D&D Druids Are Stupid and Here's Why: The Flesh and The Hunger

Evening, at a fire outside the village of Terhaven

"It is the Hunger."

They laughed at my words. They tried not to show it but I have lived among people too long now not to see their amusement.

"You so-called druids. you look down on the forests from your perches, your towers, and think to speak for the beings in the forest. there are no gods there. no forest beings to owe your loyalty. the only true force in the forest is the Hunger. The forest, 'tis no story-tale where the young maiden sings as unicorns dance around her. It is a place of cruelty. Each creature and thing is fed by the hunger within it, as surely as a stream flows downwards. The wolf feeds because it hungers. The deer feeds because it hungers. They have needs and they will be met. The tree hungers. The moss hungers."

"Now, now," my friend Sandestivan cajoles from the seat next to me, "have I not also heard you speak of the birthing?" it was obvious that he was trying to calm the situation. "I have you speak of another force in nature that balances the hunger. More than once I have heard you speak of the war between the Hunger and the Flesh.

I rolled my eyes as I had seen the humans do to express annoyance. Who did he think to please with his honeyed words, these pompous magicians playing at being wardens of nature?

"Aye," i allow, "there is also the Flesh. That being at the heart of all creation."

"And that is what we seek to protect," one the druids says, the small one with large ears and the too-strong a gaze. For one who claimed to speak for the woods, he hadn't once stopped to check the clearing around us. There could be a predator circling us right now and he would have no idea. Even the youngest sparrows knew that. 

"Creation, he continued," is the purest joy of nature. The gaiety of spring, of wildflowers, the gentle chirp of the baby bird calling for its mother."

"The flesh," I continue, ignoring him," is the desire of all flesh all creatures and things to spread, to reproduce." 

"Are you suggesting," another of the druids asked, "the one with the spectacles, that all life in the forest is led by two- what? forces? gods?"

"Maybe," I replied. "And maybe not. I have never seen a god, nor have I ever seen hunger. Flesh is obvious to see but I do not think that is what you mean. I do not think it is important that Hunger or Flesh be a being, but I cannot say that they are not real. Indeed, they are some of the only things in the world. They are the most real things. Whether a giant cow licked the world into being from the flesh of a dead giant as I am told in the village, I cannot say. But I have seen the hunger. I have seen it in the bloated grizzly in the fall. I have seen in it the dying aspen in drought. And who can doubt the Flesh? Are we not all matter grown by them that reared us? Are we not all just groups of flesh, albeit of different kinds? if you, magician, with your forest magic and your shape-changing claim that we are all one with nature, is it so strange to consider all Flesh as one being, stretching across the earth?" 

"Yes, and this is the balance we speak of. Unlike so-called civilization, the wilds are places where balance exists. Yes, wolf eats the deer but not to extinction. The bird on the wing does cull all of its insect prey. They live in balance."

"If you were to use your magics to ensorcle us into the direct path of a tiger, would it eat us?"

"Not with as meals as we've been missing," Sandestivan muttered. "Someone keeps scaring all of the people with food to share away."

I glare at him. I even move from the fallen log we are sitting on and perch on the edge of the druids' wagon, to assert dominance. 

He frustratingly seems to ignore both gestures.

"Well? Would the tiger eat us?"I repeat.

"I assume it would at least try, yes. Though it might find us hard prey."

He whispered something and twisted his wrist and a vine sprung from the ground. It was not a plant I recognized though from the leaves I tell it was some kind of ivy. He twisted his wrist the other way and just suddenly as it had sprung from the ground, it withered into a brown heap of rotten leaves.

"Be that as it may, but would the tiger ask an accounting of how the human population would be affected if it were to devour you? No, it would simply consume you and be done with it. You claim to protect the forest from humans. Tis no pretty place, no utopia. The wild places are a land of war. Everything Hungers, and everything eats. The cry of the baby birds you cling to as a message of hope means that some small creature has been killed. It is a place of death. The quiet you see seek there is merely the calm before the storm, the quiet between battles. The balance you foolishly profess as the will of the forest is simply a detente. No thing of the forest can satiate its hunger on the forest as it would like. The flesh likes to consume, but it does not like to be eaten. It is a war between predator and prey. Between flesh and the hunger of others. The wolf has fangs but the bucks grow antlers. They are simply not as efficient as you humans are. At days' end, that's all that separates its lowly creatures from the likes of the 'noble beast' who 'must save it'."

"Well is there not a balance between the forces?" says the last druid. She is older than the others, I think, and her eyebrows heavier. "If there is no balance in the forest, then why has not all flesh succumbed to the hunger? Why is entropy unable to defeat unbridled creation?"

"You'll like this part," Sandestivan whispers to the small one with the big ears. "It's always very dramatic when he tells it."

"Because they are not two things, there are really only one. The flesh creates the hunger. The hunger feeds the flesh. Without destruction, there would be no creation. It is merely the snake biting its only tale. The flesh creates and the hunger destroys. But the hunger knows no sanity and the flesh no reason. Oh, believe me, there is beauty there. There is stillness. But despite what you may discuss in your circles and covens, the true nature of the wild is death. Death hangs over all."

"Anyone who truly speaks the will of the forest would only bring ferocity and death. You merely reinforce the current stalemate."

"Nothing should be allowed to destroy, to decimate other beings."

"So you seek to reinforce the status quo? Would not the coyote enjoy it if he were a more efficient hunter? He could have more time with their young if they didn't have to hunt as much."

"And what if they kill off all of the prey? What if they drive extinct all of their food?"

"Do you not think nature would right itself? Do you think so little of the system you claim to revere that you don't the flesh would right itself?"

"It has happened in other forests, other places. Important species go extinct and the ecosystem suffers."

Spoken with the mind of a human. You are too impatient. Nature, the Flesh, does not think as quickly as you. If the coyote becomes too good at killing, it will die. The flesh oversteps, so to does the hunger. Perhaps not soon, but a new stalemate will emerge. When the humans are dead, when their hunger outgrows their ability, they too will be replaced. Humans are not apart from nature they are merely a branch of it. A tree so tall it cannot see it is in the forest just like the others."