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I agree. Seems to me that the Bronzewood Lodge should be made up of ecoterrorists. Their primary concern is the caretaking of old druidic ruins and I can see how they can't really stand up to the might of the Free City. However, Diamond Lake being the hellhole that it is, any druid or ranger would be pleased it the whole place was put to the torch.
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Environmental consciousness is a relatively new concept to the sentient mind. The first environmental legislation in the US was in the 1880's when the hydraulic mining of California's placer gold deposits was outlawed. Before then (and arguably even still today), humanity has always thought of nature as being so big that there was always somewhere else to find "purity" (or another place to despoil when it became too nasty where they were). Taking this ideology to heart, in the quasi-medieval societies of most fantasy settings, the majority of sentient races would do the same.
D&D druids arguably would see the practices of mining in the Diamond Lake region to be "normal" for how sentient beings interact with the environment. They know that the world will outlast the machinations of sentient beings and that the degradation of the lake is only a short period in a long cycle of Nature. The nuetrally aligned druids know that patience will bring results that are favourable for the lake's ecosystems. The mines will run out and the sentients will move on to the next spot. When this happens, I would expect the druids to move in to accelerate the healing process.
Through the wonders of 3.x alignment restrictions easing compared to prior editions, there are opportunities for druid extremists to help push things along quicker. A NE druid may sabotage the sentient settlements to nudge the beings out of the area so that Nature can recover sooner. LN druids may attempt to push environmental legislation through the directing oligarchy of the Free City. It's up to the players' and DM's perspective on things and how proactive they want to get.
Rangers, druids and even elves that don't get "riled" about the conditions of the area aren't truly "out-of-character" as they know that Beory's Will is slow forming and long lasting.
I expect that the Bronzewood Lodge monitors the conditions of the area and acts to minimize the environmental trauma. I'd suggest that the majority of the aquatic vertebrate life was moved before the lake became too polluted. The gars that thrive there now may have been planted to keep some semblence of an ecosystem working in the lake. For all we know, perhaps there's more lurking beneath the surface...
Just this US Forest Service employee's take on the matter...
Environmental consciousness is a relatively new concept to the sentient mind. The first environmental legislation in the US was in the 1880's when the hydraulic mining of California's placer gold deposits was outlawed. Before then (and arguably even still today), humanity has always thought of nature as being so big that there was always somewhere else to find "purity" (or another place to despoil when it became too nasty where they were). Taking this ideology to heart, in the quasi-medieval societies of most fantasy settings, the majority of sentient races would do the same.
D&D druids arguably would see the practices of mining in the Diamond Lake region to be "normal" for how sentient beings interact with the environment. They know that the world will outlast the machinations of sentient beings and that the degradation of the lake is only a short period in a long cycle of Nature. The nuetrally aligned druids know that patience will bring results that are favourable for the lake's ecosystems. The mines will run out and the sentients will move on to the next spot. When this happens, I would expect the druids to move in to accelerate the healing process.
Through the wonders of 3.x alignment restrictions easing compared to prior editions, there are opportunities for druid extremists to help push things along quicker. A NE druid may sabotage the sentient settlements to nudge the beings out of the area so that Nature can recover sooner. LN druids may attempt to push environmental legislation through the directing oligarchy of the Free City. It's up to the players' and DM's perspective on things and how proactive they want to get.
Rangers, druids and even elves that don't get "riled" about the conditions of the area aren't truly "out-of-character" as they know that Beory's Will is slow forming and long lasting.
I expect that the Bronzewood Lodge monitors the conditions of the area and acts to minimize the environmental trauma. I'd suggest that the majority of the aquatic vertebrate life was...
Well the rest of the D&D "good" vs. "evil" mindset is completely and totally centered in modern Western conceptualizations of those concepts and has nothing to do with how they were and are percieved by other cultures.
So if you want eco-terrorist druids, go for it. It sounds like fun.
More fun than legally killing off the man who killed your uncle if he doesn't pay the weregild set by the local earl.
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So if you want eco-terrorist druids, go for it. It sounds like fun.
Yeah, baby! I can see CN druid Edward D'abbey and his GnomeTool Gang planning on blowing up the foundry that's continuously polluting the lake. Bad is good, Baby! Boom, Baby! Boom!!*
*intended to sound like the Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight.
I think the druids deity would have some influence on how they might view the situation.
In Greyhawk a CN druid of Llerg would be less than inclined to sit back and let humanity wipe out a group of animals. They would also tend to react in a brutal and in your face way.
about the lake... do you have an idea of how many cubic feet of water it has? =)
I have no clue about how big the lake is.
But, when I played thru the AoW our party agreed to help clean up the lake. We disposed of pollutants from the mining operations and did some other things to try and clean up the environs in and around Diamond Lake.
In my group, the party's Cleric, as he grew in maturity, took it upon himself to try and make Diamond Lake a better place, even while he was out adventuring. Once he was a high enough level, he made a rod that casts Purify Water at will, and sent it back to two of his sidekicks that still lived in Diamond Lake. The two of them would then take turns, all day, every day, casting Purify Water over and over and over again, slowly (but surely) turning the lake fresh again. They hadn't finished by the end of the campaign, but once the campaign was over, the player told me his character going to spend the rest of his life trying to fix up the town. Not for the good of nature, mind you- he couldn't care less about the environment- but rather because his character was the only one who grew up in Diamond Lake, and when he set out on his adventures he was a very unintelligent, very immature boy who didn't care about much of anything, and as he grew older and smarter, he wanted to try and give back to the town that he (over time) realized had been wasting away his entire life.