#urban druids

[honourablejester]

D&D Character Concept: The Druid in the Walls

You know when weird bits of inspiration combine from very disparate sources? Specifically to give you extremely horrible backstories for a character?

Because I’ve been walking the dog the last while, and I’ve been noticing a lot of the wall plants. You know, the bits of plants, pennywort and red robin and the like, that grow in the cracks in the walls? Between the stones, in the gaps in the plaster. They’re really pretty, and I just love the stubbornness of them, to wind their way into wherever they can anchor and just bloom there.

I’ve written some things before on urban druids in D&D, and I was thinking idly about making a character in that context. The plants that grow in the cracks in the walls. And, because this is D&D and tragic backstories are, like, the thing, I was considering …

Beyond just general urban misery, where would you be where the sight of a stubborn little weed growing in the crack in a wall might be the one beautiful thing you can see and a seed that becomes a focus for your whole being?

Prison is an obvious answer. A cell, looking up at the bit of green growing near a high window. But the idea merged with a crime documentary I watched on youtube, which I cannot find again, about (warning for child death) a Victorian/Early 20th century murder of a child. A society woman who’d had a child out of wedlock as a teenager collected her young daughter from the woman who’d been caring for her, brought her to the cellar of her new husband’s house, and murdered her, without realising that one of the maids witnessed the deed. Which, yes, extraordinarily dark. But.

A child in the cellar. An illegitimate child, hidden away. A bit of green in a high window.

For some reason, my first thought was half elf, because D&D has some options for visibly illegitimate children. But then I remembered we can go one further for social ramifications. We could have a tiefling. A tiefling druid, who spent her first years in the care of a nurse, until she was old enough that they knew she would survive, and then was violently taken away and hidden. Because she is living proof of a … of an indiscretion. A sin.

There’s a bit of me that wants to go with the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide tiefling variants as well, here. Because, while we’re on this very bleak trip into victorianesque worries about the physical markers of illegitimacy and immorality, there’s the alternate appearance descriptions for variant tieflings: “Your tiefling might not look like other tieflings. Rather than having the physical characteristics described in the Player's Handbook, choose 1d4+1 of the following features: small horns; fangs or sharp teeth; a forked tongue; catlike eyes; six fingers on each hand; goatlike legs; cloven hoofs; a forked tail; leathery or scaly skin; red or dark blue skin; cast no shadow or reflection; exude a smell of brimstone.”

… Tieflings really are playing on a lot of … of very old fears and prejudices. So yeah. But if we’re consciously playing with that, here. It does work.

And this is the sort of house that has a cellar. That has maids. That has nurses. This is urban nobility. But this kid has no memory of wealth, comfort. She just remembers a prison. A cold room with a high window onto street level. And the bit of green, the delicate bloom, the one pretty thing she can remember, shining in the dusty light of that window.

I also, I’ve been handwashing a lot of clothes lately, and I was thinking about the red hands you get from hand laundry. Caught red-handed. And, urban nobility like that, they’d have laundry. Maybe even laundry in the cellar. And I was thinking about the maid in that documentary. And I was thinking … someone freed them. Someone heard the creature in the walls of that house, and the hints upstairs of what it might be, and someone found the compassion in their hearts to do something. Some tiny thing. Even if it was just ‘accidentally’ leaving a door open. And all this kid remembers of how she got out of that prison is … red hands. The raw, boiled red hands of a laundry woman, as she darted past them into the light, in search of their tiny sprout of green.

So she escaped. She lived as a street urchin for a while, a good few years. And she never lost … She looks for the plants. The weeds. The tiny scraps of green the city over. The flowers blooming in the cracks in the walls. Because there’s … there’s an ethos there. A sympathy. A stubborn, determined thing. They grow where they’re not wanted, in the dirt and in the dark, and they bloom anyway. They survive, and they bloom, and they give hope to those around them. It’s a scrap of a thing, a fragile shred of green, but it grows. No matter how unwanted it is. And it gives hope when there’s nothing else.

