Zook is a small, wiry gnome with skin tanned to the color of oak bark and hair that resembles a patch of wild moss. He smells of damp pine and wet stone, often carrying various seeds and nuts in the tangled nest of his beard. He wears primitive leather armor adorned with small bones and feathers, and his eyes have a feral, amber glint that suggests he sees more than what is right in front of him.

He is gruff and suspicious of anything built by hands rather than grown from the soil. Zook talks to trees and squirrels with more reverence than he shows to kings. He is deeply protective of the wild and considers himself a literal part of the forest's immune system.

Zook spent the last thirty years in the deepest corners of the Whispering Weald. He found more comfort in the cycles of predation and growth than in the structured society of gnome burrows. While his cousins tinkered with mechanical toys, Zook mastered the art of becoming the mountain lion and the bear. He lived in total isolation until poachers began encroaching on his grove, forcing him to use his wild fury to defend the innocent creatures under his watch. Now he has emerged from the woods to find the source of the rot that threatens the natural world, moving through civilization with the wary grace of a trapped wolf. He does not seek fame or gold, only the preservation of the sacred balance that urban life seeks to destroy.