Marcelline Broussard - Human Druid

Marcelline Broussard

Female Human Druid 7

Size/Type: Medium Humanoid (Human)
Hit Dice: 7d8+14 (45 hp)
Initiative: +2
Speed: 30 ft. (6 squares)
Armor Class: 17 ( +2 Dex, +4 armor, +1 natural ), touch 12, flat-footed 15
Base Attack/Grapple: +5 / +5
Attack: Scimitar +6 melee (1d6/18–20)
Full Attack: Scimitar +6 melee (1d6/18–20) or sling +7 ranged (1d4)
Space/Reach: 5 ft. / 5 ft.
Special Attacks: Wild Shape (2/day), spontaneous casting (summon nature’s ally), venom affinity (see Special Qualities)
Special Qualities: Animal companion, nature sense, wild empathy +9, woodland stride, trackless step, resist nature’s lure, insect empathy (custom), venom resistance +4
Saves: Fort +7, Ref +4, Will +8
Ability Scores: Str 10, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 12, Wis 17, Cha 13
Skills: Concentration +12, Handle Animal +11, Heal +10, Knowledge (nature) +11, Listen +10, Spot +10, Survival +13, Hide +6, Move Silently +6
Feats: Spell Focus (Conjuration), Augment Summoning, Natural Spell
Environment: Warm marshes and swamps (bayou)
Organization: Solitary or with animal companion
Challenge Rating: 7
Treasure: Standard
Alignment: Neutral Good
Advancement: By character class
Level Adjustment: —
Languages: Common, Franche, Cajun
Possessions: +1 leather armor fashioned from treated gator hide, masterwork scimitar with carved bone hilt, sling and pouch of smooth river stones, cloak of resistance +1, druid’s vestments adorned with beetle shells and cicada wings, herbalism kit, fetishes of bone and chitin, spell component pouch, various preserved venoms in stoppered glass vials

Animal Companion

Giant Dragonfly (reskinned Dire Hawk statistics)
Functions as a dire hawk with insect traits - chitinous body, compound eyes, and silent hovering flight. Marcelline uses it for scouting and delivering venom-laced distractions.

Special Qualities (Expanded)

Insect Empathy (Ex):
Marcelline may use wild empathy on vermin with an Intelligence of 1 or 2 as if they were animals. Mindless vermin are not affected, but she can influence swarms through pheromonal mixtures and subtle druidic magic, granting her a +4 circumstance bonus when interacting with insect-based creatures.

Venom Resistance (Ex):
Years of careful exposure grant her a +4 bonus on saves against poison. She often microdoses venoms to build tolerance.

Venom Affinity (Su):
Any summoned creatures via summon nature’s ally gain a +2 bonus to poison DCs if they possess a venom attack.

Typical Druid Spells Prepared (CL 7th, DC 13 + spell level)

0 (6): Detect Magic, Detect Poison, Guidance, Know Direction, Light, Resistance
1st (5): Entangle, Obscuring Mist, Produce Flame, Speak with Animals, Faerie Fire
2nd (4): Barkskin, Summon Swarm, Fog Cloud, Lesser Restoration
3rd (3): Call Lightning, Poison, Sleet Storm
4th (2): Giant Vermin, Reincarnate

Physical Description

Marcelline Broussard looks like she was born from the swamp and never quite left it. Her skin carries a warm, sun-darkened tone, freckled lightly across the nose and cheeks, while her long black hair is usually tied back with strips of worn cloth and bits of chitin. Strands of it are perpetually damp from the humidity, curling slightly at the ends. Her eyes - a sharp, mossy green - are always moving, scanning, noticing things most people never would.

Her clothing is practical but deeply personal. Soft leather armor, dyed in muted greens and browns, is layered with small charms made from beetle shells, cicada husks, and carved bone. Around her neck hangs a cord strung with tiny glass vials, each holding different shades of liquid - amber, green, milky white - her collected venoms. Her boots are caked in old mud that never quite washes out, and she walks with the steady, confident footing of someone who knows exactly where the ground is safe.

There’s always a faint hum around her. Sometimes it’s just the swamp. Sometimes… it isn’t.

