Oh, man, a Spirit of the Great Rift is interesting.
Is that druid going to be thri-kreen? Is that druid going to object to masses of thri-kreen moving through their protected lands, no doubt eating tons of the local wildlife?
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Hmmm. My first question is, is the Great Rift’s spirit ready to have a druid yet?
But how do new spirits form anyway? Is it like budding/fission - when something like the Great Rift forms, the spirit of the land it formed from “buds off” a new spirit of the land to inhabit the Great Rift? If so, the new spirit might appear relatively ‘complete’ and be ready to have a druid pretty fast.
Or is it more like a process of ‘crystallization’ or cloud formation, where life energy and magic that is sort of floating around in the land and the ecosystem slowly coalesces and develops into a spirit of the land, independent of the presence of other spirits of the land in the area? In that case, whatever “proto spirit” is there may not be coherent or individualized enough to form a bond, or powerful enough to grant magic.
Or is the whole “30th level druids melding into a spirit of the land” from Earth, Air, Fire & Water a critical part of the process? Does a neighboring spirit of the land need a 30th level druid to meld in to expand to a new feature / bud off a new spirit for that feature? In that case, there might be nothing there yet for the Great Rift.
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What element does the rift count as? Air? After all, a rift is literally an absence of earth…
A windy canyon is given as an example of a guarded land that could give druids Air sphere spells, so that seems reasonable.
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No, because a spirit is but the spiritual expression, or underpinning, of a land’s unique features. It is not a creature that can choose to inhabit another area by moving to it. Though it can manifest as a creature, if that form is destroyed it still exists in spiritual form. It is, after all, the land itself.
And yes, there should be a way for an advanced being druid, or even just an epic level druid, to do something about it. Like you suggest you could become the dead area’s new spirit, or help metaphysically “birth” a new spirit, whatever that would mean.
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Yeah, “transplant” was probably poor wording; I agree you can’t just move a spirit from one land feature to another. I was imagining something like “taking a cutting” of a plant to grow a new plant.
Instead of merging with an existing spirit of the land, the druid grows into a new spirit of the land for a currently “spiritless” feature?
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Yes. At this point everyone has their own head canon. Unfortunately EAFW says nothing on the subject of new spirits.
Yeah, I was just trying to clarify what I meant by “transplanting” a spirit. I definitely don’t think any of this is canonically established.
It comes down to, I think, “What is a spirit of the land?” I think it’s considered true that they are real, not some weird psychic phenomenom, but what are they, where do they come from, and why are they where they are?
Is it a fact, and everywhere has a spirit if you can figure out how to talk to it?
Do only some features have spirits? You can’t be the druid of this 5 mile by 5 mile unremarkable stretch of salt flat, because no spirit is there, but you can be the druid of that 5*5 mile stretch of salt flat because there’s a 20’ tall rock shaped like a thumb?
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Yeah, what counts as a “feature”? Do large relatively uniform areas like the Great Ivory Plain or the Endless Sand Dunes have a single spirit,and if not, how are they divided? Does the entire Sea of Silt have a single spirit - surely not?
And what about horribly unnatural features like the caldera of the Valley of Dust and Fire or the Deadlands’ Obsidian Plain?
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Or, as I started earlier, the Great Rift?
What’re the spirits of Rajaat’s Swamp like, I wonder…
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I think I could reply. Look up the Cynic Greek Philosophy and what they did. It’s the closest to an Urban Druid in real life.
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Yeah, there are two questions I think … how quickly do new features (eg Great Rift) develop spirits, and how do spirits “divide up” featureless chunks of similar terrain?
It would be funny if it was like mitosis … the formation of the Great Rift splits one spirit into three, one for the plain north of the Rift, one for the plain to the south, one for the Rift itself.
As for Rajaat’s Swamp, I’d imagine its spirit would be horribly corrupted, and possibly unusually powerful as well, warped and enhanced by the raw power Rajaat accidentally unleashed. It would probably be too messed up to have druids.
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