Druids, dryads, and hamadryads

So I wanted to touch on dryads in this post. Two things: the etymological relationship between druids and dryads, and the mythological relationship between dryads and hamadryads.

In the past the word dryad was used to mean druidess, i.e. a female druid. By virtue of the transitive property, one could argue that a druid therefore could be a male wood nymph or nymphus. I've never seen anyone ever do this, but if you want a male dryad that isn't a satyr and care about the inflection of Greco-Latin loanwords then druid might fit the bill.

In Greek myth, a hamadryad is a type of dryad whose life is bound to a specific tree. If the tree dies, then so does the hamadryad. In fantasy tabletop games, this unique of hamadryads has been folded into dryads in general. This results in attempts to integrate hamadryads to rely on distinguishing them from dryads through any number of arbitrary means that have nothing to do with the original myths.

I generally have little interest in any of these modern distinctions, except for one I found in homebrew. One homebrew page I read introduced a fascinating distinction between dryads and hamadryads for gaming that reflects the original myths. Here the hamadryad arose as the personified soul of a tree, as in myth and the dryad of the Monster Manual. Meanwhile, the dryad was the child of a hamadryad and a father of another race such as human, elf, fairy, or satyr. A dryad could choose to live as adventurer like her father's race or could bind to a tree and live identically to a hamadryad in a manner consistent with the MM's dryad. I like this idea and would like to use it in my own worldbuilding sometime.

© 音楽ナスカ

Resource links:

• https://www.theoi.com/Nymphe/NymphaiHamadryades.html
• https://www.1d4chan.org/wiki/Hamadryad
• https://www.latin-is-simple.com/en/vocabulary/noun/8773/
• https://www.latin-is-simple.com/en/vocabulary/noun/8774/
• https://web.archive.org/web/20190923154852/http://www.chqhost.com/LairFiles/races/dryad.html
• http://aidanem.com/word-family-tree.html
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/druid#English
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dryad#English
• https://www.google.com/books/edition/Druids/9yITDQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=dryad+druidess&pg=PT27&printsec=frontcover

Nymphae and nymphi

In a previous post I mentioned that in Greek myth the nymphs have numerous male counterparts including centaurs, dactyls, tritons, satyrs, etc. To my knowledge, they have never been collectively referred to by a single name in contrast to nymphs. I suppose there is a first for everything.

The word nymph, which translates to "bride" and refers to myriad minor goddesses in Greek myth. It might interest you to know that nympha and nymphess are valid synonyms, and that the masculine inflection is nymphus, which translates to "bridegroom" and was a rank in the Mithraic mystery cult.

That was my fun fact for the day.

Ecology of the ale rune wives, honey bee nymphs and mandrake roots

As we should all be well aware of by now, fantasy gaming takes monsters from myth and folklore and often twists them into something unrecognizable. Pathfinder is just as much of an offender as D&D, but the authors have the audacity to claim they are truer to the "source material" when they are not. In this post, I would like to focus on a trio of related monsters: the alraune, mandrake and thriae.

Fauns versus Satyrs

Although originally separate beings from separate cultures, fauns and satyrs were conflated and syncretized by the Roman Empire. Nowadays some self-styled experts try to claim that they should be treated separately when writing fantasy fiction, but I find this unnecessary. That said, I do think they could be given more diversity within fiction.

No such thing as a "male dryad," unless you count satyrs and curetes

In Greek mythology, nymphs are female in both gender/sex and grammar. The word nymph itself translates to "maiden" in English (i.e. a girl of marriageable age). In Greek mythology, nymphs have multiple male counterparts: satyrs, panes, potamoi, tritons, even centaurs (as the mother of all centaurs was a cloud nymph). Of course, that did not stop Paizo from including a male dryad in their Pathfinder comics.

Nymphomaniacs: centaurs, satyrs and tritons

A little house rule I am introducing is in regard to single gender monsters: there are no monsters which consist solely of one gender and especially not ones which must reproduce by non-consensual relations with humans. That is supremely creepy and has no place in a group activity like tabletop roleplaying games.

My go to example are centaurs, satyrs and tritons in their original sense as wild male nature spirits in Greek mythology. These three dudes are now fey (see 13th Age Monthly Vol 2) and are the male counterparts of nymphs, hags and other female fey. They are all the same species which display great physical differences based on their gender and other factors.

I will be adopting this sort of model for all my monster ecology. That said, the human superpower is still that they can have kids with lots of weird creatures. I just prefer not to dwell on creepy or fetish material. Call me a social justice warrior if you like, but I will not budge.