Crown Druid

"As of this day, the first day of the first month of 1037, the Imperial Circle of Druids shall be dissolved, and members of the circle shall no longer be recognized as imperial officials by any statute or office of the empire."

Crown Druid, as it was known to the people, was an important position under the traditional Esiteshi Empire's regional government system. Crown Druids were in charge of tracking, reportin, and guiding all things related to nature in cities and their provinces. However the job was eliminated from the empire's governing system due to a political shift in the capital's politics, their duties now accomplished by arcanists and Rudena Clocks, or sometimes neglected entirely.

Duties

Control of Nature

The crown druids were a way for the empire to exert control over nature. Their magic was used to sustain large scale agriculture. They were often part of large scale projects that involved mass clearing of forests and reshaping terrain to match the needs of the Emperor's ambitions. During conquests, the wilds and the weather were manipulated to create powerful advantages for the imperial armies. Many times throughout history, the crown druids also used magic to twist nature against people in regions where disobedience and rebellion grew into problems for the empire.

Information

Using divination, such as scrying or communes with nature, the druids were often tasked with collection and report of information back to the capital about the changes in the environment. This data has been recorded for centuries in the imperial archives, allowing the empire to sometimes more robust and detailed understandings of the geography than the native population conquered there.

Theological Regulation

Druids, along with arcanists, were given the duty of quenching large organized religious movements that accumulated substantial amounts of divine power. While the elven pantheon is officially recognized in the capital, the empire is largely against the formation of powerful religious groups in her territories.

Status

Patron to the People

Amongst many of the common peoples, crown druids were often revered and sometimes worshipped. They were seen as the vessel through which the empire's will most directly exerted upon their lives, able to create both weal and woe for their crops and their houses. Offerings to the druids became another significant source of income for the cities and provinces of the empire.

Watcher of the Wizards

Politically, the druids were a foil to the power of the Arcane Schools in the Emperor's courts. They were a class of magic users equivalent in authority to provincial governors, allowing the numerous wizards that filled the empire's work force to be kept in check. On a larger scale, the head of the Imperial Circle often provided descent to the opinions of the archwizard's proposals, and could be used as basis to act against their will because of the greater standing in the traditions of elven society.

Traitors to Tradition

The instatement of the Imperial Circle was designed to maintain in spirit the tradition of elven societies of druid circles having a prominent part in the governance of settlements. However, the system reduced the role to only one officially recognized druid per region. Even more crucially, the druids now officially answered to the Emperor, a wide divergence from the independent druid circles in tradition. Other elven druidic circles, especially from Woodland, societies, looked down upon members of the imperial circle as traitors to the druid tradition. A druid that was patron to urban cities, the antithesis of the natural state, and loyal to mortal political power was blasphemy in their eyes. A druid that manipulated the states of nature for the interests of a crown, that did not respect nature's will nor its secrets, was not a druid at all.

Downfall

As the eleventh cetury began, innovation in magic and engineering accelerated rapidly. Arcane technologies such as glyph entanglement, hollowcasting, and Lumene enrichment, alongside advancements in engineering and architecture allowed for inventions like Rudena Clocks, Scrywalls, and Runic Canons. The boundries of what wizard's could do were quickly falling down.

In this age of advancement suddenly the wizarding schools were full of new faces and new ideas. Many scholastic and arcane movements formed, grew, and fractured. The status quo of wizards as a largely unified political class had fractured.

Meanwhile, the Imperial Circle remained unified as it grew in influence and establishment in imperial society. In the tumultuous shifts in the political landscape, crown druids became the stable fixtures of authority the people could lean on, and soon they began to overtake imperial governors in authority. At the beginning of the 1030s, they were almost certainly the most powerful political faction in the empire, save the Emperor.

In the following years, the powers of the Circle grew unchecked. The size of the circle was expanded, adding more druids per region to match the increased responsibilities. As even druids from the woodland elves became part of the circle, the Imperial Circle became a serious threat to the emperor's authority. Even rumors of whispers to reform the Esiteshi Empire into a druidic state could be heard throughout its territories.

On the first day of 1037, the emperor decreed the dissolvement of the Imperial Circle. Their role was replaced with Rudena Clocks for information, and numerous arcanists which now were abundant among the empire's people, armed with continiously developing technologies that allowed them more control over the land and people than the wizardly tradition could access before. Since this decree, no druids have held any official position in the imperial government. Druids were no longer part of elven society in the empire, tradition be damned.