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!

The lore team was kind enough to let me know that there is no accepted lore whatsoever on Druidism. So I am posting the original Druidism lore accepted by the MAT, who at the time were over the acceptance and revision of magics and subyptes/archetypes. When a post was made calling for all lore not submitted, we, having submitted our lore through not just the MAT but to various LT several times thought we had nothing to worry about. Anyways here's the lore. Should you choose to accept it. ~ Druidism: A Comprehensive Guide ~ Forenote:: This revision to the original Guide by Arik has been carefully considered to further define and clarify Druidism and it's magic, helping Druids to better understand limitations, speed of progression, and their ability to be creative. The original Guide was a solid foundation, and like all foundations they were meant to be built upon, as we have now done. Druidism is an ancient form of magic, tied to the most ancient of all Guilds of Aegis, the Druidic Order. Centuries of guarding secret knowledge and protecting nature has been this Order’s calling, bringing balance through healing land and spreading verdure with their unique arts. Druidism is controlled in such a way, and taught, through a clever process of training that is designed to “indoctrinate” the student into a certain way of thinking, opinion, etc. That is not to say it is always successful, but it is a powerful tool of regulating who has access to these arts. As with any training, these things occur in stages. The most commonly known one is Dedicancy. This stage is most common because it is the one newcomers enter the Order as. During this time they are given tasks and lectures over a period of time that teach them the Order’s culture, and an appreciation for all things natural. This process, cleverly designed, to open the mind of the Dedicant to the flow of nature, through meditation, assistance and an understanding of ways. When the Dedicant has finally completed their tasks, and their Guide has deemed them ready, they are instructed to devise and complete their Grand Task, a milestone task for a Dedicant that shows they are ready to take on the full mantle of responsibility of being a Druid. Upon completing this task the Guide takes the Dedicant to the Attunement Pool, an area within the grove high in natural Druidic Energies, and begins the Attunement Process. This process involves the Guide invoking an ancient knowledge to forge a connection to Nature within the mind of the Dedicant. One could consider their initial training to be similar to opening a small hole to allow light to pass, and then the attunement process as using the small hole to bore a larger one, creating a ray of light-a connection. Thus is the way one comes into Druidism. The Arts: Druidic Magic is broken down into several subtypes: Control of Nature Blight Healing Healing Nature’s Communion Shapeshifting Nature’s Communion This is the starting point of all Druidic abilities. One is connected to the ebbing flow of life around them. They can feel, see, listen, and even speak to nature and creatures that inhabit it. Yet when just attuned, the connection itself is weak. Your abilities just beginning and through training, experience, and meditation, your communion will become stronger and your requests and abilities easier to manage. No Druid can advance in any druid magic subtype more than their current Communion Tier. Control of Nature Control of Nature enables the druid to interact with the plants around them. Whether as simple as growing a flower or as difficult as controlling roots and trees to aid you when needed. Each tier here is determined by your Nature’s Communion. It is REQUIRED to be taught this by someone already highly learned in this subtype. Once you are Tier 3 or above in Control of Nature, you can self improve through practice and meditation over time. Druidic Healing / Herblore

Just a gentle bump to raise LT awareness.

Grips the flyer in hand, jumping about happily. "I know this guy! We can use this to fund the druids!" He, in his obliviousness just bounces about.

Can you read? Or do you in the spirit of Lore team tradition like to nitpick at specific areas without looking at the whole thing? It says in that screenshot that I personally got with her and she thought it was handled. No, she didn't get a response in Elder Chat because I contacted her privately which as you can see in the screenshot I reminded her about and she remembered. We got the message that all lore needed to be submitted. We submitted that lore. The lore was "denied" by the team and not one team member bothered telling US so we could even defend ourselves or try to rewrite it so that a year later we have to deal with this **** again. People tell me to get off my high horse alot but in the spirit of hypocrisy step back with your high and mighty **** we have complied with every request the lore team has made thus far. Every single one. If you were around when it was denied you are responsible for the situation we are in right now. Not a single Druid is. Because as you can tell from one of the Druid LMs in that screenshot she thought it was handled and accepted. The Lore Admin was running events with us for the stones (not menarra, but Tsuyose). We continued on thinking that, somewhat naievely, the lore team had improved to the point that they could actually tell us when they reached a decision about something. Let me be perfectly clear. We are submitting our lore in good faith and we are making edits for it in good faith. For something that already exists and is quantifiable in character. The edits I am making are in conjunction with Benboboy's council and if this lore is denied after the fact, if the lore team actually has the audacity to try to ban it we will not acknowledge your decision and the GMs can ban the entire body of Druids because we will default to our original stance, mainly the lore team can kiss our ass. Sorry for the salt but it's like a ******* broken record with you guys.

I was speaking on Tsu, not menarra. As far as what Delmo has to say on this matter:

As I'm concerned they were never denied because not only did the Lore Team neglect to mention it the Lore Team Lead created an event in which the stones re-entered the world and not only that supervised several events in which they were used. 1-Nothing, once they come together they do not part. 2-It is permanently broken and does not reform. 3-Above. 4-Druids can sense the presence of the stones, and stronger Druids can locate them even if they are "lost". 5-No. 6-N/A 7-It's essentially an immense aengudaemonic bias of power in the area. Granted I wasn't ready for this to be posted on the forums but I will agree that some work could be done here to look closer at its effects. 8-Above. I didn't think Sky would post it before I had a chance to look over the changes I gave to him :< 9-Sigh. 10-This is RP flavor and I will not go break this **** down for you guys. Seriously it doesn't matter. And we the Druids when doing events and **** will create the visions. Spoiler alert this is nothing new and it seems like you added this in just to fluff up your overly long list already. 11-They cannot be corrupted at all. They are completely immune to blight, taint, plague or corruption.