Sloan of Ewyas is a middle-aged druid-healer who learned the old herbways in a riverside village. When a terrible blight forced her to accept aid from the Pax Dei order, she swore to relieve suffering but never surrendered the forest’s quieter laws — now she moves between parish and grove, mending bodies while quietly protecting the wild things the order overlooks.

Sloan was born on a cold morning when the river smoked; the midwife wrapped her in reed cloths and set her on a basket of lavender to calm her. Eywas is the sort of place people remember for its apple orchards and the hawthorn that marks the spring well. Sloan’s mother taught her to read weather by the scent of moss and to read people by the steadiness of their hands. Her father was a ferryman who hummed old sea-spells while he worked; between them Sloan learned roots, songs, and the gentleness that makes a good healer.

As a young woman she apprenticed under Old Eira, the village herb-woman, who kept remedies in clay jars and taught Sloan the old names of plants — names that changed when the moon did. Sloan’s hands are patient because they learned to untangle newborn cords, to stitch an ox’s flank, to coax a fever into sweat with a poultice and a lullaby. She married once and lost her child to a fever that would not yield; the loss hardened a steady compassion in her: a refusal to let fear dictate decisions.

Ten years ago a blight came downriver, blackening leaves and making calves die within a day. Ewyas was outmatched by rot and superstition. The Pax Dei, with lanterns and organized relief, arrived: doctors with tinctures, cooks with porridge, clerks who recorded names. They offered a cure that required limits — a public vow of trust, a lending of labor to the order’s relief efforts, and an oath that the Pax Dei would choose who received scarce medicines. Sloan watched families saved and families passed by because of the order’s priorities. To prevent more needless deaths she took the vow and worked alongside Pax Dei healers, teaching them what root to steep and where the blight first came from.

The bargain saved the village but left Sloan uneasy. She saw the order do good and also wielded charity like law. She learned Pax Dei liturgy and cataloging, but she kept Eira’s old notebooks and the grove rituals in secret. Sloan became a bridge: the order’s practical knowledge plus the old herbways. Over time the Pax Dei trusted her as a local steward — not fully within the inner circle, but valuable enough to be deputized when needed. That position lets her direct help to those the order would overlook, but it also gives her enemies: clerks who resent her independence and officials who dislike her refusal to annul smallfolk land rights “for the greater good.

Now middle-aged, Sloan walks a narrow path. She tends parish wounds on the order’s records by day and at dusk slips into the hawthorn grove to set offerings for the river spirits. People call her “Sloan of Eywas” with gratitude and something like superstition. She keeps two things always: a reed basket of remedies and the small wooden charm her mother carved — both remind her what she will and will not bargain away.