At this rate, the grove’s reaction to the shadow druids should be “hooray, allies!â€
Actually, why were they even horrified to learn of shadow druid meddling? Near all of them were completely onboard with this whole ritual. Both groups want the same thing. They clearly have no love for Halsin’s worldview, just join them.
Like I said before I feel like Halsin is going to come clean about not having bothered to lead the grove for untold years at some point in the future. That or the shadow druids have put everyone under some kind of spell.
I have a question about dark druids. The FR wiki doesn't have much information about them, other than what was already in in the Baldur's Gate games, which makes me assume they are an invention of BioWare. Is it true?
I would not be surprised if that was true, but even then the behaviour of the normal druids is inexcusable. I think part of the reason why this all feels so unnatural is that Larian (and maybe FR lore in general) has turned druids into member associations with uniforms and a rank and file. When three mice show up at your doorstep and your interim head druid is seen conversing with them in secret, should that not ring any alarm bells? Can these shadow druids invade any grove of their choosing and subvert their leadership like this without anyone noticing? Does this happen more often?
If druids need to reduce evil, then tieflings need to evil up. Choosing between druids and tieflings must be difficult. For example, for an idol to be stolen by an adult tiefling. We also learned that they steal supplies from the druids since it's a matter of their survival.
I would like that, but I feel that is not what Larian wants to go for. The druids are a one-off Act 1 thing and the Tieflings will almost definitely follow you through the rest of the game, so there is no room for a difficult choice like that here.
Though, in the game’s defense, one is able to question Halsin giving such a lenient punishment to Kagha (demotion, a pretty heavy one granted, but this could be an unrepentant woman who killed a child). This could hint that Halsin did not master to “stick†side of carrot and stick leadership.
I know I should not make up headcanon or speculate on indev content, but it seems to me that the game foreshadows really hard that if Kagha is demoted by Halsin without exposing the shadow druid cabal she will eventually stage a full on coup and throw the grove into darkness. If she is not outed she has zero respect for Halsin and gives him a real evil eyed look that says "Olodan will come for you later" to me.
Not that it would matter to Halsin since he is a blowhard that bails on "politics" to hang out with us instead, lol.
