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Jivundus
2011-02-01, 07:14 AM
Right, so...one of my players is going to start leveling in Druid and we decided that he really should do a solo adventure that reflects his training and initiation and all that jazz.

Problem is, I'm stumped for ideas on what exactly he should do for this little session. Do you guys have any suggestions? Ideas on places to look for inspiration?

Any help would be muchly appreciated.

Ashtar
2011-02-01, 08:04 AM
Reread the odyssey, all the part about Circé is when Odysseus is being initiated into secret Druidic knowledge. This includes visions of death and visits to the underworld...

Also which kind of initiation? Three Types of Initiation (http://www.neopagan.net/Initiation.html)

Type One: Initiation as a recognition of a status already gained
The basic idea is to gather the community around you, and to announce that you have achieved a particular stage of growth, that everyone recognizes that growth, and therefore you now have certain responsibilities as well as privileges.

Type Two: Initiation as an ordeal of transformation
There are a wide variety of traditional techniques for doing this in a ritualistic way, such as making you fast for a week, go without sleep, be flogged without crying out, be sexually tempted and/or exhausted, be buried alive or locked in a dark room, go on a vision quest, be led through a night-long guided meditation, etc.

The emphasis in Type Two initiations on difficulty is both descriptive and prescriptive: Being born again into a new worldview and status is not easy, since it requires giving up (some people say “growing out of”) your old identity, which is usually based, at least in part, on your culture’s collection of approved tunnel realities. Whatever physical or psychological pain might be involved also serves as a screening mechanism — if you are likely to buckle under pressure, the tribal elders want to find that out before you get into a position of responsibility where your weakness could endanger others. This is a harsh reality to reside in, but for most of human history it’s been a necessary one.


Type Three: Initiation as a method for transferring spiritual knowledge and power
Obviously, this is usually thought of as flowing from (or through) the initiator(s) to the initiatee(s). (By the way, I’m using the term “initiatee” as distinct from “initiate” to indicate the difference between someone going through the process of being initiated vs. someone who has already been initiated, whether in the near or distant past.) In the Western mainstream occult traditions, this is often called the “transmission of the Gnosis” or the “Apostolic Succession,” but it has been used by quite a few different traditions and organizations throughout human history. This approach assumes that the purpose of an initiation is to open you up to a source of external power that has been used by your predecessors.

A properly done initiation of this sort should have the following results: (a) you are better connected to the deity who is the group’s magical/spiritual focus, (b) you are better connected to the spirits of your predecessors, (c) your internal psychic hardware and software are rewired and reprogrammed to enable you to handle the group’s flavor of energy better, and (d) you are given the ability and right to speak and act as a representative of those predecessors, and thus to fulfill certain spiritual and/or magical responsibilities.


I hope this wall of text has given you ideas :smallwink:

Warpwolf16
2011-02-01, 08:22 AM
Reread the odyssey, all the part about Circé is when Odysseus is being initiated into secret Druidic knowledge. This includes visions of death and visits to the underworld...



As a latin student...and quite mythological scholar..Circe was a enchanting sorceress, the druidic knowledge keeprs were of Britan and Ireland and possibly Gaul and the likes. She had nothing to do with the old druidic ways, Odysseus remained human on her island sheerly due to a herb and in the end was on the island for quite some time.

Though the 3 paths one could walk into enlightenment of nature could possibly work.

Ashtar
2011-02-01, 10:59 AM
And as a latin student, you should realize that there is no way in heaven or hell the Odyssey takes place in the Mediterranean.

Have a read of "Where Troy once stood (http://www.troy-in-england.co.uk/)", it will open your eyes as to the most probably location of Troy. It's a beautiful use of Occam's razor.

Thinker
2011-02-01, 11:23 AM
@Ashtar:

And as a latin student, you should realize that there is no way in heaven or hell the Odyssey takes place in the Mediterranean.

Have a read of "Where Troy once stood (http://www.troy-in-england.co.uk/)", it will open your eyes as to the most probably location of Troy. It's a beautiful use of Occam's razor.

Wilken's theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, his methods are sloppy, and his conclusions are highly questionable! He is a poor scientist.

Further, saying that something is Occam's razor does not make it so. It is known that Troy has been destroyed and rebuilt like 5 times. The one known as Troy VII looks to have been destroyed by war sometime around 1300.

Homer was the first (or one of the first) to commit his oral tradition to writing. Over time, descriptions of places could very easily be changed, modified, or forgotten. It is not surprising that the geography of the Odyssey does not match up very well with the real world.

As for the original post, the Celtic druids were an order of philosophers, diplomats, teachers, doctors, etc and their training took 19 years. They are not like the D&D druids, though if you want to match up with an initiation similar to those of the Celtic druids, you could look here (http://www.druidry.org/obod/druid-path/druidhistory.html).

Hammerhead
2011-02-01, 03:25 PM
Type Two: Initiation as an ordeal of transformation
There are a wide variety of traditional techniques for doing this in a ritualistic way, such as making you fast for a week, go without sleep, be flogged without crying out, be sexually tempted and/or exhausted, be buried alive or locked in a dark room, go on a vision quest, be led through a night-long guided meditation, etc.
Anything that might shove a bunch of druids into a frat house is a winner in my book.

Coidzor
2011-02-01, 06:21 PM
(Potentially) lethal hazing.

