"--Hello! Are you a druid?" 

"Yes!" Finally another normal person to talk to. Studying the outsiders would be so much less emotionally exhausting with a support group of more than one person.

"I'm Bright Morning Feather, druid of Ravounel forest. This is my companion Greystripe. I'm pleased to meet you! Are you here because of the human convention too?"

"Yes! I persuaded some other Itarii to elect me." 

"I was chosen by the senior druids and I'm glad I was chosen, because I'm trying to understand the outsiders - the mostly-human society outside the forest. Why did you want to come? And I don't recognize the name Itarii, where do you live?"

Feather being friendly with strangers tends to consist of a rapid stream of questions, but unlike with Chelish humans she can totally read the body language of a strix in flight and will react accordingly! Assuming this strix is like the ones she knows back in Ravounel, anyway.

"I'm from Mountainhome, like all the rest of us. It's northwest of here. I don't understand the humans very well either, so I don't think I'll be able to help much, unfortunately. What are you, under the owl? I've learned about halflings and orcs and their not being human, since coming here."

"I don't know where Mountainhome is." To be honest it sounds like something anyone would call their mountain home, which is very valid but could mean there are dozens of places named that. "Do you know where Ravounel Forest is? It's all the way west and a bit north, past some big mountains, until you reach the big ocean and can't go west anymore."

"And - I'm a druid." Not everyone understands druids though, not even in the forest. "I'm not anything under the owl, I'm just an owl right now. I spend most of my time as either owl or human - well, mostly human and a little bit elf and orc and other things - but I'm the creature that I am at the time, I'm not something else under it."

"...Itarii druids are still Itarii when they're shaped like something else, or they wouldn't be allowed to be chieftains. I don't know why it would be different for anyone else. I mean, it's not that I don't believe you, but I couldn't have guessed it ahead of time. And no, I know what forests are but I don't know much about anyplace too far from home. West and north of Mountainhome is also ocean, though. I mean, there's a human city for a bit, but besides that."

Huh. "You have your own druids? How many people live there, is it just strix? I haven't met any druids who aren't from a forest, maybe they're different in a way I don't know about."

"The way a druid becomes a creature of some race is by studying that race and understanding them in every way and gradually learning to think and behave and live just like them, and then the magic supplies the shape. The shape is necessary, but it's not the important or the difficult part. I can't become a new kind of creature without meeting a real one first and learning a lot about them for a long time."

"I think wizards and maybe clerics have spells that just reshape their bodies, they don't need to understand anything about the creature they're pretending to be. But I really am an owl. I grew up knowing owls, some of my best friends are owls - I mean they were hatched owls, like Greystripe here, he's not a druid. And when I became a druid I learned to become an owl too."

"If something killed me while I was an owl then the magic would end and my body would return to being human-shaped. Maybe that's what you mean? But if something killed me, I'd be dead, and that's a much bigger change than what shape my body is!"

"Well, you can understand a creature without being it--I don't just mean in terms of bodies or magic, I mean, if I argue with one of my friends, sometimes I will understand their point completely but still disagree with them. So I bet you can understand another animal while still having a sense of identity as your original species. It's just Itarii, on Mountainhome, as far as sapient beings go; when the humans come in we kill them. But halflings and orcs aren't human so maybe we won't kill those, going forward! Druids are rarer than--uh--I don't know the word--[shamans,] but we have them."

*[] indicates Itarii word instead of Sylvan.

"I mean, yes, of course! I understand many races but I can only be one at a time. And I understand many other races but not well enough to be them; I can't become a strix, not until I'm a much much better druid. But I can't become a race while - disagreeing with how that race is. It would be like - becoming something I hate being, I guess. Like becoming an owl but hating and refusing to ever fly. So I wouldn't do it even if I could. Understanding lots of very different races at once means a druid has to accept how they are and not think some are better than others. Druids are supposed to help everyone in the Forest." Maybe if a community's druids are all hatched strix for many generations, they could lose sight of that? But Feather isn't going to judge druids she hasn't even met; Liushna could be misunderstanding her own druids too.

"Why do you kill humans? I mean, we do it too some of the time, because we know the humans are usually coming in to hurt and kill people without need and to cut down or burn the forest and not let it grow back. And I'm still not sure why they do that, at least not - in all the cases that they do. Why do the humans bother you, if you live on a mountain and not in a forest with trees they want?"

"I didn't mean I thought you should disagree with it, just that it's possible to understand and even inhabit a perspective without being it. I think the humans want to live where we live, and that's why it started, but right now we kill humans because the humans will kill us if we don't. The human Queen who was just overthrown is supposed to have been really bad, so I came here because I hope that with less bad humans in charge, we can have peace again. We had peace a long time ago." 

