Sprout grew up in The Veridian Grove, an isolated community dedicated to the preservation of an old forest, sacred to the church of the Goddess Mikaya. She is an orphan and does not know who her parents are, but believes that they were members of the Grove that have been exiled. She is one of the younger members of the clan and has just reached twenty years of age.
Sprout is a sort of pariah within her own community. Many of the elders appear to distrust her, and this distrust has trickled down to the rest of the clan. Most of the others her age and younger act friendly towards her, but that goes away once someone else older is looking. Sprout assumes this disdain comes from two different sources: that her parents must have done something horrible to be exiled from the clan, and that her nascent druidic abilities are manifesting in ways completely different from her peers. Unable to Wildshape, and with a supposedly unhealthy predilection towards fire-based spellcasting, many elders consider her to be a danger to the forest, as well as the world around it, and have forbidden her from leaving.
Instead of wildshaping, Sprout can summon her wildfire spirit, which she thinks is much better. Ember, or Em for short, is kind of Sprout's best friend, and currently takes the form of a chipmunk. Sprout keeps Em to herself, and only a couple of others know about her.
While the forest that she calls home has been healthy and growing for centuries, in the past decade or so the clan has noticed a kind of rot spreading from the edges of the forest and towards the Grove at the forest's heart. The clan has tried everything within their power to stop the rot from spreading, but it has unfortunately reached the Grove in the past couple of years and has started to infect the people living there. Becoming infected and eventually succumbing to the rot is a very long process that can take almost a year depending on how healthy the individual is. While no one has died, those who are infected appear to be in some sort of stasis and remain unconscious.
In a desperate move, the elders of the clan, for the first time in many years, have sent some of those who have just come of age out into the world to find some sort of cure or assistance. Sprout watched many of her friends leave, and none of them have returned. She was the last one left, trying to take care of those who were sick. The last of the elders fell, and then she began to notice that she was displaying the initial symptoms of the infection. Without anyone left to hold her back, she has left the Grove in search of a cure for the forest, as well as herself.