And being whacked with a ruler by whoever has to teach him druidic.

Ashtar: Heinrich Schliemann would like to have a word with you about that.

LibraryOgre
2011-02-01, 08:22 PM
Ashtar: Heinrich Schliemann would like to have a word with you about that.

Schliemann's Troy was on the Dardanelles, which is either Aegean or Black Sea, depending on which way you want to play it.

EDIT: Ok, yeah, the link is pretty questionable.

EDIT 2: To the OP, I'd ask you who your druids are. Are they simply nature priests? Are they more shamanic, with oaths to obscure spiritual beings? A simple version is to have him go onto a spiritual quest... fasting and exposure can fit into both shamanic and deific religious ordeals. I might do some bluebooking for this, rather than a side-adventure. He takes a few days off, lives in the woods, and comes out with a vision.

Coidzor
2011-02-01, 09:45 PM
What's bluebooking? I've never run into this term before.

A random thought, you might include having to kill some abomination or another, depending upon your druid sect, such as an undead or aberration as a symbolic gesture.

LibraryOgre
2011-02-02, 12:38 PM
What's bluebooking? I've never run into this term before.

Probably a little old-school; I've been in that sort of mood, recently. "Bluebooking" refers to the college blue books that you get for exams, and using them for out-of-game character interaction. One person (player or GM) writes an entry... something that's happening, things they're planning on doing, whatever. They hand it off to the other person, who composes a response (things that happen as a result of the actions, or their characters response to what's going on). You pass these back and forth in collaborative storytelling, until it's time for the game. It's horrible for combat or action, but good for intentions and conversations.

These days, we usually handle it through e-mail or Facebook (in fact, I need to sit down and work on my character's background). But I still think of it as bluebooking.

Set
2011-02-02, 12:57 PM
Have the druid elder transform him into a series of animal / natural forms, and experience the life of an herbivore, a carnivore, a tree and some form of natural 'elemental' phenomena (perhaps a thunderstorm or wildfire). Let him start out believing that he's been physically transformed and 'let loose' to learn how truly hard it is to live as an animal, and go through harrowing adventures (attacked by predator, defending herdmates, providing for cubs, etc.) and finally 'dying.'

He awakens in a sweat lodge, and comes to the conclusion that he's just imagined the whole thing, that it was a hallucination or illusion, but is gifted with items made of a wolf pelt (that he recognizes the scars upon), an antler (that recognizes the broken off point, from something he experienced as a stag), a staff of the wood from the tree that he was, and a flask of rainwater, from the storm he spent time 'being.'

He didn't imagine it all, he somehow was reincarnated / vision-quested into the lives of real animals (plants, an actual thunderstorm), and 'lived' those lives. They really died (or, in the case of the storm, blew itself out and drifted apart), and their lives (and deaths) contain a thousand lessons that he will spend the rest of his life as a druid discovering.

hangedman1984
2011-02-03, 02:07 AM
Have the druid elder transform him into a series of animal / natural forms, and experience the life of an herbivore, a carnivore, a tree and some form of natural 'elemental' phenomena (perhaps a thunderstorm or wildfire). Let him start out believing that he's been physically transformed and 'let loose' to learn how truly hard it is to live as an animal, and go through harrowing adventures (attacked by predator, defending herdmates, providing for cubs, etc.) and finally 'dying.'

He awakens in a sweat lodge, and comes to the conclusion that he's just imagined the whole thing, that it was a hallucination or illusion, but is gifted with items made of a wolf pelt (that he recognizes the scars upon), an antler (that recognizes the broken off point, from something he experienced as a stag), a staff of the wood from the tree that he was, and a flask of rainwater, from the storm he spent time 'being.'

He didn't imagine it all, he somehow was reincarnated / vision-quested into the lives of real animals (plants, an actual thunderstorm), and 'lived' those lives. They really died (or, in the case of the storm, blew itself out and drifted apart), and their lives (and deaths) contain a thousand lessons that he will spend the rest of his life as a druid discovering.

that...is...AWESOME

Jivundus
2011-02-03, 07:50 AM
Have the druid elder transform him into a series of animal / natural forms, and experience the life of an herbivore, a carnivore, a tree and some form of natural 'elemental' phenomena (perhaps a thunderstorm or wildfire). Let him start out believing that he's been physically transformed and 'let loose' to learn how truly hard it is to live as an animal, and go through harrowing adventures (attacked by predator, defending herdmates, providing for cubs, etc.) and finally 'dying.'

He awakens in a sweat lodge, and comes to the conclusion that he's just imagined the whole thing, that it was a hallucination or illusion, but is gifted with items made of a wolf pelt (that he recognizes the scars upon), an antler (that recognizes the broken off point, from something he experienced as a stag), a staff of the wood from the tree that he was, and a flask of rainwater, from the storm he spent time 'being.'

He didn't imagine it all, he somehow was reincarnated / vision-quested into the lives of real animals (plants, an actual thunderstorm), and 'lived' those lives. They really died (or, in the case of the storm, blew itself out and drifted apart), and their lives (and deaths) contain a thousand lessons that he will spend the rest of his life as a druid discovering.

Agreed with Hangedman, that is...just beyond description. May I ninja?

Everyone else, thanks for the help, I've got a few ideas for what I can do with him now (as well as what Druids are all about, 'cause I hadn't gotten around to that yet :smalltongue:)