During the Godless Times on Second Shem, a leafpad named Artha Geelaun was initiated into an order of monks whose primary focus was a reverence of the plantlife of a secluded mountain forest. She, having been an archer in her village, brought with her some skill at hunting and tracking and such, but mostly, she brought with her her affinity for plantlife.

By her thirty-third year at the monastery, at the age of forty-nine, she had become abbess and was well respected in the region as a leader and expert botanical lorist. She had traveled all over the region and then some learning and bringing back new plants, crafting a beautiful garden within the monastery to rival gardens of legend. Her rise was quick for a monk, though, and this brought jealousy to some of her fellows. One such, Boram Gallom, had been passed over when she took up the mantle of abbess. The old wood dwarf stormed out after her promotion was announced.

Two years later, he returned, bearing a present for Artha--a poisonous flower called spidertear. Awed by the rare flower, she happily welcomed him back. He assured her, of course, that the flower had been properly tended, that it would not attack its owner like the flower was known to do, because he had, as a proper botanical lorist should, grafted a gentler strain of the flower onto it as it grew. Artha, being a kindly old woman, had no reason to suspect his jealousy would drive him to murder, and so she kept it.

Within a week, the flower struck, but not Artha. Her second-in-command had come to water her plants while she was out in the nearby town, and the flower had awakened and bitten him. Brother Boram ran as soon as he heard, and, meeting Artha in town, confessed everything. Enraged, she rushed back to her second and found him dying. Knowing but one antidote for the poison, she pleaded to the Green Mother to slow the old monk's body to the pace of a tree. As she prayed, a green light suffused her room, and a voice spoke to her,

Take up your bow.

The earthy, feminine voice came from the very roots of the world, and Artha knew she had been called by her Goddess. She took up her bow, and upon doing so, knew what she had to do. Seeing her second was, indeed, slowed to the pace of a tree, she knew she had but a few weeks. She went back to town, where she found Boram drunk half to death, and roused him.

"Brother Boram, you spoke of a passage from the Grove that you used to travel around the world. Take me there, immediately."

And, despite his infirmity, he did. Using an ancient Waygate buried beneath an old oak tree, the two were whisked to Taggarus instantly. They struggled over the continent at an incredible pace, using their plant lores to guide and protect them, and Artha's bow, and they came to the Mountain.

There, they both took the Trials, and they both came to the Beast of Ordeals--Artha seeking to be Champion of Flora, Boram seeking to be a Servant of the Oak. In the ensuing fight, Boram gave his life for her, and she was able, with her bow, to slay the Beast. She left a Champion, and summoned a leaf on which to ride the winds to her monastery.

Using her new powers, she made grow an opal rose, and its petals she used to heal her second.