The Solution To (My) Druid Problem

Druids are a fascinating archetype, synonymous with stories of the wandering shaman or the flowery forest folk. An old man rides along the back of a moose or some oversized bird, his body strapped in simple rags and wielding a wooden club. The man speaks softly to his animal companion and listens to the whistle of the wind, all with a smile on his face. He is serene. Gentle. One with nature.

He has also fallen into the pit trap of resemblance. 

That man may be remembered in the history books for his bravest of deeds, but he will not be remembered by name. His actions and accomplishments, no matter how celebrated, will inevitably converge into the canon of Druids everywhere. The Druid was a hermit. The Druid held a club. The Druid loved nature with all its heart and cried like a child whenever it died.

This has been the case for a very long time. This spirit, this Ur-Druid, haunts the dreams of creatives everywhere and strangles the walls of their imagination into form. A force which has tipped the scales to one side, sending the delicate balance of character design into a tailspin.

I am talking about the archetype of the Hippie Druid.

I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing! Look at how much fun he's having!

The Hippie Druid is a powerful archetype. It is simple, easy to use, and incredibly malleable for anyone to adjust to their liking. It is also very popular. So popular, in fact, that the vast majority of Druids fall somewhere along the Hippie side of the axis. This is not a bad thing

I can enjoy the Hippie Druid. I can sit down for a couple of hours each and every week and listen to one of my players speak like a stoner and talk to small animals like children. I would even go as far as to say I support them wholeheartedly! But I can also say with confidence that it would be nice to get a bit more nuance in the other direction every once in a while.

That other side is the Savage Druid. Let's talk about the Savage Druid.

An Alternate Solution

Deep within the darkest corners of the eastern forests, there lives a  circle of druids. Nobody knows what they do: their every waking moment is spent hidden in the shade of the woodlands. Everyone knows who they are. Their presence can be felt throughout the forest, and the mangled warnings they make of wanderers serve as an effective, albeit brutal, form of deterrence. As far as Druids go, they share quite a lot with their cousins:

1. They are itinerants of the wilderness, relying on what nature provides (and one another) alone. This same territory they will defend with their lives.
2. They all worship a communal "religion" shared only through action. 
3. They are capable of communicating with woodland creatures, albeit not in the way another druid might just cast Speak with Animals.
4. They are also fully capable of Wild-Shaping, also through abnormal circumstances.
5. They ABHOR civilization. Given the chance, every single druid would set fire to the cities of their neighbours and crush the stones back into gravel, all with a smile on their faces.

These are not uncommon traits for Druids. In fact, they are actually some of the most important things that Druids share between one another. As beings of nature, the most important thing that one can represent is nature itself. A Druid that truly understands their place will eat, sleep, shit and breathe all within the confines of their domain. They are a mirror of chaos, shifting and changing in all ways but prime constants. The constant of power. The constant of death. The constant to feed.

Hippie or Savage? What say you?

Druids cannot be druids without these traits. That same hermit without his ragged clothes or his whispering would not be a druid at all, but a conduit for something else. The hipster druid's serenity and the savage druid's ferocity meet at some point in the middle, and yet their similarities are marred by significant lapses in coincidence.

A hippie druid speaks softly because he has become one with calamity. He is at peace and as a result, concentrated, a monk resting in their monastery. A savage druid speaks softly because language disgusts him, and so he wishes not to taint the breeze with its filth. 

A hippie druid carries a simple branch whittled into a staff. His movements are practiced and his strikes are true. He is both willing to kill you and open to witnessing change, for he knows that such a thing is inside you. A savage druid wields the same branch, sharpened to a spear's point. He places no iconography on this tool, nor does he adorn it in string or stone. He created this weapon through rigorous repetition, sliding it against a slanted stone, with the express permission of his kin. He will use it in the coming days to harpoon a lost traveller through both lungs. It will be left behind with the corpse.

The tone is different. The magic is different. The way the two archetypes stand beside one another is different. Whatever actions one can make the other can do in stride, and yet the perceived outcome will be either obverse or exactly the same. 

