[Draft] History of Druidism

[Tristam]

Endorsed by bluebird and Art !

As the Universe was shaped by the Dance of Colors and the edicts of the Constants, Eternia was at first a painting devoid of life. While the mountains rose, they were all barren. While the oceans and the rivers flow, the sea was only an empty blue void. And the winds silently blew the skies.
It was until Alacritas, the Constant of Life and Nyssa, the Divine Dragon of Winds and Mana, combined their powers together to weave the Lifestream, the source of all Life within the Universe. The World Tree was sown into the barren land, and grew to bring life upon Eternia. The mountains were painted in grass, flowers, trees and many other critters. So did the Seas and the Skies. Eternia was now in motion, and an ecosystem was born to ensure the cycle of Death and Life.

Yet, how come the flora and the fauna was made ? Why do we have so many species of plants and animals ? Why can some animals do unique things that others can't ? Why do some flowers have unique properties? Why are the oranges not blue ?

While we know why Life and Death exists, how then was it made ? The answer takes root in the art of Druidry.

Lore Summary
Druidry (also called Druidism), is a primal form of magic that originates from Alacritas, the Constant of Life. While not necessarily tied to Faith, it is a form of Arcane primarily focused upon the living and biological thing. It helped creating the first living creatures and plants in Eternia along with humanity, when Yggdrassil was still an early sprout.
The First humans that decided to live close to Yggdrassil were thought of her arts and assisted her with the help of the Divine energies from Yggdrassil to continue populate the universe with different kind of fauna and flora, to allow the influence of the World Tree to spread further.

When Moros manifested, many of the creatures and plants showed traces of abnormal behaviours and corruptions, forever altering them and lashing against the world. The first plagues were also born from these twisted creatures, in an attempt to weaken the living.
In the fight against the forces of Moros, the Druids of Alacritas were tasked to heal and restore those touched by the corruption back to their initial self. And with the separation of the Spirit Realm and the creation of the Physical world, the druids lost their powers to create new life, and focused on the healing and preservation of the world.
Altough, with the creation of the Pantheon and the rise of Black Magic and the Fel forces, the arts of druidism were slowly abandoned towards Faith instead.

Druidry became a niche, but still continued to be used by some of the races more attuned with the concepts of Life or Nature. Centuries of progress lead the druids to study the nature of Dreams. And with the increase of wars and battles, Druids managed to achieve the unique art of Shapeshifting by exploiting the traits of other creatures to overcome their weaknesses.

Main attributes of Druidry
Druidry focuses mainly on these concepts

• Life communion : Druids show an importance to the concept of Life, and therefore a deep interest towards the existence of Yggdrassil and the Constant of Life. Their endeavor is to preserve the living aspect of the Renewal Cycle, and ensure that Life can continue to prosper not only in Eternia, but also in the rest of the Universe. Therefore, often Druids have access to magic that uses these living energies. This is less of a form of worship, but instead a form of study, but none of these make exception to each other.
  
• Naturalism : Related to Life, druids also take interest in the different concepts of Nature. For Druidism, Nature is described as the entire ecosystem and phenomena that occurs in the world of flora and fauna (and  for some subsects sometimes the various primal forces and elements occurring without artificial intervention). Druids can interact with these attributes and traits found then within Nature.
  
• Dreams & Spiritism : With the separation of the connection to the World Tree Yggdrassil, druids had to find an alternative source that could allow them to continue their arts. The closer alternatives were the usage of Dreams and Spiritism, in an attempt to achieve a connection back to the Spirit Realm or the own imagination.
  
• Shapeshifting : The result of all three precedent attributes. A druid is able to transform and alter living things into something else, as a way to negate a weakness, or improve themselves. The difference of such transformation is the preservation of self integrity while changing forms.
  

Life Communion
While the Dragons brought fourth the four physical elements, the Constants brought instead the metaphysical elements, such as Space and Time. Alacritas' influence created the base of today's biological magic. Biological magic is based upon "Vitae", an ether that holds living energies in which most organisms today hold. Blood, the base of biological magic, is one of the most common, richest sources of Vitae, considering that all major living beings use blood.
A living being is generally described with :

• An organism able to move. It is obvious for animals, but for flora is not exempt of such too.
  
