Talk:Druid
From email with gm The Elven druidic structure is completely separate from all the other druids, as the Elves have basically walled themselves off on their island and tolerate almost no interaction from the mainland beyond minimal trade. They're the only landform fully in the tropical region though, so they have an amazing amount of luxury resources only available in Sidhe-Praxen, like Coffee, most Spices, or - lets be honest - the best poisons. It's also, I think, the only place outside of Gildenhome one can get mithreal, athough they either no longer trade it or no longer refine it, so Sidhe mithril is effectively an artifact of the past.
You would have no way to know this maybe but the elven hierarchy is very strict and very contained. I imagine the mainland druids to be more like the athasian druids - loners and hermits and Taoist sorts - or else some sort of apprenticed tradition attached to various traveling bands. Elven druids to be the more traditional D&D/Hierarchical druids with one and only one organization. The Lizard Folk have an ancient but largely defunct relationship with the elves, so their version of Druidism is a little bit of both : small, independent circles of druids tied deeply to certain localities.
The hierarchy of the mainland druids is much more fluid, but ultimately poorly understood by people who do not regularly interact with druids. It's viewed skeptically and warily by the chruch, but it's not really heterodox. Druidic bullshit is a sizeable plurality of halfling and wild gnome worship, and at least one of those constituencies the church is interested in chasing. Druidism, then, is sort of grandfathered in as a marginal exception to the church's otherwise pretty firm and uncompromising hold on divine power. Frankly, the church and the druids don't even have to agree on what each other are: the Church could - and probably does - posit that druids are blessed with alexandria's grace on account of their passion or love of nature and druids could suggest that they tap into a power deeper and older than alexandria and they would both just talk past each other. Since only one of the two faiths is evangelical, the two blocs aren't really in direct competition with each other. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if some heresies began with Druids, but frankly learning to be a druid is still an arduous task, so it's never going to win a recruitment race that can just make you into a cleric with a couple of fancy words and a spell.
I imagine the druids - at least the halfling and gnomish sort - to be less interested in ritual and orthodoxy and more interested in ethos and action. It's no coincidence that the Goodly Races that still cling to druidism are the most displaced and vulnerable to nature, they're the ones furthest removed from church reach and infrastructure. In my imagination, a world with actual tangible God Magic is not going to be obsessed with theology because ticky tacky Benedictine and Augustinian debates are going be to short circuited with "Did you see that God Magic I just did?"
