The Seeking Journey

For millennia, the multiracial druid tribes of the Omdese has sent their members out on a journey when they come of age. The Seeking Journey, as it is called, is meant to teach the druids to blend in with whatever environment they're in, and search for the answer to a set of questions that the elders pose them. The druid also is required to bring back a treasure to place in the ancestral shrine. The Seeking Journey is meant to take at most five years, or they have failed.
The questions are listed on a wall, painted with gilded letters in the shrine of questions and answers. Beneath the Question Wall is an arched gate to the Treasure Room, which lays underneath the village, expanded upon with more rooms as time goes on. The person ready to come of age is called to the temple, where they kneel in front of the elders who would start The Posing, where they would give the youngling the questions that they would need to find an answer to. Upon return, the Seeking is made to kneel in the shrine in front of the elders. There are witnesses gathered, including the Seekings adult blood relatives. No one that has not come of age is allowed to witness the Questioning. The youngling that has returned is first required to display the treasure that they brought to the elders, and with the item in front of their knees they are asked the questions that they were given before they started their journey, and they are transcribed word by word into a journal. The questions are five: What is Family?, What is Society?, What is Loyalty?, What is Trust?, What is the World?
After the Questioning, the Questioned walks up to the altar in front of the archway to the treasure room, which is covered by an intricately painted screen which mirrors the one in front of the door to the shrine, where they place the treasure that they have brought on top of the journal with their answers. The treasure doesn't need to actually have a monetary value. It is a treasure because it holds meaning to the person, and it is a gift to the ancestors because it is willingly giving up something that they value. If the ancestral spirits accept the gift, it will be transported to a spot for that person in the treasure chamber. Once this has happened, the elders smear the Questioned's face in paint. When the Questioned emerge from the shrine with that paint on their face, they are considered an adult, and they have finally come of age.
For the last several centuries, The Seeking Journey has become increasingly dangerous, as the Omdese druids make use of their wild shape a lot in a time where shapeshifting is punished by death. Many of the Seeking never return, caught by the Shape Chasers and executed as criminals.

The Seeker's Shrine