I think it’s Izellia. From the heroic tier:

Nature DC 24: Izellia was the first dryad to take a mortal lover. As her forest was consumed by a blight spread by foulspawn, her lover sacrificed himself to save her. He bound her soul to this branch, the last untouched by blight, but the ritual cost him his life.

I love your artifact–seeing mine lose or win to it will be an honor. I think what distinguishes 4E artifact philosophy with that of Pathfinder is the way that personality is built into the stat block itself, so no artifact is complete without a vivid personality nested within it.

The Branch does this beautifully. Izellia is a vivid embodiment of nature–mother earth personified, weakened and forlorn and wrathful.

4E needs more good heroic tier items like this. That’s so classy, by the way–heroic tier. There are many artifacts out there that are far more powerful than any item I would willingly hand to my players. This is not one of them. It’s balanced, vivid, and just the right thing to give a low-level druid a sense of direction.

If your gaming network is anything like mine, I suspect that your artifact has been going demi-viral. I scoffed at the idea of calling my old gaming groups to generate votes–I just put a link up on my Facebook account and gave a step-by-step on how to register.

Now, in the final hours of the competition, my friends have been contacting every nerd with whom I’ve nerded. Entire gaming groups, old co-workers overseas, anyone whose been cheering me on amid that slow, don’t-quit-your-day-job crawl up the game design food chain. My roommates have appointed themselves my campaign managers. They all know they’re playing into the Kobold-in-Chief’s hands, boosting his web traffic and getting familiar with his website. After all, once they’re registered, they’re that much closer to getting a subscription.

Respect, man. mpodeschi[at]hotmail[dot]com if you want to chat sometime.