Druid, Circle of the Land, City Terrain

It may come as a surprise that there are druids in cities who are not merely lost, or railing against the inevitable transformation of the landscape into rectangular conglomerations of wood and stone. But even the most overgrown and corrupted of urban sprawls contains some vestiges of nature, and they deserve protection, not only for their own sake but for the people who interact with them.

Urban Druid circles are small and widely spread, keeping in touch by means other Druids would find esoteric, such as messages attached to horses or homing pigeons. Their Druid signs are hidden amidst vines cimbing the sides of buildings, or carved surreptitiously into wooden pillars. Many have day jobs to support their needs, while spending their free time in tiny municipal parks and fetid, trash-filled alleyways, seeing to the needs of the animals and plants that thrive in defiance of the depredations of civilization.

Civic Druids are dual outcasts, seen by other Druids as pretenders or apostates to the calls of nature, avoided by their neighbors as weirdos with incomprehensible habits, but their work is essential to the health of an urban environment. Their persistent work is critical to prevent the spread of plague, blight, or total ecological collapse that might strike an unprotected city and rend the life of its people. By the same efforts, they are on the watch for hazards and threats to the city that come from unexpected directions, and that more conventional defenses are unprepared to predict or face. In this, they are true to their calling and their devotion.