At some point another druid stumbled across her. An apothecary, maybe, an urban herbalist, or just a vagabond with their own sympathy and appreciation for those shreds of green that all the artifice of urban living could not drive away. She found a teacher. She learned some things. And she gave back some things. Druids have goodberry. Healing word. Spells to help … those who survive in the city’s cracks and crevices. And she wants to. Because of the green, yes, for the hope in the darkness, and also for those boiled red hands. For the servant who helped her, for the faceless person in her memory, that pair of hands, that helped the monster in the walls when no one else would. She doesn’t know who she was. She don’t know what happened to her. The house she came from had a demonic child caged within it. Who knows what they’d do to a servant who interfered in the family business like that? Urban elite, nobility, tend to have … pragmatic solutions to things like that.

Though they hadn’t killed her. Why didn’t they just kill the monstrous child, the proof of their sins? Why hide her, instead of simply getting rid of her? So maybe … maybe there’s hope. Maybe that poor woman, whoever she was, didn’t die for her good deed. I think that is a hope she holds. That she wants to find out what happened to that woman, and maybe, if it’s possible, if it’s not so very much too much to hope, to meet her. Thank her. And … until then. To emulate her. To help. Before anything else, just to help.

I do know I want this druid to have the druidcraft cantrip. Because, yes, it might be largely useless, compared to the likes of prestidigitation and even thaumaturgy. And yes, druids only start with two cantrips, and she probably should take more useful ones. But there is one effect of druidcraft: “You instantly make a flower blossom, a seed pod open, or a leaf bud bloom.” And that’s …

I’m not sure if it’d be ruled that she could create flowers with that. Let small flowers bloom in the cracks with a whisper. But even if she’s only helping the ones already there to bloom, it’s still …

That was her hope. Her symbol of the outside world. The only beautiful thing in her world for years. And she wants to be able to spread that. That was the first magic she learned. The first warmth and hope she ever held in her hands. The ability to make flowers bloom. Even here. Even in the dirt and the dust and the misery. A little tendril of green, stubbornly rooted into the stones of the world. Sometimes you don’t need to be able to fight. Sometimes you just need to be able to provide hope.

(If she could also get herself a Staff of Flowers along the way, she’d love that too)

Maybe a lot of the local urchins know to follow the flowers to find help. You know?

So yeah. Yeah. A tiefling urchin urban druid. A child of sin, with the cherished power to coax hope to bloom, and the stubborn determination to grow no matter what. And to … to repay the small and infinitely precious kindnesses they have received.

[tavshortfortavern]

Urban Druid!Tav

Just discovered Urban Druids and Circle of the City. Its a homebrew subclass for druids but they're whole thing is going against the traditional druids even more so than Spores and Dreams. Everyone thinks cities would be the opposite of nature but urban druids believe that cities are their own ecosystems. Will now be applying this to my Tav.

Imagine Urban druid Tav who adapts to both being in the wild and in the city. They love nature for its tranquility but can't stay away from the chaos in city. Their subclass has buffs depending on wether the terrain their on is natural or manmade.

First shows up to the Grove, they're sort of discretely rolling their eyes at the typical reclusive druids. Especially when the Rite of Thorns is brought up. Like. Really? That's how your going to help preserve nature? By ignoring people and staying in your little bubble?

It goes against what they stand for. People are just as much a part of nature. They find they could learn a lot and help nature even more with mankind's wisdom. They ditch the whole secrecy and reclusiveness most circles hold sacred to aid people in cities, bringing nature to them but also teaching them to use nature as a tool. (Basically how to live sustainably)

They banter with Dammon about druids only using wood as if metal isn't from nature just shaped in man's hands. Rocking up to the grove in heavy armor (this subclass could have proficiency in them as like a tank). They save a literal child from being murdered ("These crazy hermits... *mumble*). They jump right in to helping that one refugee with the stew taste better.

Just vibing more with these 'outsiders' than the druids. They're used to helping the marginalized and downtrodden in the cities. People left behind by those better off.

Stepping into the temple to get rid of all the goblins they showcase some of their abilities. One of their abilities lets them sense how many people there are in a manmade building and where they are.

