Conclave

The Conclave is an organization made up primarily of druids, rangers and bards.  Invariably, all members are highly capable in their own fields, be it as warriors, spellcasters, herbalists, or survivalists. Personal power is very important to them, each member possessing the knowledge and skills to be self-sufficient.

The goal of the Conclave is an admirable one. Above all else, they seek to maintain balance between the natural world and the world of civilization. While they are certainly known to help protect people from the threats of the natural world, historically they have been known to take nature's side in conflicts; bully and harassing settlements to force them to adhere to the Conclave's arbitrary view on where the line between nature and civilization should be.

It's worth stressing just how arbitrary and subjective the Conclave's ideology is. After all, who gets to decide when a city has expanded too far into nature? Who gets to decide how many beasts need to attack a village before a member of the Conclave can get involved? For the most part, it seems up to the individual member of the Conclave, with little guidance coming from their superiors.

Things get more difficult when we start to question what we mean by the natural world. A city, most will agree, is not a natural place. However, is a village a natural place? After all, most villages are abundant with farmlands and animals, and ecosystems. True, these ecosystems tend to involve humans, but so does any ecosystem preside over by a druid or ranger of the Conclave.

What about nomadic tribes? Are the Gruul Clans part of nature? What about goblins and orcs? True, most people associate them more with the wilderness than with civilization, but how does the Conclave regard them? If goblins attack a village, would the Emerald.

Enclave necessarily protect the village, or would they aid the goblins striking against civilization? What about other creatures, such as trolls, manticores, dragons, and beholders? At what point do they stop being part of nature and start being a monster that needs to be killed?

This becomes more complicated when we consider imbalances to nature that are brought about by natural means. For example, if a species of rodent were being hunted to extinction by a particularly fierce breed of eagle, or a particularly harsh winter was killing off a local colony of badgers, would the Conclave get involved? If they do, it means they're willing to interfere with nature, to shape it to fit with their preconceived idea of how it should be. If they don't, it means they have no problem with ecosystems being disrupted, so long as it's not intelligent creatures causing it.

The question of when to meddle and when not to meddle becomes even more confusing when you remember that most of the Conclave's members are druids. Their magic is all about interfering with nature. They can cause plants to grow or die, can suddenly alter the weather, can start or end entire epidemics, can “bless” beasts and plants with human level 4 intelligence. They obviously insist that they use these powers responsibly; however, as with everything else, the Conclave has no official guidelines on how its members should use their powers.

Much of this is due to the fact that most of its members are naturally predisposed towards being hermits and isolationists. Its members are used to following their own (often unexamined) sense of morality and having few outsiders question them. While the looser organization structure is beneficial to its members; to outsiders the Conclave can come across as hypocritical and capricious, pursuing their whims and their alien ethos without considering how it will affect ordinary people.

That said, their capriciousness means that they do at least as much good as they do harm. They have opposed many cults and other organizations that have threatened to tear reality itself apart. They are also known to help guide those lost in the wilderness and are known to acts as ambassadors between the civilized world and barbarian tribes. The problem is that all this good is easy to forget when a druid is leading an army of dire wolves against a village.