"I wish the Forest could have peace too. But we never had, even back under Aroden. So - I don't really know what to do," Feather confesses, "but I hoped that maybe I could understand the outsider humans better, or meet someone who could explain them to me, and find a solution. Because we can't - just not try, right?" 

"...and of course it will be useful regardless to know what the new human Queen is going to do, and she promised safe conduct to the delegates."

"I'm a little surprised humans want to live on a mountain, but - some humans try to burn whole forests to get more territory. Adjusting to life on a mountain has got to be easier than that." This is getting depressing. "I'm glad you're able to defend your mountains, at least!"

“Humans can’t fly. It’s a big disadvantage.”

"That makes sense! Flying is great, isn't it." (Greystripe hoots in acknolwedgment.)

"Speaking of, where are you flying to? I don't mind flying along while we're talking, I'm just curious." Owls aren't the best at endurance flying, or hovering in one place for that matter, but she can keep going for a while, she hasn't been doing anything else strenuous recently; worst case she has lesser restorations.

“Nowhere in particular. Just trying to familiarize myself with the layout of the city.”

"It is hard to find your way around, isn't it? I guess it took me a long time to learn the forest too. I flew over it when I came in but I don't think I really understand it yet. It's all built by humans but I don't know if it could have been built different or why it is the way it is."

“I don’t know what enough of the landmarks even are to guess,” Liushna admits cheerfully.

"Me neither! I found some temples, and the place for the convention, and then everything I checked seems to be private homes, for sleeping and eating and - I guess lairing in, for the really big ones? But I only checked a few, the others just look similar. And some are probably for work, like making tools and smaller things. And I know those over there are for storing grain, I found them because I was looking for the local rats. But that still leaves a lot I don't know about."

“Sorry, I don’t know the word ‘temples?’”

"Places that belong to a god or the god's clerics, so the people who follow that god and want help from the clerics or to help the clerics know where to go and meet each other."

“Oh, gods. Itarii don’t do gods.”

"Fair enough! We have very few clerics in the forest, and those are mostly of Gozreh, although some people do worship other gods." Like the hags who worship Rovagug, but she's not going to mention that in polite company, it makes a bad impression and probably deservedly so. "I've been trying to understand what the gods tell humans to do, or what they think the gods are telling them to do, but they seem very confused about it themselves."

“Gozreh isn’t a god, Gozreh is just the world.”

"I... can maybe see why you'd think that? Gozreh is the god who's closest to being all of Nature. Honestly I'd feel more comfortable with them if they really were the world and not a god, I don't think any gods have our best interests at heart! Everyone I know calls Gozreh a god but I don't really know how you'd tell if it's true, so maybe you're right."

“I’m not sure what it would mean for Gozreh to be a god.”

"That's - huh. Well, I'm sure that some gods exist and are really gods. They make clerics, and the strongest clerics can talk to their gods. And the gods choose clerics who will do what the god wants, and take away their power if they don't. As far as I know Gozreh does all those things, but their clerics in the Forest aren't strong enough to talk to him."

"I'm not sure it really matters, though? Something makes those people clerics. Maybe it's a different god with a different name and Gozreh really is - all of nature. Many people have magic without being clerics, not just druids. Maybe some of that magic is - given by someone, I don't know how we'd tell. The important thing is who gets the magic and what they do with it."

"Well, that's fair. But Itarii conceptualize ourselves as not-having-gods, and we have clerics of Gozreh." 

"What does it mean not to have gods? Some people in the Forest worship Gozreh, does that count? Or do you just mean being clerics?"

Feather is fascinated by learning about a new kind of people and would happily spend weeks doing just that if she didn't have to eventually go back to trying to understand the Outsiders, but she can definitely spend a few hours!

"Gozreh doesn't count to us because Gozreh is--in our minds, at least--just the world. Not having gods means..."

How much can she tell Feather? Feather isn't bad, but she's not an Itarii, and therefore not entitled to their secret lore. 

"...Itarii legends say that a very long time ago, we were--separated, from the gods. And since then we don't worship them or anything." 

Feather knows all about having secrets that aren't meant for outsiders! She bobs sympathetically.

"Most of the people in the Forest don't like the gods. Because they're mostly helping outsiders and not us, and the outsiders are mostly our enemies. And some gods are themselves enemies of the forests, like Aroden and Asmodeus and probably some others, and there's no god who's really on our side. I'm not sure even Gozreh are on the forests' side; they're said to care about wind and rain and waves, not about - people. We don't refuse cleric spells if they give them, but - they give them to the humans outside the forests, too."