At the end they save the grove and stop the ritual. They gain a new alley Halsin who seems more open-minded than the rest of them. Score.

Imagine them in Baldur's Gate. We saw how badly it kinda chafed Halsin. It would be an intresting juxtaposition to Tav who settles in just fine and immediately blends in with everyone. Soon they'll know the best places to get a meal from and the best shortcuts.

The city itself might know their purpose and arranges things to suit their needs.

To them there is no line between nature and cities. Life should be encouraged to grow everywhere. Its just in a different form. From the animals and creatures people considered vermin. The trees may not remember the forest but they know the history of this city, of every event that happened, and of words spoken.

Someone else had this idea before but urban druids can be scary in cities. Their whole thing is area of effects spells and their in a city with narrow alleys and paths. They can speak and befriends animals, starting up a whole spy network with the rats, crows, and other vermins. Heck they can spy too thanks to wildshape and blend in with the stray dogs and cats. Eyes and ears everywhere that others can't even detect with magic.

[lostdeviantartfilm]

Capricorn Fields

[invinciblerodent]

If there's one thing that can absolutely convince me to pick an elf for my next, Astarion-romance playthrough, it's the "no sleeping" thing.

Mainly it's just *infinitely funny* to me to have two bristling, wet cats be the only two awake through basically the whole night, avoiding eye contact and covertly glaring at each other from either side of the campfire

And it's also kinda cute to imagine them reluctantly striking up a conversation, just because somehow it's MORE awkward to be silent, and kinda ending up finding out that it's... actually pretty entertaining? To just talk?

A pair of nasty, judgemental, pan/bisexual freaks

[darlingartt]

“The earth is a fine place worth fighting for.”

just a new illustration and original character! I love them💖

[leidensygdom]

I’m giving Relent some more modern looking fits : )

[briefbestiary]

The one positive rumour surrounding Black Aggie was that if one left coins in her palms, good luck would come to you.

[ftafp]

Since people don't seem to get the concept of urban druids, here's the deal:

There is no line between nature and civilization. People are animals and animals are people too. Urban druids don't shun human creations like metal, and many prefer leather jackets covered with metal studs and pins.

The spiritual forces druids mediate exist in cities as they do anywhere else, but the forms they take are different. Bridge spirits, grafitti elementals, and the horrors sealed in sewers: druids can feel the balance of these forces through the streets of the concrete jungle, and where corruption either metaphysical, political or economic seeps through the cracks, urban druids are there to fight it, even if they might be labeled criminals or terrorists in the attempt

We are a part of a greater whole. On grander scales this might mean the whole of nature, but on the more local level, this means the city itself. Cities are macro-organisms, colonies composed of millions of smaller organisms that breathe, eat, breed and think. They are primal forces druids draw on for power, and live in as part of a greater whole. There's a reason they can vanish in crowds, open locks at a touch and always seem to know where to get a meal or a ride. The city itself knows their purpose, and arranges things to suit their needs

[muddiestpath]

Orrin meets her first real druid, & then also in the same day, her first Owlbear. Neither experiences were good on her heart.

[bornitereads]

Hounded - Kevin Hearne

The Iron Druid Chronicles Book 1

Reread: Aug 2022

The books of this series that I own barely survived my Marie Kondo purge of my bookshelves. They ended in a pile of books under the heading "Unsure, reread and decide." See I remember liking them when I read them before, and I cannot quite recall why I was so back and forth about them. It took a few years, but I finally am getting back to them. And I got to say, I really liked it. This one was fun, entertaining, and interesting.

I originally picked it up because, it was in the fantasy section, it was about a druid, but in modern day, and whoever did the cover found a hot ginger model for it and that sealed the deal for me haha. But it's written in a laid-back style I would say, everything is easy to follow and smoothly flows along the plotline. I really like the Druidic magic system, the Celtic twist on things. I like that it's set in the desert. I like the inclusion of other magical traditions, creatures, and beings. There is quite a bit I love about the world here. Plus I also like the story, its a fun time. It's engaging and I found myself ripping through it, rushing to find out what happens next. I always love when I book does that to me. Plus I really love the werewolf lawyers. It is pretty funny honestly.

