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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8524938" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Druids in Jewel of the Desert are one half of a two-sided tradition, the Kahina; the other half are Shamans. The Kahina collectively revere, though do not usually worship, the spirits. They classify spirits in two ways: "living" and "dead.""Living" spirits are those which arise from and, in general, primarily reside in the mortal world (Al-Duniyyah) or its highly elementally-charged reflection (Al-Akirah). This includes things like actual elementals, the spirits of trees and forests, the spirit of winds, etc., but also the semi-concrete spirits of various types of animals too, that is, the essence of what it means to be a desert raven, to be a wildcat, to be a camel, etc. Druids, who focus on living spirits, see the whole world as awash in spiritual influences. You have the spirit of this wind, here, today, which forms part of the spirit of the winds of this local area or city, which forms part of the spirit of the winds of this region, which forms part of the Spirit Of All Winds. Such hierarchies, where technically you have simultaneously many individual spirits, but also one spirit that arises from all those subsidiary spirits, is a common feature of living-spirit stuff, though not always (e.g., elementals are less likely to form such things)."Dead" spirits are not necessarily dead in the formal sense, though "common" ones usually are. Dead spirits do include the lingering essences of creatures that have died, particularly if their deaths were unusual, noteworthy, dramatic, etc. But they also include things like the Spirit of Owl--not the essence of what it means to be an owl, that's a Living spirit thing, instead Owl herself, who abstractly represents all Owls. Greatfather Tempest, the First Oak, the World-Serpent, these are the kinds of spirits that Shamans truck with--not taking the spirit into yourself or nurturing the spirit where it "lives," but calling on the spirits that naturally come from the Spirit World and binding them to totems to call upon their aid.In general, "living" spirits tend to be a bit less...intellectual than "dead" spirits, though this depends on their nature. The vast majority of "dead" spirits that a Shaman would be interested in binding tend to be able to actually speak human languages, whereas the vast majority of living spirits that a Druid would call on are either animalistic or non-sapient, working more in emotions, experiences, and sensations than words.*Socially, Kahina in general tend to be more dispersed and more "direct," I guess you could say, in how they interface with society. The Safiqi priesthood maintains temples and monasteries and the like, and the vast majority of them live at least partially separated lives from the general public (though unlike some religious traditions, they do not forbid marriage, and welcome all genders and races among their number, for the One is beyond such limits.) Safiqi provide a significant amount of free, publicly-available healing and other works to support the common weal, such as feeding the poor and helping them find jobs and housing, as well as offering counseling and guidance to their flocks.The Kahina, on the other hand, tend to take a more personal and worldly involvement. Shamans tend to set up shop and be the spooky witch-doctor type that is a bit feared but very respected and trusted with helping the community deal with Issues (you'd go to them to help treat your sick ewes, put down the strange spirit making noises at night, hoping they can play matchmaker, etc.) Druids tend to be very active, some of them even actually leading nomad tribes or serving as the village elder; even those who don't take such an openly political role will still tend to hunt down threats before they grow and actively work to enrich and sustain the land. Many remote villages naturally attract a pair, one Shaman and one Druid (sometimes a mated pair, sometimes just "coworkers"), whereas in the cities it's a bit more "whatever one can get."*Incidentally, I have leveraged this difference to communicate that certain kinds of things seem to be very Different from what the party has encountered before. When interacting with spirits more of the "living" type or those of dead animals, the party has to sort of do away with abstraction and symbolism and get down more to actions and sensations. The phrase I used was that it was, in a sense, the step "before" language, not quite actual language but still expressing and communicating. In the one and only situation where the party has encountered beings that they weren't sure what they were, the situation was reversed, with the being almost using something above or higher than human languages, expressing incredibly complex thoughts in both abstract and concrete terms simultaneously, with just a few of their "words.")</blockquote>

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