You have addressed an issue that the Druid's Guild has been concerned
about for some time. With more and more people entering Sapience, and
with the forestal guilds as some of the larger guilds in the lands, we
have had to deal with the issue of growing numbers of novices in the
guild for some time now. Quite some time ago, actually, we required that
novices could -not- imprint a grove until they reached Sapling status.
Therefore, if you are seeing groves imprinted by Acorns, these are
illegal imprints and should be reported to Raelene, who is our current
Grovekeeper. But the vast number of druid novices that you see
imprinting are saplings. We have requirements for a novice to reach
sapling status. The purpose of the requirements is to assure us that the
novice is indeed serious about remaining and being dedicated to the life
of a druid, as well as teaching the novice the responsibilities of being
granted the privilege of caring for a grove. However, once a druid has
not entered the realm for a period of 30 months, their grove severs its
ties with them, and therefore, those druids who are "never heard of
again" is solved by such action.

Be assured that this is a problem that the guild is well aware of, and
has tried to meet its responsibilities to Nature, and to those outside
the guild as best we can. Certainly, if you have any ideas or questions
you would like to share with me, please message me or speak to me. One
thing I will add is that it is not feasible for us to totally ban
novices from imprinting. As you are aware, our grove skills are useless
without a grove. With the advent of Certimene and the current novice
system, druid novices only get the grove skillset and the metamorphosis
skillset. It would be unreasonable and dangerous of us to further
handicap our novices by only allowing them one skillset. But we
certainly do want them to be responsible grove users.

Conor
Guildmaster of the Druids Guild

Penned by my hand on the 4th of Daedalan, in the year 339 AF.