Info: Del Rey, 2011

[franticvampirereads]

This book was a rollercoaster from start to finish and I loved every minute of it. This was the perfect way to end this series, everything was wrapped up neatly with just a hint of what’s next. I loved getting to see the end of Adam’s story. With all of its ups and downs and hard parts. I also loved that we got to see Vic’s journey through the underworld with Jodi (and Mel). I really liked that we got to see everyone grow into their powers and change and become something more. It was so much fun getting to explore a new layer to this universe! I also kinda liked that this book took a slightly different turn at the end than I was expecting. Deadbeat Druid is getting a solid 5 stars from me. I hope we get to explore more of this universe in the future!

Reading Challenge Prompt Fills:

PopSugar 2023: a book with alliteration in the title

Shop Your Shelves: no people on the cover, free space

[honourablejester]

Thoughts on Druids in Urban Environments

“Purple lichens grow on the bare, blasted rocks of frozen tundras. Fish swim in lightless depths that have never seen the sun. Life grows, and should be encouraged to grow, everywhere. This manufactured landscape is no different.”

“Do you think we have no place here? We are the rats in your walls and the starlings in your eaves and the rain in your gutters. Did you think you could just build a wall and keep nature itself out?”

“Beavers build dams, dragons build lairs, and mortals build cities. It is the way of things. To every creature their dwelling. But all dwellings are fragile, all dwell at the mercy of the forces that surround them. The cities, no less than any other habitat, require guidance and sheltering. And, occasionally, clearing.”

So I’ve been noodling around these sorts of thoughts previously with my homebrew urban druid subclass and thoughts on a green dragon trying to greenify a city. I just really enjoy urban fantasy, in the literal sense of fantasy in urban environments, as well as the noir-influenced genre sense. You can see this in stories like Cityside Fairytale, the idea of nature spirits interacting with the city. I grew up in a river town, you don’t get to avoid nature just because you live in an urban environment.

So. I like the idea of D&D druids being integrated even in the more urban areas of their worlds. Not even as specialist urban druids, but just in general. Quite a few of a baseline druid’s abilities and spells fit very well into a city environment, and some of them have very interesting worldbuilding implications if you tease them out the right way. Heh.

I’m going to be talking about this mostly from a worldbuilding, DM, NPC sort of direction, but there’s maybe inspiration here for player characters as well. Just. Some thoughts, character concepts,  worldbuilding ideas:

Spymaster

Well. Spymasters, spies, city watch, urban infiltrators. Because three things. Wildshape. Speak with Animals. Pass Without Trace. This is a city. Every rat, sparrow, rook and crow are now your eyes and ears. Or you. You can go almost anywhere. You can see almost anything. Magics like nondetection that protect against divination don’t do shit against the 2 million beady eyes watching people come and go. A druid spymaster in a city milieu would nearly be terrifying. Small wildlife is everywhere. And, yes, a druid can only take one shape at a time, and only talk to so many creatures. But the paranoia fuel is exceptional, just from the idea. A druid that’s strategic about it, that has creatures they regularly talk to watching particular hotspots, could cover a lot of a city. A network of druids, a whole spy network, could cover … a lot.

Just. Picture a city, in your world, where the rats are always watching. Sorry. The Pied Piper of Hamelin is one of my favourite fairytales. The rats and the city, and the magic figure at the heart of it. A druid spymaster, a small, grubby figure behind the throne, their eyes and ears spread chittering out across the city. In the gutters, in the streets. Behind the skirting boards. Under your bed. In your eaves, eavesdropping. There are ten rats for every person in the city, and they can talk to all of them. The bats, the starlings, the sparrows too.

