Song Druid

Howdy folks! I was trying to find some old screenshots and thought it'd be fun to start a thread where we shared memories of many years past. It's hard to believe it's been 7 years for some of us. Can you think of anything worse to waste your time on? Anyways, post your memories, and feel free to caption them! We'll start off with a few shitposts I have stored in my google drive. We had a glorious time in Aegis/Asulon where some of our artists would recreate memes with prominent members, let's not forget this gem - I don't remember the exact context of this meme, but I remember I laughed pretty hard at it. Tehlulu, I love you hoe don't even come at me for this 6 year old shade. You used to be able to lock your own threads. Fun! Speaking of Tehlulu, we roleplayed beneath the forest of Elandriel. The Druids reforming from the first ever circle split in the city of Solace, while some sort of robbery took place outside. I can't remember who specifically played him but one of the GMs would mobdisguise as an enderman and called himself Constable Enderman. We showed him around menocress. This is more recent, I'm digging across multiple image hosting sites here, gimme a break! It's The! Druids! Shots of the Oasis Grove, one of my top 3 favorite groves. Ethanriel, Mother Tree of Elandriel and wife of Arik. Racingbrother, or Wilting Druid Giovonni, made wonderful caricatures of the Druids! Arik fussing with his student Tippen. One of the Elder Trees of Anthos. Some images of the Druid's Grove in Anthos. Finally, the last one I could find, the attunement of Vi, the serpent Druid. The last attunement made in the Solace Grove. Post your favorite memories! I'd love to relive them with you! There are no guidelines! Just do it! If there's another thread like this out there, my damn bad but I did what I did.

I'll ask you what I've asked every other opponent of this change -- What benefit outside of being a secret is there to this magic staying secret? Is there some inherent issue with multiple users learning shapeshifting? Or are you perhaps drawn to the original aspect of the lore for it being a secret for secret's sake?

Everyone knows my opinion on this. I've seen no end of OOC conflict revolving around shifting. Furthermore, since they removed our ability to use mobdisguise in the past there's no mechanical advantage from the magic. I see no reason for it to be secret when more useful, powerful and easier to attain subsets of Druidism exist. I also hold hope that this can help heal some resentment among Druids.

Please do not take anything I say personally - it can come off as crass and rude and I would simply say that I am passionate about Druid lore, and am therefore incredibly critical of it. Alright. This is a negative from me. As far as endgames go, I don't care one way or the other. I love ideas for this sort of thing and the concept itself I think is super interesting and not far off from what Ouity was thinking a year or two ago. But I take issue with several parts of this lore and its direction. In no particular order: The Aspects could care less what goes on in the mortal world between people. The Aspects were never designed to interact with players directly in any way. This is less of a jab at this lore, but previous precedents missed the mark in that regard. We hear from the Aspects about as much as we hear from God in the real world. To suggest that a person would be denied re-entry because of actions on the earthly plane is to fundamentally not understand the nature of the Aspects (no pun intended). I hate this. I'm sorry. I love the idea, an ancient Druidic Spirit bestowing powers to a lesser Druid as a boon, that's ******* awesome. But these powers for one thing I think are paltry and silly in many regards, and wholly unnecessary. Furthermore these abilities aren't in line with the Druid's own strengths either. I get that you want to add more abilities, but instead of doing that I would suggest allowing them to go beyond tier 5 in abilities, and bestow that strength to other druids, or even remove certain red lines from existing abilities in these heightened states. No need to continue re-inventing the wheel. As I said earlier, unattunement after everything you have established with this lore would most definitely be impossible. Some have argued with me that because their soul is still attuned it can still be severed. But to that I say that at that point it would be far beyond the power of the Druids to sever such a connection. It would simply be too strong for their own abilities to touch. Furthermore I think it would take a very large amount of powerful Druids to permanently banish the spirit. Perhaps a few druids could banish the spirit back to the fae, and then if enough tier 5 Druids gathered they could permanently do it if at the original guardian circle? Finally I can't help but think this simply is an echo of Soul Trees that add extra powers. I mean here are TL;DR versions of both Soul trees and Guardian Spirits in their most simplistic forms: Old Druids sacrifice their life to transfer their soul If killed, cannot return for some time Druid is immortal now unless unattuned etc All that said, I like the concept, and I also really enjoy the writing! You did a good job writing the lore, but to me I don't think it's something overall that is not suited for the Druids. With a direction rework it would be a great boon though. And since you can't complain without offering solutions, here are my own suggestions here. Rework the Unattunement portion Undo most of the abilities to interact with the world physically. Let the sacrifice of body mean something. Let them manifest in spirit form, let them even use their powers but limit their activities. That would give the ability to grant power to other Druids even more significance. On the subject of powers, don't kill yourself trying to come up with new powers. Let it enhance past tier 5, and even remove certain red lines for a temporary span of time. Remove the bit about the Aspects barring them from re-entering for engaging in political stuff. I apologize for the disrespect, but that's really dumb. Expand on the corruption section, a villain spirit would be most interesting. Don't make the corrupted spirit die after a certain period of time, it undermines how devastating a corrupted spirit has the potential to be. Make it so they must be banished back to the Fae in order to be restored or something. EDIT: Spirit manifestation - I really don't see any reason to allow them to manifest as whatever they want. It should be as they left the world, my own personal opinion.

Is there a tl;dr version of this? Also, the format makes the text a little too small for me to read, personally. Since it's so long I was wondering if you could do something about that so I can peruse it. As someone said before though, No me gusta on unattuning one (regardless of what else I think). If the idea is getting rid of one, consider a "banishment" or something similar that would remove the spirit. It is simply impossible to unattune something that is essentially a coalescence of Druidic energy. If they were a living body, yeah I get it. But at that point the Druid would have transcended the need for the body, and effectively "unattuned" their entire souls from their body and then we get back around to it simply isn't possible.

Quite by chance stumbled onto this on one of my occasional forum visits. I liked it when you pitched the idea way back when, I like it now. I don't personally like you using the Shadow Druid as a catalyst for the creation, I generally prefer these things to be "lost secrets rediscovered" or sommat, but that's a nitpick on an overall decent lore. I saw the link, rolled my eyes, clicked on it in preparation to tut and dismay, and leave pleasantly surprised. For whatever it's worth, you have my support.

Benbo came to the rescue and pointed this out to the several lore team people who apparently overlooked it in their haste to declare the magic unaccepted. Huzzah!