The Story of Ivern
Ivern Bramblefoot was once a great warrior of the ancient northern world — a braggart, a killer, and a seeker of glory who traveled to the edges of the known world hunting the most dangerous prey. His last hunt brought him to an ancient forest and a creature the locals called the God-Willow: a titanic tree-spirit that was the forest's animating intelligence. Ivern came to fight it. He touched it instead.
What happened next took a moment and changed everything. The God-Willow absorbed him — pulled him into itself, processed him, and released him transformed: no longer human, no longer a warrior, but something that partakes of both the man and the forest. He became the Green Father, a half-tree wandering spirit who nurtures all living things and who has spent every century since his transformation trying to undo the harm he caused as a man.
Ivern's defining quality now is joy — a pure, uncomplicated delight in the living world that has nothing to do with naivety and everything to do with having been remade by something that loves all life equally. He knows that his past self was violent and selfish. He carries that knowledge as motivation rather than shame, working to give back what he took. He names every animal he meets. He cries easily. He is, by almost any measure, one of the genuinely good things in Runeterra.