Kuldahar and the Balance
Arundel explains some of Kuldahar's history and significance:
"This is a special place, one where the Balance can be felt tangibly. This is what the Druids of Kuldahar hold sacred and have worked to preserve for generations. Is all around us. It *is* us.
Balance is the harmony that is achieved when man and nature learn to coexist, no longer contending one with another, but coming together as two parts of a whole.
Balance is the belief that this town is built upon... the very reason for its existence. Druids of Silvanus, the Oakfather, have tended this shrine since the beginning. For hundreds of years, we have striven to achiever the ideal balance between man and nature.
When settlers finally came to this pass, it was the Archdruid Tolben, my predecessor, who laid the foundation for the relationship that led to the birth of this community.
The Great Oak. The massive tree that stands above us... around us. It is a holy shrine to Silvanus, for it was he who planted its seed when Faerun was first born. It is a testament to the raw power of nature, a monument to its ability to thrive in the face of adversity.
Thanks to Tolben, the Great Oak we Druids called the Kuldahar, and the town that has come to be known by the same name, have become a monument of even greater significance... a monument to the balance.
Tolben was the catalyst for the transformation of the shrine from a sacred grove to a thriving community in which man and nature exist as one. At first, settlers were kept away from this site. The druids of old saw outsiders as an affront to the sanctity of the tree and its sphere of benign influence.
They erected thorny brambles to keep intruders out, and used their powered to frighten away the men and women that came to build homes in a place they felt was... obviously so close to the gods.
It wasn't until the succession of Archdruid Tolben that things changed. Unlike his predecessors, he believed that the settlement of the valley was not only inevitable, but it was actually the will of Silvanus.
He also believed that we had been wrong in keeping the settlers away, and that the Oak Father had intended people to share in the miracle of the Great Oak from the beginning.
When Tolben finally became Archdruid, he formed a plan to fulfill the destiny of this sacred site by bringing about a union between the Great Oak shrine and the settlers.
It was this union that the Archdruid Tolben believed would achieve the harmony that we had been striving for for generations... the harmony between man and nature. As it stands, Kuldahar is a monument to this vision.
The tree and town exist in a natural symbiosis where it is next to impossible to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. But now, the balance is threatened.
I fear that if we do not soon discover the source of these disturbances, then all that we have worked for will be destroyed."