Draft:Archdruid

Omega 0.90.4

The Archdruid leads the Druids and conducts rituals of neutralization. The initial holder is Thistleman, a spellcaster living in the Great Henge north of Rampart. A peaceful meeting offers experience and advances an early Oracle objective; the ritual can help manage alignment and mana, with its effects depending on the moon.

Initial holder	Recorded level	Combat level	HP	Attack strength	Armor class	Base melee damage	Kill XP
Thistleman	10	9	220	9	5	9	180

Finding the Archdruid

The Great Henge is a countryside temple marked X, at world coordinates 32, 5; Rampart is at 27, 19. Coordinates start at 0 in the upper-left corner. Enter from the south, reach the central altar, then search immediately north of it for the concealed passage leading west. The Archdruid occupies the northwestern chamber.

The Great Henge initially makes its inhabitants nonhostile to all visitors. Its walls are hedges: Druids move through them freely, while others risk the usual hedge injuries or entanglement. The ordinary doors and corridors provide a route without pushing through hedges.

The Archdruid can also appear in mansions, wilderness encounters or random historical-person summons. Mansion generation starts the resident hostile, sleeping at night, even to another Druid. A nonhostile Archdruid encountered elsewhere can provide the same conversation and ritual; the service is not restricted to the Great Henge. The shared missing-priest behavior can affect the Great Henge after you become any religion's high priest.

First conversation

Your first conversation with a nonhostile Archdruid awards 300 experience. If you already follow the Druids, each active guild experience pool also receives 300 additional guild experience, on top of its share of the ordinary award.

The meeting satisfies the Oracle's request to speak to the Archdruid. You can decline the ritual and still receive the first-meeting reward and complete that objective. This is a once-per-game greeting, not a payment from every successor or every visit.

Ritual of neutralization

Ask for the ritual during a peaceful conversation. It costs no gold, but accepted rituals take time and execute hourly updates.

Moon at the start	Result	Ritual time
New or full moon	Ritual refused	None
Either half moon	Everyone becomes exactly Neutral and has mana set to its calculated maximum; Druids also gain 200 experience	Six hours
Other phases, Druid follower	Exactly Neutral; mana set to its calculated maximum	One hour
Other phases, non-Druid	Alignment moves toward Neutral according to character level; no direct mana refill	One hour

On ordinary ritual days, a non-Druid loses a fraction of current alignment equal to (10 - character level) / 10, with the amount removed rounded toward zero. At level 5, alignment +101 becomes +51, then +26 after another ritual. Small remaining values may stop changing. At level 10 or higher, this ordinary ritual cannot change a non-Druid's alignment, but still takes an hour. The half-moon ceremony remains an exception and fully neutralizes even a high-level outsider.

The six-hour ceremony applies its initial result before advancing time. Each hour consumes food and performs the usual hourly status and recovery checks; crossing midnight advances the calendar and moon phase. In an original-function experiment, a ceremony from 21:30 ended at 03:30, advanced the date and used six food units. This differs from the tavern's clock jump. The moon has a 24-day cycle, and the ritual uses the phase when you start it.

You may repeat eligible rituals. Bring food, and account for changes to temporary effects or conditions during the elapsed hours. A Druid can obtain another 200 experience from a half-moon ceremony, but it costs another six hours and the moon eventually changes.

Hostility and disappearance

The initial Thistleman has dangerous combat spellcasting despite modest melee damage. A hostile Archdruid's conversation is also dangerous: before asking whether you have learned your lesson, the Archdruid strikes you with 100 points of magical disruption. This is ordinary damage, reduced by absorption and stopped by ordinary-damage immunity, rather than an unavoidable 100-HP loss. It can still kill an unprepared character.

If you survive, answering yes, no or quit all leads to the same result in 0.90.4: creatures on the current map become nonhostile and the Archdruid vanishes. The dialogue's apparent choice does not work as its wording suggests. This disappearance gives no kill experience, drops no holy symbol and does not appoint a new Archdruid. It also does not count as the peaceful first meeting for the Oracle.

Succession and strategy

The Archdruid carries a Holy Symbol of Druidism, appearing unidentified as a Sprig of Mistletoe. Stealing it does not qualify you to become Archdruid. A Druid Senior Priest instead needs one of the symbols of Odin, Set, Athena or Hecate, a character level above the incumbent's recorded level, and alignment from -10 through +10. The initial level requirement is 11.

Pray at a Druid altar with that symbol to receive the promotion: +5 current and maximum Power, Disintegration and Heroism, and an authorized Symbol of Druidism. Killing Thistleman grants no office and does not lower the recorded threshold. As with other high priests, an identified stolen symbol is unsafe to invoke before authorization.

For a newcomer, a peaceful first meeting is useful even without joining the Druids or changing alignment. For a follower of Odin or Athena, becoming exactly Neutral can prevent priestly advancement and disrupt other alignment-dependent careers; plan the ritual around those obligations. At high levels, outsiders seeking full neutralization need a half-moon ceremony rather than repeated ordinary rituals.