Random thing I've been thinking about for a few days

An ecology spec for druids, it's primary focus is around the summoning of elemental animal spirits at a bonded tree and calling on them for aid.

Once called to the tree, the spirits offer some skills for the druid. Should the tree fall for any reason then they will flee and leave the druid without the abilities.

The skill would probably go something like

Spiritualism
Burning - Burn herbs within a flame to elicit the correct effects
Chanting - Weave your rites with the power of the spoken word
Imbue - Infuse objects with your will
Dancing - The rythmic motions of the forestal rites
Embrace - Ask the spirits to touch your spirit, if you are worthy.
Calling - Call the spirits to walk beside you
Sketching - Ancient sigils and scripts to enhance your work.
Duality - Two elements can call up unexpected allies
Harmony - Calling on all the spirits at once

Known rituals
Sanctify - Cleanse a location or flame for your workings
Bonding - Bonding your soul with the spirit of a tree
Summoning - Call up spirits of nature to dwell with your tree.
Location - Discern the location of your enemys bonded tree
Blessing - Give homes to spirits within physical objects
Cursing - Show the enemies of the forest the ferocity of nature

?Riding - Offer your body to the spirits?

Running out of steam.

Burning, Chanting, Imbuing, Dancing and Sketching are all pieces of the rituals.
For example, to perform sanctify you would Burn and then chant sanctify.

Bonding requires a sapling/tree and summoning calls up one of four element based animals (or with a small chance, the appropriate aspects, no difference) at that location. The spirits are required for the bulk of the skill.

Invocation gives defenses, one for each element and in certain combinations with duality.
Evocation is your active abilities with the same rules as invocation.

I can't really think of what the abilities might actually do, but I think harmony invocation would be some nice buff where evocation would be death.


Oh and for reference I would think the following animal/elemental relations could work (don't know about crow aspects enough for them)

Earth - Dog - Stag
Air - Eagle - Foal
Fire - Viper - Buck
Water - Dolphin - Doe
Forest - Hart/Crow - Hart



This may not make any sense, I'm all... fluey at the moment but wanted to post because I wanted to get thoughts

no to be dismissive but it sounds like more passive attacks to stack up..

Evocations are active abilities not passive, they just require the spirit summoned. The only evocation that might be passive would be the forest one as a demesne effect.

The spirit summoning is more in the vein of fetishes, you need to add the grafts (spirits) to the fetish (tree) before you can use the related poisons (abilities).

Imbue is already an ability all Lusternia players have. IMBUE (item) WITH ESTEEM

Sketching is a skill in Arts, I believe. Chanting is a form of says.

Evocation and Invocation can get tricky, seeing as there's the LowMagic skill which has you INVOKE CIRCLEs and the HighMagic skill which has you EVOKE PENTAGRAMs.

Harmony is a skill for "good" monks, remember. Coding's not perfect, and it might get a bit hard to code in something like this.

Also, traditionally (and Westernly) speaking, Water and Earth are both female signs. Air is usually seen as being the sign of intelligence. Unless you're exploring a different aspect of Air I'm yet aware of. Though, Buck seems dead-on, as does Doe. However, I'd like to suggest that Forest be changed to Spirit or GreatSpirit, since it would be the representation of unity and strength among all four elements.

Again, Westernly speaking, there's Earth, Air, Water, Fire, and Spirit.

The skill sounds interesting, but seems to me like it could use a bit more of definition, and some word changes.

Also, what would be the main word for the skill? Spirit? If so, it might be more possible.

It'd be SPIRIT INVOKE (element) and SPIRIT EVOKE (element). Also, perhaps you could have SPIRIT CHANT (chant name) (chant name) (chant name), with a little stored database of the chant types, and your own names and definitions for each, much like Kata's and Songs, so you could have SPIRIT CHANT FIRE1 FIRE2 FIRE3 with a equilibrium between each. And, perhaps, if your chanting is broken, it won't work. (locked windpipe, knocked out of the room, killed, et cetera)

If the admins hadn't made sylphs a fae (d'oh!) and gnomes npcs (d'oh!!!), I'd suggest the elements be named after their elementals:

Earth - Gnome
Air - Sylph
Water - Undine
Fire - Salamander

Be careful with the suggestion of a dolphin -- in the Lusternia world, dolphins are a creature symbolizing Celest. Also, I think people in Celest (I forget the skillset) can get dogs.

I hope to see you expand on the idea.

Edit: I'm aware I may seem picky, but I find symbolism to be very important, and I can only ponder at the difficulty our coders for Lusternia have.

As you seem to know your stuff



Think of imbue like charging crystals and the like, It would be coupled with an ability "release" to unleash the energies.

Unfortunately most of the appropriate words are taken. For ritual actions it's hard but perhaps CALLING and EMBRACE for evoke and invoke?


Well aware again it's just an issue of being at a point where many appropriate words have already been used

Unfortunately with the aspects unless you change them there isn't much leeway. With wind it's also traditionally linked to spring time and the time of youth with effectively is Foal

Also the reason I used forest rather than spirit is mainly because I think druids would view the elements coming together as forest and working in harmony, rather than the more ethereal meanings which I think suit moondancers more.


Spirit could work, or RITE for each ritual action if evoke and invoke changed to the above

I'd be skittish of it either way, the primary reason for not just saying a spirit of fire is to put some focus on the animal world for druids.



Dolphin true maybe otters, Canine companions can be called with tracking celests are golden retrievers

It was tempting to have the same animals as ecologists use

I dunno. For a skill called Spiritualism there are pretty few spirits. I would agree with Myrkr's choice of elementals if it weren't for the problems she already stated so... why not call them Mars (fire), Jupiter (wind), Venus (earth) and Mercury (water).

