverse community in Idyllwode. He does his best to create a unified Idyllwode Commonwealth. He is about 350 years old, but has the appearance of a 35 year old, the age at which he became infused with the Nemorance. He was originally from a small settlement called Firbank, a bit farther away than Snaggly Thicket. In his position on the Concilium, he uses his spores and Nemore connection to manipulate the other four Consiliares, bending them to his will. They do not know that he is several hundred years old, either, which he keeps the population of Idyllwode Hearth unaware of by enchanting them with his spores. He helped Idyllwode to shut down from outsiders, enforcing hard barries Counter to common mushroom-based character archetype, he wears formal and refined clothing. He comes across as in control and mysterious. He is fiercely independent, emotionally withdrawn, and super smart. Very big on performance, and pretending everything is ok. Never wants to present a crack in his armor. Very good at reading people, has good insight. Enjoys the finer things, everyone likes nice things, he is just more upfront about it, as he grew up without. Lives in Idyllwode Hearth, the capital of Idyllwode. He has straight black hair, mono-lidded eyes, and light-medium cool toned skin. Broad shoulders, lean muscle. Eastern Asian in appearance, with a good layer of beard stubble. He is an adept battle mage, good in a fight, which comes to light much later. Late 20s, early 30s. His surname comes from the Idyllwode tradition of carrying your profession name, which is also usually inherited. The Idyllwode people have a tight hierarchical system, and you are often born into your position. He wants to have power and respect in Idyllwode, well, along with keeping the peace and securing the future prosperity of Idyllwode. Becomes an herbal alchemist and potioneer, like an Analog Enchanter/Mesmer. He is typically frustrated and exasperated by the group - our other heroes. He eventually grows to embrace and identify as a Grovegarde, and he decides to rescind the title of Conciliare, stepping down from the position, once he realizes that he has held it for too long, isn’t allowing Idyllwode to be truly run as a Sovereign nation equally between the Conciliares, Magisters, and Emissars. Once they get to know each other, Russum calls her ‘Lyv’. He gets Helke to do so too eventually. He has a thing for cute soft boys, and eventually finds love with Ulfin.
He has a formal, simple attire, pants that are straight-legged or have a flare, but often with some. Simple cut shirts, very angular, but made with fine material. Color palette is whites, khakis, purples, lavender, baby blue, red, antiqued colors, rose, dusty.
Russum backstory:
Before he was part of Idyllwode’s Concilium, Russum was a peasant of the Commonwealth of Idyllwode, far outside the city (Idyllwode Hearth). He was born and raised in the countryside of Idyllwode, a patch of land called Firbank, Outside the village of Snaggly Thicket. There he was an herbalist, a witchy man, a healer. He grew plants and fungi, worked with them to create medicines, tinctures, and salves.
A terrible disease swept through the Commonwealth of Idyllwode. Russum had more people in need of his services than ever. However, he had no cure. He could ease their pain. People were dying from this virulent sickness. All over Idyllwode, citizens could not eat their food without intense vomiting, stomach pain, and were losing the ability to digest food. Russum discovered through his close studies the healing power of mycelium, mushrooms, and he utilized a fungi to eat the sickness. Inside of people and help them to digest food. He began a symbiotic relationship with the people of Idyllwode and the fungi of Idyllwode. He studied them more and more and he was able to keep the disease at bay. And eventually it petered off, unable to continue the stranglehold that had on Idyllwodes people.
By then, they were already using fungi to help them break down their food. They were becoming symbiotic partners in nature. Visions came to Russum in his sleep, he began to see these deep connections between mycelium and other partnerships in nature. Mushrooms could be used to heal, to poison, to awaken understanding, to expand the mind, and to manipulate. Russum became a respected healer helping the upper class: councilares, and nobles of Idyllwode. He moved to the town to the city center, Idyllwode Hearth. He could feel himself fusing with the mycelium and he would receive messages from them through the soil. The Nemorence had chosen him as an avatar of fungus. He could infuse objects with their health-giving properties, poisons, and mind manipulation. With the power of mushrooms, Russum learned that he could convince people, make them pliable, ready to receive his persuasion and his suggestion. He became renowned in Idyllwode. With his communication skills and humble background, he was politically useful to the Councilors, it was determined that he could gain support of the villages, countryside, and lower class of Idyllwode. And he, along with the help of the fungal influence, convinced the counselors to bestow him with the Crestcall of Emissar. He would henceforth be known as Russum Emissar. He became one of the few Emissars of Idyllwode. He influences and manipulates with magical aid of the mycelium of the Nemorence. He is cunning and conniving, but ultimately wants the best for Idyllwode and for Idyllwode's people. As an emissary, he is responsible for outreach outside of the city, to the Commonwealth, their villages and to outside of the Commonwealth.
The public does not know the details of his connection to the Nemorence. They do not know that the Nemorence has bestowed upon him these gifts or even explicitly that he has powers magical in nature. But there are rumors. He dismisses these, claiming to be just a gifted healer and student of nature. Idyllwode is becoming more insulated, reacting to the expansion and destruction sown by Hallowed Reach and Peldrim Dominion. Russum Conciliare has met with citizens from elsewhere to gather info about the outside world to learn about their cultures etc. Recently, he's begun to feel the great web of mycelium weakening, drying up,becoming shaky and disjointed and its connections. We will find this is due to climate disaster and collapse. He can tell though, that the fungal life and the ecological balance and health of the world realm of his corner of the world, which he has so deftly and successfully maneuvered, is in trouble. He is looking for answers and ways to help Idyllwode and to help the great fungal web. Russum has spent the last 150 years or so using his fungal spores to influence the minds of the Magisters, Emissars, and Conciliares, as well as some of the citizenry, subtlety manipulating and persuading them to ally with him, forget his immortality, vote in his favor, in concert with his beliefs, He has essentially glamoured them. While he has tried to only use it when needed, he has slipped in recent years because it is easier to glamour someone than to persuade them. It has affected his personal relationships, to the point where he doesn’t even remember who truly likes him and agrees with him, vs who has been manipulated into doing so.
He has done this all for the better of the Idyllwode Commonwealth, he has told himself. And it has largely been true, Idyllwode is relatively prosperous and safe, but insulated, and isolationist. Unaware of the danger outside of their borders, the threats to all of Aldwer and to Idyllwode.
Russum Conciliare can read a number of languages, Common, Old Ostran Sigien Scrawl. He is a scholarly nerd, Russum is obsessed with the Nemorence, plants, and herbalism. He is assigned to Lyv and Helke because of his great study of the Nemorence, with his duties as Emmisar. He initially finds that Helke could be useful, but thinks Lyv to be too obstinate and difficult to be useful to Idyllwode. Russum Grovegarde becomes his full name once he receives the Crestcall of ‘Grovegarde’ alongside his chosen sisters.
He has lived a very long time inside the safety and comfort of Idyllwode Hearth, pulling strings and cajoling wills. This pushes him to agree, toward the end of the novel, that it is time for head-on action, to destroy the Nemore eating machine. Peldrim has been impenetrable, despite Idyllwode’s efforts, and poses too imminent a threat to all that he has helped build in Idyllwode.
By siding with Lyv and co, he sees that he needs to let go of control of the people of Idyllwode. He knowingly sacrifices some of his power, the ability to control people [via invisible hyphae?] when he brings Valla back from unlife, into life again. She gains some of his fungal power, as a decomposer, and she is still a Revenant, but she can feed on the undead, decomposing them, and returning them to the Nemore cycle.