DRUIDS
WHAT IS NATURE?
▶Nature is
typically not aligned with traditional good and evil. The "natural
order" favors bringing life when it is needed, and death when it is needed.
▶Most people
see nature as good, they associate it with life and food and things like that,
but there are elements associated with evil: winter, floods, droughts, night,
insects, diseases, plagues. Nature just sees these things as
"things" they're not good or evil.
▶Good and
evil are largely about impact on sentient beings, and about the motivations of
sentient beings. Nature does not make moral distinctions between people.
It acts outside the moral and ethical frameworks of societies.
▶Since nature does not make that distinction, but the character is making that distinction, it takes a little bit of effort to be a particularly evil or good druid, largely because having an alignment typically requires actions taken specifically to have better(doesn’t mean good) or worst (doesn’t mean evil) outcomes, in the same way that you can be too lawful good, you can want to sprout more trees than an area can support, birth too many rabbits or birds beyond what a biome can support, save every tree from rot, wipe away all fungus and so forth.
WHAT IS A DRUID?
▶You learned
clandestine verses, the names of stars and constellations, the cycle of the
seasons, sacred songs, formulas for prayers and incantations, rules of
divination and magic, and the language of animals.
▶Guardians
of the natural order, druids saw themselves less as masters of the natural
order and more as an extension of its will.
▶Druids
believe nature exists outside of civilized conceptions of good, evil, instead
seeking only to maintain a natural always changing state of being which most of
the civilized world cannot or will not understand.
▶Druids
value the pristine wilderness, accepting its cruelty and ugliness along with
its wonder and beauty. As such, while druids rarely acted selfishly,
they still can be “good” or “evil”, as I said before, they are individuals, and
that’s why they receive training.
HOW DO YOU BECOME A DRUID?
▶You have to
be part of a druid circle, whose members train you in the druid ways.
▶You could
be born in a Druid tribe
▶Receiving Druidic Training of some sort of mentor or spirit.
▶Having a
connection to a god or aspect of nature and following their way, leading to a
connection with nature itself. That connection can be created or you can
be born with it.
▶Being born with druidic powers/a connection to nature like a sorcerer.
▶A
prospective druid is inducted into this society through secret rituals,
including tests that not all survive. Only after achieving some level of
competence is the druid allowed to strike out on her own.
DRUIDS AND UNDEAD LORE SUGGESTION
▶UNDEAD seek
for help to cleanse the curse and they need to learn how to coexist and live
with their environment.
▶Druids
never abandon any creature not even the ugly ones, and they always seek the
better solution, in the case of the undead that were abandoned and cursed by
the Old gods, just because they wanted something different from the Old Gods,
they actually did no harm, they just disagreed with a capricious, pride and
temperamental deities.
▶The Druids
decided it was the best to help them and teach them how to accept and live with
their new nature, because they are just like sick or dying creatures in
constant pain, instead of eradicate them and abandon them like the Old gods did,
all for the balance of nature.
▶UNDEAD
needed all the help they could have, the curse couldn't be cleansed, but could
be slowed. So it was better to help them than to leave the curse
spreading and creating more unbalance among the natural order.
▶Nature is life and death. Two sides of the same coin. Without both there is only stagnation. It’s a cycle. Leaves fall to nourish new growth. And from their curse of having the aspect of death, they have learned and grown as new beings accepting their new nature.
HOW UNDEAD CAN BE DRUIDS?
▶It can work
if they were druids before becoming UNDEAD. As I suggested, the curse
allow you to retain your magical and physical abilities.
▶You could
be trained by Druids even you were not a Druid before the curse, Druids wouldn’t
reject Undead for all the reasons I listed before.
▶Your soul never dies. The body dies. There is no such thing
as undead for the soul. Souls can be destroyed. You can be a spirit, but you
have a soul.
▶Dead equals non-living. Undead means alive, living
functioning, even if you are dying, you still alive.