Hello! Now, before I say anything else, I'm sorry if there are other threads on this. Feel free to delete it if that's the case. this will probably be quite long, and while this might seem like I'm stating what little lore we have on them for no apparent reasons I do have questions here and there as a beginner roleplayer. And hey, who knows, perhaps another druid is looking for the info I'm confirming here?
Harvest Witches. They've always fascinated me lore-wise, because we only have tiny scraps of lore to go with. I'm planning to faction change/realm transfer my druid to Argent Dawn EU from being a Tauren into a Worgen. What originally drew me to them was how they seemed to be inspired by the celtic druids of our own history, which I've always been interested in. They seem to be rural sorcerers, and often looked at with suspicion and contempt - perhaps the priests of the holy light go around preaching witchcraft was evil, regardless whether they use shadow(Warlocks) or nature(Druids)?
It seems before the teachings of the holy light spread around the human nations, the primitive human tribes were led by "Druids" more like our own medieval druids than the Kal'dorei shapeshifters. But when light worship became rooted in human society, these druidic keepers were quickly forgotten and their ways went extinct. Yet when Gilneas walled itself off, due to this isolation, Gilnean Druids managed to live on in the fringe of society. Even then, they almost went extinct as an order, until the gilnean crops failed and the entire kingdom was almost wiped out by starvation - yet the few remaining Keepers of the old ways managed to save the harvest through magic, which seemed to have rejuvenated their numbers a bit due to the order not going extinct after all.
Ka'ldorei contact and the Worgen curse
When the worgen infested Gilneas, unfortunate harvest witches who became afflicted with the curse seemed to find that their druidic magic was amplified, probably because the curse was druidic in origin. In addition, contact with Night Elves could have opened up the chance of further training into what we see as the in-game class "Druid" - shapeshifting and commanding nature and wind. Morphing into a worgen is a shapeshift in itself, so experiencing this transformation could have made learning bear/cat/sea lion/stag/moonkin form easier. And from what I've seen, some Worgen have even joined the Cenarion Circle.
1.) I'm not sure of my warcraft lore pre-WoW, but weren't the humans worshipping the holy light for a long time by the time the greymane wall was erected? If this is true, then when all the other human nations abandoned druidic practice Gilneas was still connected to them all. What was so special about Gilneas that the practices managed to survive until the isolation period, when it disappeared in all other kingdoms? Could this have been due to the typical Gilnean stubbornness which made them cling on to the old ways?
2.) Seeing as they could only perform minor druidic acts such as encouraging crops to grow and healing with the power of nature before contracting the curse, it's not a big stretch to assume that shapeshifting was unknown prior to that. Yet something caught my eye while reading the King Greymane short story on the official website;
...does this suggest that the harvest witches could shapeshift BEFORE contracting the curse or meeting the night elves, even if it were only into crows?He had heard that druidism was practiced among some of Gilneas’s agrarian folk, but he hadn’t been exposed to it until recently.
3.) From reading all of this, how do you guys think a harvest witch would be roleplayed?
-Would they avoid the city? Would they be shy, preferring the company of the trees, wildlife, or other harvest witches?
-Could Worgen form in fact be tapping into some kind of ancient nature spirit which lives in Gilneas? If so, that could be interesting and make the druid stand out.
-Do you think a harvest witch would travel by horse, or embrace the wild side and run around on all fours as a bestial worgen?
-Would a harvest witch prefer to remain in human form, or worgen form?
4.) And finally, if you happen to play on Argent Dawn EU, are there any guilds who would accept a character such as this?
Thank you for taking the time to read this!