Wilderness Explorer (Ranger Archetype)
While almost every ranger is accustomed to the wild places of the world, there are those who go beyond even this, exploring places that few people have ever even seen, not to mention the denizens they meet along the way.
First contact is where they excel in particular, making new friends with individuals, cultures, and even the spirits of nature. They specialize in making it past language barriers, and at ingratiating themselves to strangers.
With this in mind, most of these wilderness explorers are good or at least neutral, with those that are evil being more manipulators than true friends, and often heralding dark times.
That being said, their camaraderie not only helps smooth over interaction with others, it also gives them a measure of protection from otherworldly sources.
As they are very likely to meet cultures they cannot understand, these rangers have mastered the art of gestures and pantomime to convey simple concepts with others. They can even use this to communicate with more simple humanoids with not language of their own, or in a limited capacity with more monstrous humanoids.
Intimately familiar with both natural and constructed hazards of the wilds, these explorers are adept at recognizing and avoiding them.
Not just friends with mortal natives, these rangers befriend native spirits of their favored terrains, which provide multiple boons, warning them against hidden dangers, and later on even protecting them from hostile magic.
Not as adept at working with others with either companion or animal bonds, this archetype is valuable for making contact with unfamiliar locals and getting some personal protections in their favored terrains. If this appeals to you, it might be a valuable alternate flavor of ranger. If you do go with it, I definitely recommend you put more interest in charisma and intelligence (for more bonus languages), for a more social ranger than you normally see.
The typical ranger stereotype is that of a loner that reject camaraderie in favor of the solitude of the wild, but that’s not necessarily true with even the core ranger, let alone these wilderness explorers. With their tendency to travel far and wide, though, the explorers form friendships that last a lifetime, though they may not see those friends for years, or even ever again, perhaps out of a realization of how far their lives will take them?
Traveling to the far north with their explorer guide, the party finds that a culture of fisherfolk have been dealing with a horrific monster lately, a powerful ahklut that has been preying upon their vessels and pursuing the fishers onto land. Dealing with the beast will certainly go a long way towards earning their trust, even without sharing a common language.
Traveling in a wide circuit throughout the untamed lands, Miretia has been a regular visitor of many isolated communities, bringing news of the world to each as the years pass by, that is, until the elf stopped showing up. Only an equally great tracker has a chance of discovering what happened to her.
Stopping for the night under a large tree, a keen-eyed party member might recognize curious growths in the bark, the mark of a modified version of the sturdy tree fort spell that leaves behind the conjured tree after it is finished, the mark of the legendary ranger and explorer Leafweaver. Perhaps there might be some leftover trinket of his somewhere nearby?
