WoW — Undead Druid Faction
While the Royal Apothecary Society has traditionally worked on creating and improving a new Plague, many alchemists also pursue their own projects. One such branch obsessively studies the original Plague to see if it’s reversible. They are usually met with frowns and rolled eyes, due to either the impossibility of the task or direct protest of a potential success.
Their grand knowledge of alchemy indeed seemed insufficient for reversing a such transformation. Eventually, accepting that they hit a dead end, the branch decided to change their approach entirely. Following the partial success of Earthen Ring and Cenarion Circle’s efforts to heal the Plaguelands, they found a new path.
Instead of trying to transform the natural into what they wanted, they started using their knowledge on diseases, alchemy and nature to reverse-engineer the Plague and other diseases to discover their very essence and exploit it. While the direct results were not as dramatic as alchemy, this cheaper method did produce interesting results.
The method was not met well by the Society. Several members were pressured to abandon the branch or did so on their own and the remaining ones were banished. This, in turn, pushed these exiles closer to the Earthen Ring and the Cenarion Circle, who suspiciously welcomed these odd Forsaken. Moved by this tolerant behavior, the group called themselves the Embraced.
Being at odds with the infamous Society actually made them more trustworthy in some druids’ eyes. Indeed, a few druids shared certain natural secrets with the Forsaken and indeed, some of them did welcome this path. The Embraced could not bond with nature as a living being, but they managed to produce certain effects with the expanded knowledge of nature, combined with their mastery of alchemy. They called this new method Naturchemy.
Some alchemical transformation experts, thanks to Naturchemy, managed to take forms akin to the cat and bear forms of druids. Others were already masters of decay and diseases and how to reverse the diseases. They became healers. The hardest was to master the Balance philosophy as it required not only a mastery of alchemy, but also engineering to convert energy and matter into each other. Only a few Embraced was able to do it with assistance from the archdruids.
Once the naturchemists of the Embraced became better known to the rest of the world, the reactions were mixed everywhere. Some druids thought of them as complete monstrosities while others thought there should be no limits on how the nature’s power can be harvested and that nature would react to anything that was not meant to be. Some Forsaken found the methods intriguing, while others used words like disgusting and unbearable. In the end, both sides accepted the faction cautiously, but it’s certain that the future of their place in either society hangs by a thin thread.