• Ability to grow and develop itself.
  
• Ability to reproduce itself and create offsprings.
  
• Ability to "breathe". As in, every living being has a regular cycle that maintains them to be alive. Therefore, considering the Lifestream is made from Alacritas and the dragon of winds Nyssa, many stipulate that the Lifestream can be found within air currents too.
  
• Ability to "sense" and react in their environment.
  

These attributes were also found within Auguria, a mineral that is filled with Vitae, also surnamed to be a living rock.

This control and manipulation over Vitae, will is what allow for most druids to achieve their powers and rites. The most important ability of the control of Vitae is the prowess of "Incarnation", creating physical vessels able to host a living being, spirit, and such.

Naturalism
The World functions with different sets of rules and fundamentals laws. The living is not exempt from such. While the living is less predictable than Constants, Nature ensures at least that there is a stable ecosystem that allows for Life to prosper without needing intervention.
To achieve this, Alacritas and the First Druids ensured that each of the new living creations would have specific attributes that would define their default behaviour, called the instinct.
These traits would not only define the behaviour, but also their abilities, their shapes, and different attributes to make them unique out of the other beings.

Examples would be how birds have this innate knowledge of nesting. Or how not all species of birds share the same diet. Or the cunning of some predator tactics or the survival of some creatures.

Druids are able to interact with these different traits for different goal, such as restoration or adaptation if needed. How it works is similar to Arcane. In theory, the world is created and ruled by complex kind of runes. Arcane is able to alter some of them to change their functions. The nature of each beings is also described within an unique kind of runes defined as the "Genos" (genes). Druids are able to exploit these runes to add, remove, or change. Although the addition of such runes would require a divine source to ensure a total integrity.

Dreams and Spiritism
Without the presence of Yggdrassil, druids have lost many of  their potential of creation. They have seeked alternatives, and two sources have been used.

Spiritism is the art of finding and exploiting "convergence" points in the Physical Realm. There are parts within the Physical Realm where the Veil to the Spirit Realms (and more) is thin. Or even overlapped between. The most notable examples are the Vale and the Mount Kunlun, where the Spirit Realm is close to reach. In places like such, the connection to Yggdrassil is close and can enhance the druid's abilities. The Drawback is that, creations that use such locations are often tethered to them, unable to leave. This is why for example, many of the different Spirits visible in the Vale, can not leave this place, because the Physical Realm alone can not sustain them.

Dreams are another alternative. More complex and volatile, it also holds a great potential, but at the risk of the druid's life if done wrong. Indeed, those who attempt to bring forth their dreams into reality, will suffer greatly in health as their own existence and vitality is consumed for such. To remediate this issue, they would either make only partial, temporal creations that are still bound to the caster, for the Vitae used can return to the caster.

Druids still can not agree on what dreams *exactly* are, but there is at least the agreement that Dreams represent a world where the subconsciousness of a living being exists. Our senses, such as our eyes, are able to see what this subconsciousness acts.
Inside the dream, it is said that anything is possible to take shape, and creativity is limitless. As if, we were a God of our own world, but in which we can not control.
Druids attempt to reach this world through various sleeping techniques, such as hibernation or lucid dreaming in an attempt to become close to what they live in the dreams, and even perhaps control them.
It was then found that Dreams were able to easily influence its holder, representing also most of the deepest thoughts and feelings. Often druids have been able to cure deep rooted issues through such process, eventually being able to reach other's peoples dreams.

Shapeshifting
Many druids are often more scholars than fighters. But their knowledge and the powers of the Constant of Life and the World Tree is often sought. From both nobles and wicked intentions.
To defend themselves, rather than fighting with traditional magic, they use their combined powers to employ their body as a whole and change them to become a stronger vessel of their choice. Often, this new vessel is a mythical creature. The most notable benefit of the ability to shapeshift is to empower themselves through natural acquisition of feats that are found on animals or creatures, compared to humanity who has to study, practice and learn their magics to perfectionate them too.

