High Druid Maerla Windbound
The Voice of the Pack, and the Flame on the Trail
High Druid Maerla Windbound is unlike many of her peers among the Clans. She does not sit in stillness beneath ancient stones or vanish into sacred groves. She moves, ever at the center of her people — traveling from hearth-circle to hearth-circle, her wolfskin cloak trailing behind her, her voice rising like a hunting horn through the misted valleys of the north.
Tall, lean, and weathered by endless travel, Maerla is said to have been born during a midnight hunt — her first breath taken under the moon with wolves circling close. Her name, Windbound, was given after she ran alone across three ridgelines to warn a southern band of an incoming raid, arriving bloodied but unbroken with the storm at her back. She has borne it proudly since. Maerla is not only a spiritual leader but also a unifier, maintaining the pack's memory through story, ritual, and song. She knows the name of every child born in the clan since her rise, and she can recount every battle fought on Faolán soil for four generations. She is a druid but also a warchanter, skald, and council-keeper.
Her druidic magic is grounded in wind, instinct, and animal kinship. Wolves answer her howl, and storms shift at her whispered call. Her most sacred rite, The Binding Run, weaves unity between feuding bands by leading them through a ritual hunt together beneath the moon, where all bloodshed is replaced by song and shared breath.
Maerla does not wield a staff, but a pair of carved wooden runes tied to her belt — one for memory, the other for motion. It is said that when she casts them into a fire, the flames shift and rise in the shape of the one who must lead the next warband.
“We do not walk behind the wolf. We run beside her, and the land runs with us.” — High Druid Maerla Windbound
