Druids...the Joy of Sects

Long before I had much more done than the initial world concept, players started telling me what they wanted to play. The first concept to be presented was a druid...which meant, I needed to define druids in my world. In the manner of all good creators, I stole, and in the manner of egotistical creators, I stole from myself. :) I'd often thought the four 'neutral' alignments of Druids (lawful, chaotic, good, evil) made nice 'sects' of druidism. Add a nature theme, and, presto!

Why no True Neutral? No good hook for them off the top of my head, plus, let's face it -- there's a Book of Exalted Deeds and and Tome Of Vile Darkness, but there's no Manual Of Pretty Much Standing Around Doing Nothing. Evil without concern for law or chaos, or law without concern for good or evil, etc, all provide good dramatic and mechanical hooks, but absolute true neutrality is a bear. It's not impossible, and I might even take a whack at some sort of True Neutral supplement one day, but for now, I like my four sects.

Druids
Druids do not derive their powers directly from a deity, though they often do worship one. Rather, Druids gain spells by their connection to the divine spark which exists in all natural things and by tapping into the power of the elemental planes. While all druidsshare in common a special connection to the natural world and the primal forces of the universe, there are four distinct sects of Druidism, each with a differing worldview which affects how their powers function.


Summer
Summer Druids are Lawful Neutral in alignment. They see the natural world as a clockwork mechanism. Season follows season; the stars and moon move according to fixed laws; each animal and plant lives in a complex pattern of birth, life, and death, playing its part in the great machine of life itself. Summer druids are often found in the more advanced civilizations, where they are part priest, part natural scientist. They are the most inclined to study and categorize nature, and they have produced some of the most sophisticated biological tomes of Arith. A few view civilization as a wrench in the machinery of the world, and actively seek to return sentients to their 'proper' place in nature, but most are comfortable with cities and complex culture, studying the relationship of social strata in a city just as they'd study the castes of an ant colony. They are known for being aloof and indifferent, roused to action only when something threatens the order of the world. Following the Crush, they have become very few in number -- most died in the cities, and others went mad as the order of the world vanished into utter chaos. A few have managed to ally with Earthborn humans to preserve the remains of biological science, and have become incorporating modern theories into their own understanding of the world. The panoply of new and changed species which emerge in the vicinity of Worldholes draws some to investigate these most dangerous places, seeking to understand the rules they believe must underlie the seeming chaos or just document the altered world and try to understand how the balance will reassert itself.


Mechanics
The scholarship of Summer Druids is unparalleled, as is their discipline. Summer Druids can 'take 10' on Knowledge (Nature) checks even under times of stress, and have access to spells of the Knowledge and Law domain in addition to their normal druidic spells. (They do not gain any additional spell slots, however). Their unconcerned and diffident nature, though, causes them to suffer a -2 on all Cha based skill checks.


Autumn
Autumn Druids, sometimes called Bleak Druids, are the avatars of death in nature. They see nature 'red in tooth and claw', and worship the fact that all things must die for anything to live. Of all the druid sects, they are the most isolated and feared. They wander the world, rarely settling in one place, seeking to balance nature by bringing death and destruction where it is most needed. The blazing forest fire, the hungry wolf pack tearing through an isolated village, the blight which dooms crops -- this is the nature worshiped by the druids of Autumn. Most humanoid druids are Autumn druids, especially those of the Bugbears.

Following the Crush, the Autumn sect has grown. Seeing the world of Earth, a world wholly out of balance with nature, a world where even the greatest normal disasters kill a few dozen instead of thousands, they are convinced as never before of the absolute rightness of their cause. They actively work towards pain, terror, and destruction.

Mechanics
Of all the druids, only Autumn druids can tolerate undead, seeing them as the ultimate survivors. As such, they can rebuke undead as a Cleric four levels below their own, and may use their Knowledge(Nature) checks to make checks about Undead, as well. They have trouble channeling the power of nature to bring life, though, and all of their healing spells cure 1 less point of damage per die (minimum 1).


Winter
Winter druids worship nature as impulse and abandon. Where the summer druids see rules and boundaries, the winter druids see exception and variation. Mutation, change, and chaos are their watchwords. A summer druid sees an endless cycle of order in the caterpillar and the butterfly; a winter druid sees that nothing, not even shape, is permanent and stable. Earth science such as chaos theory and continental drift appeal to them, but they prefer an intuitive understanding of the natural world to the stuffy scholarship of the summer druids.

As such, they have been the most comfortable with the Crush. The madness into which the world has been plunged appeals to them; the lies of order have been undone. Unlike the Autmun druids, they do not seek destruction for its own sake, but neither do they aid in building order. Many Winter druids are a touch mad. They have been known to offer services to communities, such as helping crops or driving off predators, in exchange for anything from a song to a virgin to a sack of gold. They have no fixed routes and schedules, but wander as they see fit, heeding a song only they can hear.

Mechanics
Autumn druids revel in chaos. They can rebuke Chaotic creatures as a Cleric four levels below their own, and gain a +2 on saves against any spell with the Chaos descriptor. They are, however, unfocused and easily distracted, suffering a -2 on all Wis based skill checks.


Spring
Spring druids worship life, hope, rebirth, and renewal in nature. They are the kindest and most compassionate of the druidic sects, though they can be moved to rage by callous destruction or the turning of nature to evil. On Arith, they were patrons of the outer villages and small towns, wandering in a long circle around their territory, blessing crops, curing animals, and offering help and advice. While they never sought to destroy cities, they did not value them, and sometimes appeared outside of city walls to implore those within to cast off their chains of stone and come return to the land. Spring druids were also notoriously free with their sexuality, and wandering druids would often father children or take a local man to woo for a night, returning a year later with a child for the village to raise. Such children were considered blessed or sacred, and many would take on the mantle of the Druid in years to come.

After the Crush, the Spring Druids have found themselves strained almost to their limits. While many survived the initial disaster, the sheer press of desperate need which followed overwhelmed them. The world had twisted to extremes of chaos and evil, and their healing, compassionate, natures were tested in the face of suffering such as they had never experienced. They also saw the horrors of cities and crafting gone mad, artificial mountains of stone, glass, and steel scarring the land. While they were among the largest druid sects on Arith, their numbers have dwindled greatly since the Crush, with only the Summer druids being rarer. Many have been forced to cease their wandering, and have instead settled near a conflux of holdfasts, providing what services they can to the locals and struggling to keep the encroaching wilderness in balance. They tend to be suspicious, if not outright hateful, of technology, and often make its abandonment a precondition of their settling in a region.


Mechanics
Spring druids can swap a prepared spell for a rejuvenating effect, losing the ability to swap for a Summon Animal Companion, as per PHB II.