Ritual of the Twilight Equinox

The natural world exists in eternal cycles, day and night, summer and winter, light and dark. The cycle of the season grinds eternal. With spring comes new life and the time of plenty, with Autumn comes entropy and the time of deprivation. Autumn exists as a reminder, all things must resist and all things must die. It is the twilight of the world, and none are more aware of the coming darkness then those that feel this changing cycle to their metaphysical core. Druids the world over feel it as the times change, they feel the heat of summer, and the icy darkness that is to come. At the equinox, both powers are strong within the world, and from the point between strange powers rise. The ritual of the twilight equinox is a spell designed to weave this strange power into the soul of the Druid. For death is as much a part of the natural world as life. The ritual begins with a book, in this book the Druid must write the secret names of many dead creatures of the forest, they must call the souls of the bestial dead to them. To do this is to reach beyond death, yet at the same time, the Druid dies. They weave these souls together with their own, and for a time they die. The Druid experiences the deaths that surround them, the terrible, vicious beauty of nature. They become undead, helpless and overwhelmed by the deluge. But, then they call other names. For in any place of the wild, their are ancient names, powerful names. Names of the trees that have stood for centuries, magical names of the fey and the gods of the wild. Through the darkness, a brilliant light bursts into being. Through ice, fire burns, and the Harvest lord awakens. At this point of life and death within the world, a Druid binds themselves to both forces, and binds themselves to their lands. The Druid becomes a Harvest lord, a powerful spirit of the land they bound themselves too. They will appear, generally as a kindly nurturing hermit. They will wander and protect their forest. But behind the kind smile lurks the hunger of the twilight spell. The harvest lord has made a bargain, ensured that they will always be able to tend to and protect their forest. But to do so, they become its greatest predator. An immaterial spirit calling upon fire, ice, darkness and light. It hunts the beasts of the forest, and it psychotically protects the forest from outsiders. This ritual is considered a dark form of druidcraft, it is a closely gaurded secret in the most ancient of circles. To allow one into creation is to allow a monster of the seasons. Kinder in summer, nurturing, a vicious monster as darkness comes. Many druids consider them abominations, but others take a different view. They say that these creatures hold themselves to the cycle of the seasons in its purest sense, and they are certainly no more vicious than nature itself. They have become a part of the natural world to their very core, and so they have earned its respect. Good or bad, right or wrong, the harvest lords prowl through their forests, and their wisdom may be heard in the whispering of leaves as they fall to the ground, and in the last gasp of dying beasts.