Circles of Spores
The Circles of Spores are a branch of druidic practice concerned primarily with the cycle of life, death, and undeath.
Druids of the Circles of Spores have a complicated relationship with both Resurrection and the Undead. Their philosophy holds that all things on the Material Plane are meant to flow in a cycle of life and death, and they exist to act as stewards of this flow. Just as the corpse of a dead, fallen tree is a valuable host for insects, fungi, seedlings, and other life to flourish, a spores druid sees no issue with other energies temporarily animating or overtaking a dead corpse. However, if an undead force seeks to corrupt or steal from other life to feed its undeath, or refuses to pass on to the next point in the cycle, a spores druid sees it as their duty to destroy it and help death retake its rightful place.
In contrast, resurrection reverses the natural cycle of the Soul out of the body. Druids of the Circles of Spores typically will not engage in restorative or regenerative magic unless not doing so would disrupt a much greater life cycle (such as in cases of famine or widespread crop failure). Druidic reincarnation is not typically taught in these circles.
Druids of the Circles of Spores are often associated with death gods, though rarely in an explicitly evil sense. For instance, the Luciferan Synod, caretakers of several of Hades' holy places (including the Conservatory of Souls and the Hadesian Catacombs), are among the Circles of Spores.
Culture
The druids of the Circles of Spores carry a symbiotic link to fungi. Their staffs and clothing are often adorned with living colonies of mushrooms or molds, so as to help them better guide and command the fungal spores that naturally follow them in the air. They are able to weaponize these spores in a number of circumstances: to destroy an enemy, reanimate a corpse, protect them from disease and destruction, and aid in nearly all of their druidic magic.
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