And on a smaller scale, this does work for things like investigators, spies, criminal gangs. You’re a city watchman and almost none of your informants are humanoid. You’re a thief who can climb up any drainpipe, hide behind the skirting boards, pull a cloak of shadows around yourself and blend into the brickwork. Why a druid? Because the rats taught you. The shadows hide you. You’re one with the world around you, this habitat build by animals who think they’re smarter than maybe they really are. Dirt, nature, gets everywhere. You thought it was a good lesson to learn.

Beggar Lord/Street Gang/Urchin Leader

Again, inspired mostly by a single spell. Goodberry. Imagine Goodberry in an urban slum. Imagine the implications of being able to feed someone for a day on one berry.

Imagine trading favours on it.

Swing it for good or ill. Feeding the hungry, or extorting them. But a druid has a lot to offer in densely packed, poverty stricken areas. Food and water from the area. Purifying water. Healing. Granted, a cleric has a lot of the same merits. But Goodberry. Goodberry in particular. As I mentioned with Ylin Dos, my villainous druid, it’s such a fascinating spell for implications. You can give a street kid a berry that’ll feed them for a day. What do you charge them for it? (Might link back up to spymaster, above, there).

It can be villainous, extortion. But there’s also room for camaraderie. Support. Beggar networks. If they want to starve us out, we’ll bloom to spite them. If they want to deny us everything, we’ll just make it. Druids have such a theme of growth and survival, and that’s interesting in a city. Weeds growing where they’re not wanted, not supposed to be, and thriving despite anyone’s best efforts. There’s a sort of a theme of urban anarchy and urban support there. You can’t keep nature out. You can’t decide what you want to grow where. Weeds get in. Weeds are supposed to get in. The only thing ‘weed’ means is a plant where you don’t want it to be, but you’re not the only one who gets to decide that. Put some urban druids down at the bottom of urban society, in the cracks in the pavement. People are starving, but nature provides. Even when it isn’t wanted to.

(Seriously, on a worldbuilding level, druids have so many spells that are interesting in urban environments. Purify food and drink. Create or destroy water. Protection from Poison. Lesser Restoration. Detect poison and disease. Think about things like cholera epidemics. Sewage. River water. If you’re in a highly urbanised fantasy world, an extremely developed magical society, city health inspectors. Your entire health department could be druids. Huge chunks of your civic planning departments. Magical CDC. There’s so many options …)

Harbour Master/Dock Master/River Master

This does go back to Carla James in Cityside Fairytale for me, but the epitome of a high-ranking civic position for a druid in a city is Harbour Master, River Master, something similar. Because cities run on rivers, harbours, water, trade. Access to water is a primary consideration for a city, and usually one of the defining factors that determine where they locate and grow. How many of our worlds cities are defined by their relationship to their waterways? And the river giveth, but the river also taketh away. It gives trade, water, access, control, and it costs lives, damage, a steady force eating at the base of everything you build. Water moves, water flows, water floods, water erodes. Cities sink slowly into their lagoons, silt clogs the harbours, waves flood the levees and drown districts whole. Whoever controls the water, in some very real ways, controls the city.

And what class, in D&D, controls the water more?

If you want to give a druid an office in a city. If you want them to be a fundamental, powerful city figure, an overt power in their own right. Harbour Master. River Master. A high ranking, powerful magic user. And, underneath them, whole departments, organisations. (Circles). They protect the city from floods, from waves, from erosion. They direct the currents that guide trade. They defend the harbour from foreign ships. Your ship tries to sneak in or out? Control Water is bringing it right back. They patrol the harbour, the docks. Your water police, your city watch, your river patrol. Some of them can walk on water. Some of them can pretend to be seagulls. Some of them can pick your whole damn smuggler ship up and sit it on the dock next to the Harbour Master’s office.

And, to go back up to the previous point, do consider sewage. Sewers. Cholera epidemics. Flood defenses. Sea defenses. Buried rivers. Storm drains. Consider harbour dredging. Large scale water purification (perhaps even water purification festivals). Cisterns and water storage. Aqueducts, aquifers. Enough drinking water to support the population of a city, where is it brought from, how is it brought, how is stored, how is it accessed? Cities are built around water. As well as, often, in defiance of it. Which can create a certain tension.

