When Sylvan children hear that Grand Oak Padraig is in town, they flock to see him. They marvel at the ancient Fae whose beard is moss and whose raiment is shrouded in leaves, who taps his long gnarled staff against the ground as he wanders through the Mistwood to dispense wisdom and perform cantrips to amuse and delight. Their parents, however, know that the mysterious, genial old patriarch often brings grim tidings along with comfort and amusement, and when his
tone turns serious, all must listen and heed.

Padraig is silent on his origins and domain as a lord of the Fae. He rarely interacts with the Fae Court and its politics, preferring his seemingly aimless perambulations across the Mistwood. This leaves a great gulf of wonder as to what his true motives are, guessed at by a dozen wild theories. In truth, Padraig has no grandiose secret agenda. He is simply not motivated by the forces that prevail among the Sylvan Elves or Fae, making his lifestyle and demeanor out of sync
with theirs.

Some six centuries past, Padraig — old and wizened even then – was a more typical Fae lord, plotting and scheming. But one day, he was visited by one of the first generation of Lightbringers — holy Firstborn from the Halls of Eternity able to take on mortal bodies and traverse the barrier excluding their kind from Teleria. That being was called Soriphus the Evangelist, a gentle Lightbringer of stunning beauty and gilded tongue. He had come to minister to the Sylvan, Elf and Fae alike, and exhort them to greater loyalty and devotion to Lumaya. In Soriphus’ eyes, the Sylvan were too enamored with nature and magic, and had lost sight of Lumaya as the true creator and master of these forces.

Padraig protested that their ways of worship were their own, and legitimate. Soriphus pointed to the amoral machinations of the Fae Court as evidence of their errantry from the Light. The Fae and the Lightbringer argued for a day and a night in passionate theological debate, lost in their convictions yet deeply impressed by each others’ erudition and wit. At the end of it, both were changed: Soriphus accepted Padraig’s personal piety — though he would go on to minister to other Sylvan – and Padraig’s eyes were opened to the dark aspects of the Fae and their Court.

From then on, Padraig cultivated an un-Fae-like humility, and a connection and solidarity with other peoples and societies. Where most of the Fae Court viewed the doings of the Sylvan Court and the governments of wider Teleria as largely beneath their notice or concern, Padraig paid attention. Where most Fae saw Sylvan Elves as valued but inferior junior partners, Padraig saw them as equals. This alienated him from his fellow Fae, but as a Fae himself, he was fated to remain forever a stranger to the Sylvan Elves, and all other Telerians. This left him in a liminal state, forever wandering, seeking to know the world and do small acts of beneficence wherever he could, to expand his own personal enlightenment and faith.

This served him well when, at the dawn of the Age of Treachery, a Demonspawn infiltrator awakened the seed of corruption Siroth had planted deep within the Heart Tree at the center of the Mistwood centuries before. In the days and weeks that followed, a cancer spread through the Rhythm, and madness and death ensued. The Sylvan had no choice but to sever their connection to their living past and regrow a new Heart Tree while waging a war of containment against the old one. The Old Rhythm, as it is called, perished — save in the heart of Padraig himself.

His worldliness and compassion, and the many connections he had personally made, let a tiny but significant kernel of the Old Rhythm persist and survive within him. In time, the new Heart Tree grew in the new Sylvan capital of Nyresa, and a new reborn Rhythm emerged from it, to the joy of the people. Padraig, already well used to the role of outsider, did not even try to reintegrate his relict Rhythm, for he could sense that he was too far removed from modernity. His antique Rhythm-remnant yet entranced and enticed those of the new. They drew inexplicable comfort and nostalgia from it, even though generations had passed since any had felt the Old Rhythm. But these feelings faded when they were away from him.

Padraig remains a good-hearted sage, and still to this day makes time for kindness to strangers and brightness of spirit, though he remains forever apart from the Rhythm of new and from the world and people that he cherishes. Though on a deep level, he longs to have a place to which he feels he truly belongs, he knows that in keeping his distance he has a perspective that enables him to help from afar in ways he couldn’t otherwise. Furthermore, when he looks upon those in tune with the New Rhythm, and sees their growing taste for battle and expansion, he feels only sadness. And gratitude that its driving ‘war-beat’ has not affected him.

This Grand Oak Padraig lore is originally posted by Plarium in-game.