D20 Fantasy - Kill All Druids

A response to Deus Ex Parabola's excellent essay over on Numbers Aren't Real. 

Calder Moore

Ever wonder why nature cultists forbidden from wearing metal go adventuring for fistfuls of gold? It's because of these assholes. The Honourable Guild of Respected Agrimancers. The Druid Mafia.

A cartel of weather wizards, shapeshifters, lay priests and lumpen proles who seek a total stranglehold over agricultural production. Starving entire cities by calling down droughts and flashfloods, installing awakened animal monarchs amicable to their interests, unleashing fungal blights and selling the cure - nothing is beyond the pale for these greenthumbed mafiosos. 

But say you're sick of it. The economic blockades. The price controls. The disappearances late at night. The gangland executions. The government that won't do anything to stop them. What could you do? 

THE DRUID MAFIA

The Emerald Dells. The land on the windward side of the Hunting Horns, a vast mountain range of white-capped peaks. Rolling pastures and green valleys interspersed with dense pine barrens, fast rivers of snowmelt and towering bluffs of limestone. Beyond the Horns is arid steppes and vast plateaus, populated by all those ontologically evil monstermen that morally righteous people kill for XP.

The Dells and their surrounds belong to the Regency, a weak and failing autocracy. Rather than overextend itself further, the central government tacitly permits enterprises like the Guild of Agrimancers to act as de facto rulers. So long as the taxes flow and the levies march, it's business as usual.

The Guild's activities in the Dells is divided between three branches (pun intended):

• The Wise Guys. What you think of when you think druids. Changing shapes, charming animals, controlling plants. These druidic intelligentsia, recognisable by their spider silk suits, perfumed hair and artisanal shillelaghs, sell luxury goods and ensorcelled monster pets.

• The Haymakers. One part martial arts academy, one part jihadist cell, one part grassroots charity. These milk-quaffing brawlers handle street level issues for the vox populi.

• The Feathermen. A cabal of bird-obsessed sorcerers. These arrogant wizards control the weather and guard the mountain passes from their citadel atop the Hunting Horns.

ibid

THE WISE GUYS
The mafiasos are commanded by Rion Bloodsmock, the dejure guildmaster of the Dells (though the other branches flaunt his authority). It's an open secret Bloodsmock is a werewolf, though he passes it off as the usual wildshaping. The Dells used to be filled with pissant tribes of lycans until the Regency put them all to the sword. Bloodsmock gleefully sold out his family for a seat at the victor's table.

The wolfman is an urbane and ruthless political operator, running his enterprises like a colonial project - selling to foreign markets or to the Regency's military without reinvesting any of their profits back into the communities they're extracting them from. 

• Luxury Goods. The capos are swimming in expensive furs or rare herbs. Why? They get the wildlife to do the work for them. They strongarm beavers into cutting mahogany, wolf packs into massacring minks and hares, hogs into unearthing alchemical reagents. Like the Atlantic slave trade, they offer tempting incentives to sell out rivals or hand over undesirables for the fur trade, creating the usual feedback loops of gunrunning, predation and violence.

• Charmed Animals. You ever want a badass owlbear bodyguard? A carrion crawler for a scarf? A dozen well-trained warhorses? Look no further, they've got animals with brains so pickled in Charm spells even their ghosts will sit, heel and fetch. The Wise Guys sell all manner of ensorcelled beasts, but keep the nastiest specimens as superpowered guard dogs.

• I Heard It On The Grapevine. Imagine if every second squirrel was a spy for a crime family. Why every other one? Because the rest are polymorphed druids idiot, keep up. Little occurs in the Emerald Dells without the Wise Guys hearing about it, or so they like to say.

THE HAYMAKERS
The militia are led by Mother Gooseberry, a fat-bellied halfling matron with more children than she cares to count. She runs the Haymakers like she runs her extended family, with hearty food, strict hygiene standards and regular disciplinary beatings. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

The Haymakers are a grassroots movement, anyone can join or appeal for their help. This makes them popular among demihumans and the peasantry. It's not all bucolic pastoralism though, they obliterate cultural identities of their monsterman converts in favour of a "model minority" approach.

Gooseberry enforces a strict regimen of agrarian foods. No more pristine springwater, delicious wild berries or rich game meat. Are you a savage? An animal? No? So don't fucking eat like one. Agrarianism is a gift from Law, a divine transubstantiation of Chaos into blessed beef, bread, cheese and beer. 

• I Know Kung Fu. The restrictive diet and strict martial discipline of the Haymakers allow them to channel the cosmic power of Law into their strikes. Their more experienced members are unparalleled martial artists, with the usual suite of monk/paladin powers - catching arrows mid flight, laying on hands, detecting lies and obliterating undead with a mere touch.

• Hoi Polloi. The Haymakers handle street level issues like blessing crops, healing injured livestock and smiting troublesome undead. You can go to them as a dirt farmer or monsterman refugee and they'll actually help, as long as you dedicate yourself to a lawful alignment and obey their dietary restrictions. It goes a long way to making people support their antics.

• Inquisition. If you have information they want, the Haymakers are straightforward in getting it. They'll cast Zone of Truth in a basement somewhere and beat the everloving fuck out of you. Don't worry, clerical healing means you won't die. At least not until you to tell them what they want to know. It's suspected the Regency extraordinarily renditions POWs to the milk jihadists for processing, in exchange for turning a blind eye to their criminal acts.

THE FEATHERMEN
The cabal is ruled by Keranos the Blue, an arch conservative and fanatical racist. The one exception to his bigotry is elves; he's a hopeless faeophile who turns into an excitable schoolboy at the sight of them. He'll happily give the grand tour to any visiting elves, much to the chagrin of his underlings.