So how do you perform any action that the former druid can take and make it impactful to the latter?

You make them weirder.

In the darkest shadows of the oldest vines, birds do shriek and hopes shall die.

If there is one stereotype that these druids do not reciprocate, it is pacifism. The savage druid hates their urban neighbours with a broiling passion, rivalled only by their need to remain wild and uncollared. There are no shortcuts in this way. No discrimination. A druid who hunts in the nude on all fours will just as easily strike down a boar as they will a man. Young or old, rich or poor, weak or strong. All serve a purpose to the individual, and both will somehow benefit the pack. 

It should also be said what happens to those who aren't killed outright.

A Separate Fate

    You awaken in the pitch to the sound of crackling, your vision blurred and your temple throbbing. You have no memory of this place, and so you rely instead on your remaining senses. Your fingers tickle the edges of root and duckweed. A puddle sits warmly beneath you, soaking your rear. A wet trickle runs from your brow down to your lip. You taste blood.

Your nose too is assaulted by smells, the scent of smouldering embers and a brackishly sweet mist which engulfs your throbbing mind. Through your misty vision, you see a soft light shimmering. The chromatic glow of turmeric, flames licking at the feet of a wooden pallet, constructed from bark and string, a fleshy plank laid atop it. It is a man, a soul who you have never seen before in your life. He is bound to the board by scraps of fur.

The man on the pyre is drugged, of course, pumped to the brim with a concoction of vile toxins and opiates. His moans are one of confusion: his nerves belting still with an expression between pleasure and pain. The man's eyes roll behind their sockets as you attempt to meet his gaze, only to find those same scraps tying you to a rotting stump. You realize the man has been stripped to the nude, just as the tingle of your own skin soaks into the mud below.

It is not until your eyes finally adjust to the darkness (as well as your-throbbing concussion) that you see the woman standing mere feet from your position.

She is naked. Almost disturbingly so. Chittering bugs climb from her spindly limbs and across her body like droplets of rain. her hair is unkempt and long, reaching somewhere past her ankles. Its colour is that of old leaves. In another lifetime she could have made a beautiful wife.

She carries no tools and yet you feel a tingling in your chest. A horrible, primordial scream electrocutes your nerves. As your senses kick into gear once more, you recognize the taste of it. The ripened terror that your ancestor felt in the dark.

It is intuition. A howling thought which tells you to leave. You are not safe here.

She approaches the bound man with a gloss in her eyes. A hunger, pent-up compassion awaiting in her shivered breast. She crushes something in her palm and the sweet scent of fruit fills the air. An object gray as ash is placed between her teeth which she crushes between her molars, spit turning dust into mist in mere moments. She grasps the burning man's head like a child's and exhales into his mouth. The mist drips through his lips like pipe smoke, thick and cloudy, before the woman straightens herself.

A moment passes in silence.

She watches the man on the pyre with that same hunger as before, allowing him to simmer against the flame. She leaves her stillness shortly after, placing both hands against his sternum as if to cut him down the middle. She whispers something beneath her breath, an indecipherable phrase in an unrecognizable tone, and plunges her hands inwards. The man does not groan, nor scream nor cry, but merely gasps as his blood sizzles violently and the air in his lungs converts to steam. The body-mist only grows in intensity as the woman deepens the wound, spreading flesh from wall to wall. Ribs crack like twigs and leaves. She is engulfed in the fumes, her head nearly buried in the man's chest and yet digging still. She huffs violently as she digs, a boar fondling truffles in the woods.

He gasps once more, and as the steam builds within his throat she pinches his lips with her own, huffing the fumes from his neck. What is left is a shrunken man. A vile, desiccated corpse. The woman takes a deep breath and exhales before rolling the mummified body off of its seat. Your heart screeches to run in vain, your legs begin to kick the mud, and your arms slit against the knot. In your state of panic, you look to the horizon and instead meet her gaze. She is smiling.

She looks different than before.

I should write more on these folk sometime. So much to say!