Lore

Marcelline was born deep in the bayou to a family that understood the land not as something to tame, but something to listen to. While others feared the insects - the biting, stinging, crawling things that define swamp life - she was fascinated by them. Where most saw nuisance, she saw order. Purpose. A quiet, relentless intelligence.

Her early years were marked by long days trailing behind elders who taught her the rhythms of water and root, but it was the smaller lives that called to her. She learned how ants reorganize after destruction, how dragonflies hunt with surgical precision, how certain beetles only emerge when death has already begun its work. Insects, to Marcelline, were not lesser creatures - they were the true custodians of the wild.

As her druidic power grew, so did her connection to these creatures. She began cultivating venoms, not as weapons of cruelty, but as tools - precise, controlled, and purposeful. She uses them to heal, to hunt, and when necessary, to defend. Her magic reflects this philosophy: swarms answer her call, chitinous forms swell to unnatural size, and even the air around her can thrum with unseen wings.

Marcelline is not merely a practitioner of druidic tradition but a quiet scholar of the smallest lives that define the bayou, having authored three distinct and widely circulated treatises on insectology (aka entomology), each reflecting a different facet of her understanding - one a practical field guide to identification and behavior, another a dense and meticulous study of venom properties and applications, and the third a more philosophical work exploring the role of insects as agents of balance, decay, and renewal within the natural order. Her writings are sought after by herbalists, hunters, and even certain less reputable alchemists, though few who read them fully grasp the deeper message threaded throughout: that the smallest creatures are not merely part of the world, but the forces that quietly determine its fate.

Among the scattered communities of the bayou, Marcelline is something of a whispered figure. Some call her a protector. Others - especially those who’ve felt the creeping warning of a swarm gathering too close - call her something else entirely. But those who truly understand the swamp know this:

If the insects are restless…
Marcelline is already watching.

Kelwyn’s Notes

Ah… Marcelline Broussard. Yes, I have had the distinct - and increasingly persistent - pleasure of crossing paths with that remarkable woman no fewer than six times. Each encounter has been heralded not by fanfare, nor by the expected signs of a druid’s passing, but by the subtle, rising chorus of wings. One does not meet Marcelline so much as realize, often too late, that one has already been observed by her. There is, I must admit, something undeniably captivating about her presence - a quiet confidence wrapped in mud, chitin, and the faint suggestion that one is being politely assessed for decomposition.

She is not merely a caretaker of the swamp - she is an interpreter of its smallest, most easily dismissed voices. Where most druids lean toward fang and root, Marcelline has aligned herself with the infinitely patient, the innumerable, the inevitable. Insects do not rage, they do not plead - they persist. And so too does she. Her magic reflects this philosophy with unnerving clarity. It is not dramatic, not theatrical, but precise… incremental… inescapable. One does not fend off Marcelline’s influence - one is simply, gradually, overcome by it.

To the uninitiated, she is disarming - soft-spoken, observant, even warm in her own peculiar fashion. But that warmth carries conditions, most of which are unspoken and all of which are enforced by a thousand unseen agents. I have witnessed seasoned travelers grow deeply uncomfortable under her gaze, though they could not articulate why. It is because she measures worth differently. Not by strength, nor by intent, but by one’s place within a system far older and far less forgiving than any civilized law. Those who fit… are tolerated. Those who do not… are corrected.

And here, I confess, lies my irritation. She is, in every sense, lovely. Intelligent, composed, and possessed of a perspective that is both rare and deeply compelling. And yet - she insists on demonstrating that perspective in ways that test the very limits of my patience. I recall, with vivid clarity, an incident involving a cluster of mosslings - harmless in isolation, mind you - which she had apparently “encouraged” into a state of collective agitation. What followed was less an encounter and more a prolonged negotiation with a hanging, damp, mildly sentient inconvenience that refused to respect personal space. She found this educational. I found it moist, itchy, and profoundly unnecessary.

Still… one cannot dismiss her. Marcelline Broussard is not chaos, nor cruelty, nor even mischief in the traditional sense. She is balance - but not the gentle kind so often romanticized. Hers is the balance of rot and renewal, of swarm and silence, of the quiet understanding that the smallest things, given time, will inherit everything.

And should you ever feel the faint brush of wings where none should be…

I would advise you to mind your place in the world.

She already has.