Consider the relationship between the river, the city, and the sea. And, thus, between the druids and the government. Cities are fragile, especially when set against raw elemental might. How much power does this River Master hold, and how happy are people about it? How happy are they about it? How they view the city, how does the city view them?

Honestly, you see all these fantasy cities with powerful wizards, because intellect and magic and construction, but you could do so much with a city druid. A city official, in their brown-and-silver robes, their gull-shaped badge of office fixed to their shoulder. Several of them, even. The Harbour Master, the River Master, the Sewer Master. The River Patrol, the City Health Department. And, yes, the Spymaster. Druids are considered the antithesis of the city, the forces of the wilderness in stark contrast to the artifice and civilisation of the city, but honestly druids could run a city. They could keep it alive, keep it afloat. A habitat as delicate as any other, a challenge as harsh as any other.

Nature doesn’t stop at the wall, no matter how much we like to pretend. Maybe druids shouldn’t either. I don’t know, I just really like the idea of urban druids. I like the worldbuilding potential of so many of a druid’s abilities and spells. I like how they meld and contrast with an urban environment. In some ways, a city only gives a druid advantages. Narrow streets and alleyways, for a class that excel at area of effect. A fragile, artificial environment, in the hands of a class that wields raw elemental wrath. A city full of eyes and ears, packed solid with bodies, for a class that can change shape, and that deals with poison and healing in equal measure.

And there’s thematic push and pull too. Weeds in the cracks. Power and protection. Stealth and solidarity. How much is the habitat worth protecting at the cost of everything around it? Did you think you could keep us out? The river giveth and the river taketh away.

I like it. I like the ideas of it. If you have nature magic in a world, it will exist everywhere, not just the most obviously thematically appropriate places. If people exist who can speak to animals, who can control water, who can cast Spike Growth in the middle of urban warfare and decimate an enemy gang unfortunately crammed into the same alley … Well. Then chances are someone will think to do just those things. Some druid somewhere will walk into a city, to see what it’s like if nothing else. Some urchin somewhere will make a connection to the rats, or the water under the stone, or the scrubby weeds that stubbornly push through the cracks and refuse to die, just like them. So. Why shouldn’t a city have as many druids as anywhere else?

The weeds get everywhere. And the water wears away the stone.

[nojohnny5ive]

Drawtober 1: Magical Garden  The Druid’s grove.  Being a druid in the city means making your own grove from nothing.  Not like those spoiled forest druids.

[calowlmitygoddess]

one of the books im reading i just cant get into it despise the fact its all i ever wanted because the prose is just so...twitter

[mirthandcruelty]

Ord is a good name for an oblivious Asexual Urban Druid, right?

[knowledgebakery]

Currently reading:

JUNKYARD DRUID

A Druidverse Urban Fantasy Novel By M.D. Massey

Name’s Colin McCool… folks call me the Junkyard Druid. I hate that name.

Despite my last name, I’m not “cool” like the other hunters in town. I don’t run an occult bookstore, I’ve never owned a Harley, and I didn’t inherit a family fortune passed down through generations of hunters before me.

And I kind of have this curse on me that’s messed up my life.

So things are pretty much shit right now. I live in a junkyard, my mentor Finn is a heroin addict, I’ve got the Cold Iron Circle breathing down my neck, and the local Fae Queen Maeve is blackmailing me into doing her dirty work.

Now I’m in way over my head trying to retrieve Maeve’s stolen magic rock, all while helping my friend Belladonna solve a series of murders that may or may not involve the local werewolves.

And did I mention that Finn is in debt to a bloodthirsty gang of dwarven mobsters?

– If I can just get the Faery Queen’s tathlum back…

– And help Belladonna solve these murders…

– While keeping the dwarves from killing Finn…

Then I just might live long enough to finish my first semester of college.

– – –

Junkyard Druid is an urban fantasy novel featuring druids, wizards, giants, demigods, ghosts, vampires, shifters, and fae. If you enjoy urban fantasy books with kick-ass characters and plenty of snark, action, and suspense, then you’ll love reading Druid Enforcer.