I'd also suggest more spirits that can be called. Such as Origin (Beginning), Cosmos (End), Gremlin (Destruction), Arc (Creation), Asuka (Light), Eclipse (Darkness).

Just a suggestion. I think it is very interesting.

Why would Cosmos be end, though?

I also dont understand the rest of your choice of naming the differing spirits, would you please explain your reason for giving these names, please?

Cosmos, as from what I've been taught, is the order of the universe. Something that has no end beyond itself, thus nothing will end AFTER it ends. But... now that I think about it perhaps I'm the only one who thinks about stuff like that, so a better word can be chosen.

Origin means beginning.

Gremlins were spirits of destruction, mayhem death, etc.

Arc comes from Jeanne d'Arc, the french historical heroine, and Archimedes. One is an architect of buildings (among other things) the other is a symbol of hope.

Asuka refers to the Asuka period in Japan. The Asuka period was a period of fine-arts, knowledge and culture. Thus making it a period opposite of the european Dark Ages, and thus the opposite of Dark, I.E. Light.

An Eclipse is an astronomical event where one celestial object is obscured by another one. Most commonly known when the moon passes before the sun and creates darkness during the day. The Maya tribes also thought that a huge dragon sought to eat the sun and thus tried to scare it away.

I wouldn't go with the planets just because... well they don't exist really

More spirits is a possibility but the foundation had to be lain somewhere. Remembering that you have duality. perhaps certain combinations could result in the summoning of a different spirit. (Earth and Fire calling up a rockeater(lava) spirit etc)




If that is to me, it is because of the animal relationships with each element.
If that is to Kiradawea, it is probably for the elemental relationships of the planets and elements, though the others I am unsure of

The question was for Kira

Im too tired at this moment to add anything constructive, you people have fun.

Well, you could seperate spirits into houses. One for elemental spirits and one for cosmic spirits (you're already brushing into Elementalism, so stretching it to Cosmic wouldn't be that difficult I'd say). As for more elemental spirits...

Earth+Fire=Magma
Earth+Air=Electricity
Earth+Water=Mud
Fire+Water=Steam
Fire+Air=???
Air+Water=Mist

I'm not sure how good that is though, use it how you want.

I'd shy away from cosmic spirits, the elements are already present in the forest and nature. Cosmic would be more wiccan than druid

I thought ecology itself was a hunting spec? Some sort of... Spec spec? Maybe I'm just confused.

This would be a third spec off hunting, I'm just sick and not thinking straight

As for the defenses, they'd be buffs, right? Maybe stat buffs or a combo?

Water = +1 Constitution
Air = +1 Charisma
Fire = +1 Intelligence
Earth = +1 Strength


The following all play on chance. You can't call for the spirits you want in particular, maybe without being trans? The buffs they give, for duality, can be chance as well, so that MAYBE getting Water + Water will give you +2 Con or MAYBE getting Water + Water will give you passive healing.

Water + Water = +2 Constitution OR passive healing OR passive curing of 1 affliction every 20 secs.
Water + Air = +1 Constitution +1 Charisma OR +2 Dexterity OR Un-sense-able (no scent, scan, scry or who on the person)
Water + Fire = +1 Consitution +1 Intelligence OR Increased Magical Damage OR Levitation

.... and then I lost my track of mind. Shoot.

*
Fire = +1 Strength
Earth = +1 Constitution
Water = +1 Intelligence

Makes more sense. Shouldn't have to be explained.

This whole air/fire/water thing is sure reminding me of monk Harmony.

Monks don't use Western Elements, they use Eastern ones.

I think they have:

Air
Water
Fire
Wood
Metal

Or do they have it listed as Wind in the game? :X I donno.

I should explain more I guess

To summon a spirit you need to first sanctify a flame, then burn the right herbs and imbue a cluster of the appropriate gems. You release them at your tree. You would need to do this once for each different spirit.

Invoke and Evoke require that the spirit be active at your tree. So to call up the... Doe spirit (water) you'd need to have summoned the her beforehand. (In effect if you were out fighting and someone went to chop down your tree you could lose abilities, I'd suggest the tree should only be mulchable by the druid)

With duality I'd say you should oly be able to call on two different elements rather than the same one twice with that concept because the spirits would come to you as separate entities.

So for example when you called earth and fire the Dog and Viper would not come to you, as a result of combining their power a spirit of Magma or Rockeater would turn up instead.

Feeling a little better (^ _ ^)

So raise deadthread.

The rituals

Sanctify - Cleanse a location or flame for your workings
Pretty self explanatory, if a ritual needs a flame you need to do this first.

Bonding - Bonding your soul with the spirit of a tree
Again, should be obvious.

Summoning - Call up spirits of nature to dwell with your tree.
This ritual has four possible endings, each one summons up a different spirit creature that allows you to use it's element in the later abilities (Thinking that different emotes should result in an appropriate action so you could see what spirits you or another has summoned)

Location - Discern the location of your enemys bonded tree
Nice ritual, let's you track down your enemies tree so you can attempt to chop it down. Mid-battle of course

Blessing - Give home to spirits within physical objects
Requires that you be at your tree with a flame burning. Can put a single elemental blessing on a weapon or shield (just a buff, lost if the item is unwielded)



Other ideas for rituals are welcome. the only problem is that with duality and convergence calling, embracing and blessing are effectively 33 abilities.
So while on the ability list you might not see spirits or the like. The fire spirit gives a blessing, is summoned with calling and has a embrace ability. You can intermingle these, for example calling might be a pre-requisite for embrace or vice-versa.

I also liked the cross elements listed above but with one change
Earth+Fire=Magma
Earth+Air=Dust/Sand
Earth+Water=Mud
Fire+Water=Steam
Fire+Air=Electricity
Air+Water=Mist