"The only reason I know the name 'Asmodeus' is that I eavesdrop on the human towns a deeply weird amount, and it's the only god's name I know. --Except if you count Gozreh as a god," she adds belatedly. 

"I got history lessons! And I've talked to humans before and not just eavesdropped on them. Only the humans who live around the Forest though, I've never been this far from home."

(They flew through the Barrowood on the way here and it was incredible and really made Feather wish she could stay for more than a few days, but alas. Maybe on the way back...)

“…Can you tell me about the gods that all the other delegates are going to know and care about? So I understand what they mean better, at the convention.”

Oh wow, an exam she didn't prepare for Feather can totally do this! 

"So, um, bear in mind I don't know most of it yet, and also the humans seem to disagree with each other a lot. Maybe it's because there are humans here for the convention from so many different places, as far apart as this place is from the Forest. But here's what I've learned so far."

"Asmodeus is the god the humans followed until last year. All around here, in the huge area they call Cheliax. So everyone cares about the fact he's gone and they hate him now, or pretend to hate him."

"Asmodeus is double-alignment, Lawful and Evil, and he wanted the humans to sort of own everything and everyone else, and each other too. Like, every thing has an owner, every person has an owner, humans own the non-humans, stronger humans own other humans, all the way until the top two humans in the country were owned by Asmodeus himself. And he wanted everyone to hurt and terrorize the people they owned. And no, I have no idea why they went along with all this, because as far as I can tell all the humans were miserable all the time. Asmodeus is really weird, even for a double-alignment god."

"Iomedae is the goddess of fighting Asmodeus. So last year everyone here thought she was weak and bad at her job, and now she's suddenly won and everyone thinks she's strong and scary. I don't know if they'll follow her now - or rather, they don't know, they're waiting to see what the new Queen does. Iomedae's Lawful and Good."

"Erastil is the god of humans farming, Lawful and Good. I don't know why farming is Lawful and I don't think they do either. His clerics get the plant growth spell, and the humans relied on that a lot. After Asmodeus drove out all the clerics of Erastil and also made war on the forests they didn't have enough food, and now I think they're hoping Erastil will like them again."

"Pharasma is the goddess of safe childbirth. Most races that don't lay eggs are fine but humans have a lot of babies and even mothers die in childbirth, it so they like Pharasma. She's Neutral."

"There's a lot of smaller gods, or at least ones that fewer humans around here follow. Cayden, god of drinking alcohol, it may seem like a very specific thing but humans care about it a lot. Desna, goddess of butterflies, I don't know why there's a goddess of specifically butterflies but gods are weird and I guess it's better than not that. Abadar, Lawful god of buying and selling and trading, the humans who have a lot of money care about him and the others not as much. Uh... Oh yeah, Shelyn, the Good goddess of beauty and song and art. She sounds like the best one of the lot but I haven't met any of her followers yet."

"Oh yeah, and Aroden was the god they followed before Asmodeus but they say he died. A century or so ago, when a lot of horrible stuff happened around the world - I guess I don't know if you've heard about stuff like the Worldwound. Anyway, the one good thing that happened was Aroden dying, because he was the forests' biggest enemy. And since then the humans have been fighting themselves half the time and not bothering us so much. I don't know what Aroden was god of, besides humans destroying the forests and conquering the world, maybe he was like a Lawful Neutral version of Asmodeus and the humans went with the closest thing they could get."

"...I don't think I've heard of the Worldwound, but about a hundred years ago there were a few years of really bad storms. What is it that you mean about double-alignment being weird?"

"I mean, it feels a bit weird, like - doing two things at once is twice as hard and you're not doing either one very well? But really I don't understand it well enough, I haven't learned to become any double-alignment people yet. But - it seems like the gods who have just one alignment, or are True Neutral, are the sensible ones doing stuff it's easy to understand? Childbirth, beauty, trade, those are - kind of natural concepts. But Aroden was just Lawful and I don't understand him either - well, I guess 'conquer everything for ourselves' is easy to understand, I just hate that there doesn't seem to be anything else behind it... Maybe it's just me, maybe double alignments are hard to understand but that doesn't mean they're wrong or unnatural, right."

"What do you think about the alignments? You, or the Itarii, I guess. I was taught a lot about them but that's mostly important because I'm a druid, other people don't really have to care."

"So the thing is, alignments aren't necessarily something you're doing on purpose? Like, my tribe's chief is Lawful Good, but she's not trying to be Lawful Good, she just wants to be good and then a lot of things she cares about happen to be lawful. Like, alignments are just...descriptions? Of the way people are? And you can use them to point yourself places but even if you're not trying you're still going to be somewhere. Saying Lawful Good is weird sounds to me, like, Northwest is weird."