Scarred Lands Druids Question

[Gospog]

Is Nightfall in the house?

I am a little confused about druids in the Scarred lands. I've read the Ghelspad Gazateer, the Creature Collections, R&R,a few small supplements and even the short story anthology, but my confusion persists.

It would make sense to me that druids in Scarn would worship Denev and be more or less neutral, if not benevolent. So far, somewhat similar to "normal" D&D.

However, my confusion comes from the fact that I keep reading about "evil" druids that worship the Titans (such as Mormo). Wouldn't druid worship nature? And on Scarn, wouldn't that mean worshipping Denev?

The only explanation I can think of is that the Titans are venerated by evil druids as "forces of nature". I just can't find reference to this anywhere in the books I've read or online.

Can anyone straighten me out here?

 

[Frostmarrow]

Clerics are priests of the gods. Druids are priests of the titans. So I guess druids aren't worshippers of nature in Scarn. They are simply priests of a different order.

 

[Nightfall]

Ask and yea shall receive. *thank god for Election Day! I can sleep in later.*

Anyway to answer your question.

Wouldn't druid worship nature?

Druids DO worship nature, they just take differing aspects of it, and thus call it a titan. In the example of Mormo, we have the case being made for the survival of the fittest, and by doing so, vemon is involved. The one thing you have to understand thought, is even though Denev's aspect is in ascendent (because of the Cycle, her nature stuff is more prevelant.), the druids of other titans still hold fast to their favored patron/titan because of something it represents. For some, like those that are the followers of Lethene, it is her strength of the storm as well as chaotic nature that they enjoy. All things change, and nature shows us that. I hope that was helpful.

 

[Nightfall]

Clerics are priests of the gods. Druids are priests of the titans. So I guess druids aren't worshippers of nature in Scarn. They are simply priests of a different order.

Not quite priests but some view them as such. They don't exactly adhere to nature as see various ASPECTS of it. Each titan holding a particular view of how nature might work under it's guidance.

 

[Gospog]

Whoa!

Thanks for the quick response. It more or less confirms what I suspected, but it's good to hear.

Do you happen to know in what book I can read more about this? I read the section on the different Titans' cycles in the Ghelspad sourcebook, but I don't remember a clear description of this "nature thang".

Thanks again.

 

[Nightfall]

Not sure there's a clear understanding but the history pages has the cycle section.

If helps think of it this way. We have to beings, Mesos and Mystra.
Mesos, the sire of sorcery, controls and holds in a lot of arcane power. Mystra, does the same. The difference is, (not just one being a god and one being a titan), when Mesos died, arcane magic didn't die with him. It merely became more readily available. Thus we see that the titans aren't a controling aspect of their element, but merely a part of it. So while they each may have aspects of nature (such as Thulkas having fire and earth as a part of him), they are not truly the encompassing whole of nature.

 

[Sanackranib]

druids

In the scarred Lands only the titans have druid followers. As all the titans represent different aspects of the elemental raw forces of nature. I would recomend the Divine and Defeated book. It shows the granted domains of each deity - and the titans can all grant druid spells. The followers of each titan have their own agenda- they want to restore their "God". so evil titans will typically have evil followers while the followers of Denev will be good or neutral.

 

[Graf]

Hmm

OK. THe SL books aren't 100% clear. This is how it basically has to work according to the published material.

The books are explicit about titans not being gods and not granting spells.

Druids tap into the power of the currently dominant Titan (see the Titan epochs in the begining of the Divine and the Defeated). So you should probably make a distinction between what are currently called druids (the class) and the prior druids when you're talking. (at least when their could be confusion)
While its hard to say for sure there have been three titans who have had active druids according to the books Thulkas, Mesos and Denev.
Thulkas' fire druids have long since passed from Scarn. However the Sorcerors and Wizards who tapped into the power of Mesos remain empowered since his essence was flung about the cosmos and remains availible.
(I'm looking forward to a lot of this stuff getting more detail in the class books).

Druids-as-they-are-now draw their power from a spiritual connection with Scarn's surviving titan. This is why their powers derive from the Wisdom score. Its not like a prayer and a god-being dolling out individual powers to people. All druids have the same spells and derive their power from their attunement to Scarn. These powers manifest in the aspect of the currently dominant Titan (Denev). However she's not picking and choosing who gets what power so its very different from the way clerical divine magic works.

It doesn't, btw, have anything to do with alignment (though most titan spawn are evil). Denev has servants who represent all her different capacities including evil.

Titans aren't really venerated by people as evil forces of nature... some have naturalistic qualities (mormo and her snakes, etc). Most of them are violently unnatural. Its good to bear in mind that Denev created animals and plants and what we think of as natural (basically stuff that lives in the real world + unicorns). Generally Denev = Natural and the titans are unnatural.

Hope that helps.

(I realize some people probably have a different interpretation... but everything points toward something along these lines. Denev is entirely too practical to be deliberately granting spells to her enemies for some kind of ideological reason. And the books specifically say that titans don't grant spells. Those that do enable spellcasting teach secrets, warp their subjects or grant innate power in some fashion.)

 

[Nightfall]

Well what ever you say Graf (Still like my Mesos analogy...) I'm just waiting for Hornsaw and then 2003 to get so we get MORE stuff.

 

[Graf]

(Still like my Mesos analogy...)

Taaake it easy.

I wasn't particularly banging the Mesos anthology. In 3e Mystra's become the ubermagicalbeing who controls magic. Mesos was certainly like that. They're actually remarkably similar in terms of their function/powers except that Mesos bought it.

I just wanted to make it a bit clearer why you were bringing Mesos into it.