By conceiving the creature through their dreams for example, they are able to manifest this creature into reality transforming their own body thanks to their manipulation of Vitae and rewrite their "Genos" to embody the strengths and feats of the creature.
The first shapeshifts had the issue that the consciousness of the caster was overridden by the creature, permanently then transforming the caster into an independent creature. It is with the usage of Harmony Magic, that helped for the caster and the new form to cohabit together and remain as one without overstepping the other.

Another variant of shapeshifting that uses the technique of Spiritism, is embodying ethereally the new form. While it does not transform the user itself, their body becomes an anchor and a source to project an Avatar of a creature or a concept present or created within the Spirit Realm.

Shamanism
While Druidism is focused mainly on the living beings, Shamanism shares a similar idea, but instead focuses on the differents elemental forces found within the world, like Volcanoes, Storms, Winds, Earthquakes and such. They interact closer to elementals, sprites and skurns, instead of plants, animals and humans in comparaison.

A shaman has the same abilities than a normal druid, but is more elemental aspected. For example, a shaman can shapeshift into an elemental to empower their raw elemental strength.

Becoming a druid
Druidism requires different sorts of magic and knowledge to be practiced. It is a rare art of magic that only few can master in their whole lifespan.
Beginner druids
Requirements and abilities are examples to scale the different levels.
Abilities that heal would require also medical formation.

Requirements :

• Attunement to biological magic as a base to interact with the living beings.
  
• An understanding of biology as a whole, specially from the animal and plant kingdom. And an understanding on the characteristics of differents creatures and plants in the living world, their purpose, their reason, their goal, and the justification of their presence.
  

• A knowledge in a form of Arcane that allows "altering" or "define" things, like Harmony, Transmutation, etc.
  

Abilities :

• Change different physical traits from a plant or animal, like the color, taste, texture, etc.
  
• Ability to heal injuries, like superficial skin issues and diseases.
  

Practiced druids
Requirements :

• A connection to the Spirit Realm, either by transcendent senses, good mastery of cosmic magic or spiritmancy, radiant of Faith, Witchcraft, etc.
  
• 5 years of Practice in average
  

Ability :

• Influence emotions and thoughts, like appeasing or gerunding emotions.
  
• Able to dispel and fix some minor disabilities, like myopia, along with internal injuries.
  

Seasoned druids
Requirements :

• A deep understanding in the spiritual anatomy of living beings, and confident and talented spiritual senses.
  
• Stable and experienced casting with Arcane type of magic.
  
• Deep knowledge of biological, behavioral and psychological science of living beings and spiritual.
  
• The understanding of the subconscious nature of humanity.
  
• 15 years of practice
  

Abilities :

• Partial alteration living beings, both physically and emotionally. Can start to alter the shape of forms too.
  
• "Install" summons, able to partially conjure living things as extension of the caster from their dreams.
  
• Able to visit their own dreams, along with others. Nightmares also work.
  
• Able to heal deep rooted disabilities, like paralysis, along with some minor injuries made by Chaos magic.
  

Veteran druids
Requirements :

• Perfect imagination and thinking. The casting is clear and smooth, well executed.
  
• Vast array of knowledge in Life's science.
  
• Access to a source of Spiritual energy.
  
• 30 years of practice
  

Abilities :

• Shapeshifting. The caster can fully transform themselves into another creature, while keeping their consciousness. The strength of such shapeshifting is in general equal or better if specialized. (A human shapeshifting into a bear would be stronger and more resilient but loses the dexterity of opposable thumbs and the ability to speak, for example.)
  
• Make small independant and simple creations, while respecting the respective price.
  
• Able to heal  genetical change, along with most of chaos related injuries.
  

Master druids
Requirements :

• Total mastery of previous abilities, at full ease.
  
• Access to a source of Divine energy.
  
• 60 years of practice.
  

Abilities :

• Major Shapeshifting. The druid can manifest himself into an avatar of an important figure or divinity to share its strength and mimic their own abilities and behaviour. It surpasses the caster way above.
  
• Make more elaborated independent creation, able to think and live on their own if it is a creature. For a plant, it can be any wondrous magically plant too.
  
• Dreamcasting : The druid can cast magic while unconscious, putting the world within their subconsciousness closer to reality.
  
• Able to heal any genetical issues, disabilities and chaotic injury.