The Feathermen are a recent franchise of the mafia, joining up for preferential trade deals on clerical healing, alchemical components and bulk shipments of foodstuffs. The Guild also helps enforce their moratorium on harming birds - the wizards derive their weather manipulating power from avians and thus forbid anyone from harming or owning anything that flies. 

• Pray For Rain. So long as they can observe the flight of birds and read their entrails, the Feathermen can exert total control over the weather. This means they get to decide whether the Emerald Dells suffers a drought, flashflood or gets a year of bountiful harvests. They're arguably more powerful than any other faction for that reason alone. 

• Bird Monopoly. The wizards have a strict moratorium on hurting anything that flies. This means chicken, turkeys, pigeons are all off the menu, and don't you even think of killing that griffon that keeps carrying off your cattle. They also completely ban the Wise Guys from charming any birds, preventing the capos from expanding their spy ring to the air. 

• Barbarians At The Gate. The Feathermen operate from the fortress RAINSHADOW, an abandoned dwarven colony built over the Hunting Horns' mountain passes. Without their constant vigilance, monstermen would swarm over the peaks and put the Dells to the sword. Or so they say. Either way, it's the excuse they give the Regency as to why they can indiscriminately use powerful battle magick whenever they want.

FACTIONALISM
The mafia tries to present a unified front against threats both external and internal, but that isn't the reality on the ground. Each branch has ample reason to fear and hate their coworkers.

• The Wise Guys dismiss the Haymakers as a disorganised rabble of podunk farmers and drunken thugs. They're envious of the Feathermen, but don't want to destroy them. They're angling for a palace coup that keeps the cabal intact, but with their goombas in charge.

• The Haymakers think the Wise Guys are a bunch of city-educated snobs who've gone native and started fucking the wildlife. They respect the Feathermen's powerful war magick, but chafe against their moratorium on consuming poultry or eggs. 

• The Feathermen are suspicious of the Wise Guys, rightly believing the shapechangers are trying to undermine their monopoly on the skies. They despise the Haymakers, seeing them as violent gluttons little better than the monstermen they've been fending off for centuries. 

ibid

QUESTS
The Guild's branches prefers to handle issues internally, but occasionally something crops up that requires contracting a freelancer.

• The Haymakers want a printing press, eager to wage a propaganda war against their rivals. The Wise Guys only wildshape because they love fucking wild animals. The Feathermen want to ban you swatting midges and horseflies because they're holy winged creatures. They lack the technical expertise to do it themselves or source sufficient ink. 

• The Wise Guys have a problem - one of their wildshaped agents has gone native. The guy was supposed to rally local bears into harvesting killer bee honey, but he's ignoring their calls to spend all day catching fish and sleeping. The state of nature getting one over on them is an unacceptable publicity nightmare. The capos need the rogue druid taken care of, quietly. 

• The Feathermen, being unsurprisingly claustrophobic, have only explored the uppermost levels of RAINSHADOW. The deeper bowels of the stronghold are still entirely alien to them. They'd love to see them mapped out, and offer salvage rights to any prospective dungeoneers.

• The Haymakers are sick of a griffon eating the cattle under their protection, but they can't press the issue with the Feathermen without starting a trade war. Besides, the wizards seem to love watching people cringe before their mighty winged predator. The pugilist order would pay a mercenary band handsomely if they got rid of the troublesome monster.

• The Wise Guys have a counteroffer. Don't kill the griffon, incapacitate it and bring it to them so they can smuggle it out of the Dells and start a breeding operation. If the players are smart and convince the Haymakers they killed it, they could even collect two paychecks.

PLAYS AND COUNTERPLAYS
There's many paths to disrupting the mafia's dominion over the Dells. Here are but a few.

• The Wise Guys and Haymakers have vested interests in ending the bird prohibition. Give them enough of a push, and they'll stop supporting the Feathermen over it. One option is moving vast numbers of chickens into the Dells - they're a hardy livestock that would take off in popularity given the chance. Once the number of poultry hits critical mass, the Guild won't be able to enforce their moratorium without losing widespread public support.

• The Haymakers annihilate the culture of demihumans they convert to their cause. Smuggling a charismatic hobgoblin war hero or gnoll shaman over the Hunting Horns could stoke discontent among their ranks. It'd also likely start a violent pogrom as the other branches start cracking down on the Haymakers for being seditious anarchists and race traitors.

• The Wise Guys rely on awakened animals or shapeshifted druids to maintain control over their protection rackets. Without these collaborators, the true natural order would reassert itself. Assassinating them or starting a populist revolt among their subjects would go a long way to disabling the mafia's revenue streams and spy rings.

• The Feathermen are sick of people ignoring their poultry prohibition. You could rile them up by bringing them evidence, real or otherwise, of illegal egg smuggling. The wizards can only glass so many bakeries with lightning strikes before the Regency has to do something about it.

• The Haymakers get their holy powers from their strict agrarian diet. Contaminating their food would strip them of their magicks, reducing them to just another jumped-up militia. This wouldn't be easy - the pugilists are vigilant about their diets being adulterated. To taboo them in a single meal would require replacing the majority of their food with impermissible ingredients. You could also play the long game, slowly drip feeding prohibited substances into their diets until they hit the breaking point and lose their kung fu superpowers.

• The Regency supports the Guild's only so long as they serve the state's interests. If you raid the Haymaker's black sites and rescue a high value POW, or tamper with the information they're extracting, the government spooks will see the militia as unreliable partners. Conversely, if you sabotage an arms exchange of trained war beasts from the Wise Guys, the Regency's knightly orders will take their lucrative procurement contracts elsewhere.

ibid