Index Cards in the Rain 

A TTRPG Blog by Evey Lockhart

This is a blog that eats itself. 

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Nothing is Born of a Vacuum (Except Dark Energy [Maybe] )

So… I was watching this wonderful video by Snow. (I can’t recommend her work enough, btw.) Anyway, her video got me to thinking about my own vicious druids from Ruinous Palace of the Metegorgos (started writing it back in 2016). Metegorgos druids were sorta created in conversation with Kemp’s blog post. I read the wolf/murder druids post when it first came out. I was a Goblin Punch fan from them G+ days.

At the time, I’d been working on an ecoterroristy concept of druids, implacable and vicious like an animal under threat. Then along came Arnold’s wolf-monster uncivilization vision and it lit the ol’ mind-fire.

I love/d what he made, but it didn’t quite vibe with my conceptions of nature and civilization. His druids were/are super rad, but wolves didn’t fit, for me.

My zealots weren’t wolves, they couldn’t be. Wolves never deigned to be domesticated in the first place. Druids, if anything, were like feral dogs, a desperate attempt to shed civilization, rewild the soul, and atone. Thing is… Nature carries no guilt to absolve; atonement fruits solely from civilized vines.

From my perspective, druids needed the tools of civilization (and hate themselves for it).

 Specifically, my Druids required words to conceptualize and counter threats against Nature. They ALL, each one, needed these words and modes of understanding. The druids need human adaptations to accomplish their shared self-perception as blood-soaked protectors of nature.

Instead of accepting this truth, Druids turned their discomfort into anger, violence, and abuse. Instead, they terrorize she who bears the burden of words for them. Druids loathe themselves for natural advantages, necessary adaptations. That’s hella unnatural.

What hawk hates its nictitating membranes, its wings or talons? Show me a self-loathing snail.

More than that, there is no actual line between ecosystem and city. The two are instead inextricably intertwined.

In Metegorgos, the druids feel the threat to the inaccessible cave ecosystem as easily the threat to their own forest. They could feel threats to city and farmland ecosystems as well. If only they could see them as real. Ironic, that sort of self-enforced ignorance makes up the meat and potatoes of civilization.

If I had some kind of conclusion beyond “I loved that post!” and “Nothing is born of a vacuum, least of all my own work…”, I’d probably put it here. I don’t, though.

Good thing this is a blog post and not a graded essay.

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