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Treant

Treants are one of the oldest races known in the world. Even the Elves have always known the Treants as part of their world. Treants that are a living part of the world's forests; called 'Ent' and 'Tree Gardner' by the Halflings of Gold Hills and 'Tree Shepherd' or 'Tree Lord' by Elves and Humans. Treants belong to a small but diverse group of plants known as herbae vividum, animated plants. Unlike most members of the plant kingdom, animated plants are capable of independent motion and in many cases act more like animals than plants. As one of the most common intelligent plant species, Treants often serve as intermediaries between the green world of the forest and the rest of the world's tool and fire using races.

Known Treants:

Adult Treants can range in height from sixteen feet to more than sixty-four feet tall, though often as much as a third of this height is made up of the crown, a wide protrusion of leafy branches extending from the Treant’s head. The tough, flexible tissues that make up most of the internal structure of the Treant’s body are nearly as dense as the wood of an ordinary tree, and so a Treant’s weight can range from 5,000 to more than 300,000 pounds. Though roughly humanoid in outline, Treants have little in common with humanoids, physiologically speaking and so are classified with the other races. The head and the crown make up about two fifths of a Treant’s height, while the thick legs often make up less than one fifth. A Treant’s long, thin arms, located at the midpoint of the torso, are usually more than long enough for the Treant to touch the ground without bending over. The rigid, bark-like skin and powerful internal fibers that comprise most of a Treant’s torso and limbs can twist with surprising ease and speed. Bending is much more difficult, except at the shoulder and multiple elbow joints in the arms, and the hip joints of the legs. Thick, root-like toes extend in all directions from a Treant’s feet, digging into the ground for support and pushing it along at surprising speed. Treants’ hands usually have between six and thirteen long twig-like fingers, with at least one opposable digit per hand. These fingers can fold into a knotted fist capable of dealing blows of tremendous force, and can also dig into wood, stone or metal with surprising speed, causing great damage.

Treant faces most often resemble human faces, although occasionally they include the facial features of other humanoid species if these are more common in the region. They can include features from non-humanoid creatures if the dominant tool-using race nearby is non-humanoid, though this is rare. Treants generate humanoid speech using a hollow sounding chamber located in the middle of their bodies. Treants communicate with each other in a much more complex fashion, using their sounding chamber as well as creaks, groans, rustling leaves, and specialized pollens to speak Treant. As a result, Treant is a very difficult language for humanoids to understand, let alone speak.

Like ordinary plants, Treants derive most of their sustenance by rooting themselves in the soil and basking in the sunlight. They spend between six and twelve hours a day like this, resting in a meditative state. While resting, they are virtually indistinguishable from ordinary trees. Treant reproduction is a complicated process. Though Treants are hermaphroditic, and capable of self-germination, they most commonly gather in small groups of three to five to germinate a sapling and raise it. Treants can live for up to five thousand years, and rumors of even older Treants exist. They are physically mature at about three hundred years of age.

Treant's names all form the pattern of 'forest' Onod 'name' for 'name' shepherd of the 'forest name' {ie Valoris Onod Ancien for Ancien shepherd of Valoris}. Emmantiensien?, the god of the Treants, is closely associated with the Lesser God Rillifane Rallathil of the Elves.

There are three common varieties of treants.

Trueheart Treants, the most commonly encountered variety, closely resemble oak trees and dwell in deciduous forests of the lowlands and hills. The second most commonly encountered type are the Evergreen Treants, who resemble pine trees and usually frequent coniferous forests in rocky, mountainous areas. Taller than the Trueheart variety, they are renowned for their intelligence, though they’re not as physically powerful as their more common relatives are. Waterborne Treants are the least commonly encountered, being found primarily in swampy wetlands. They resemble willow trees, and are known to be remarkably persuasive.

Treants are, by nature, a solitary species. While they do gather in small groves from time to time, these groups tend to be temporary. Of course, for such a long-lived race, temporary can mean several hundred years. Treants focus much of their attention on their own territories, rather than concerning themselves with direct social interaction. Often months or sometimes years will pass without face-to-face contact between Treants with neighboring territories. “The Green comes first” is a common saying, and Treants who neglect their forests to spend time “chattering like squirrels” acquire a reputation as unreliable wastrels. Despite this apparent isolation, Treants maintain an elaborate communications network, using migratory birds, animals, and insects to carry messages across vast distances. Treants call this the “Vine of Tales.” These messages are transmitted via specialized pollens that traveling creatures can carry for thousands of miles, sharing the information they bear with hundreds of Treants. These pollens are secreted at will by Treants, and are almost impossible for non-treants to intercept and understand, as few species have the sensory apparatus to perceive them, let alone decipher them. As a result of the Vine of Tales, very few Treants are more than six months out of touch with Treant society. On the smaller scale most Treants do maintain some social ties with Treants in adjacent territories. Every few months or so, neighboring Treants will meet on the border of their respective territories and spend a day or two catching up on recent events. Larger forests can contain many territories, and periodically all the Treants of a specific area will gather for a “moot” to socialize, discuss larger issues, and plan serious business like the greatly feared, but necessary, controlled burns that keep the forest’s underbrush from collecting to dangerous levels. These moots take place every two or three years, and can last for several weeks.

A Treant’s territory can range from five to fifty miles across depending on the terrain and population. Territories in areas with large active populations of humanoids tend to be smaller to make it easier to respond to the problems inevitably created by “axe-wielders,” as Treants often call the tool-using races. Monitoring and maintaining its territory is the primary focus of a Treant’s life. Oddly enough, the borders of these territories are fairly loose, being defined more by a mixture of consensus and convenience than by rigid adherence to specific geographical markers. Treants who neglect their care taking duties often find their territory gradually absorbed out from under them, as their neighbors take over maintenance duties for the areas adjacent to their own territories. Treants “uprooted” in this fashion are subject to a great deal of social pressure from their fellows to mend their ways. Often an older Treant will unilaterally assume a mentoring role for one of these uprooted deviants, sometimes spending hundreds of years attempting to correct the misguided youth.

Occasionally, some darker force will overshadow a Treant, leading it onto paths from which it cannot be rescued by moral persuasion or social coercion. Whether rotted by some internal bitterness of spirit or corrupted by an external evil, a shadowed or Dark Treant can become a powerful force for evil with its close connection to it's territories than will often corrupt the very fabric of the land. The usual response by fellow Treants is ostracism, followed by a careful readjustment of the surrounding territories to minimize contact with the aberrant Dark Treant. So long as the corruption is contained within its territory little further action will be taken. Should the Dark Treant begin to encroach on its neighbor’s territories, eventually they will band together to restrain the expansionist deviant.

Among Treants, age, experience and wisdom determine social dominance. The physical measure of this experience and wisdom is the health and upkeep of the Treant’s territory. Treants do not express their leadership in hierarchical terms; in fact they have no kings, chiefs, or formal offices of any recognizable kind. Often, it is difficult for an outsider to tell which particular Treant in a group is the leader. How much weight other Treants give to its opinions and how often they seek out its advice are the only real clues to who is in charge of a given area. Even then, should the burdens of leadership distract the elder from its duties to its own territory, the cloak of ad hoc authority can quickly pass to another. “Prune one’s own branches first” is a popular Treant aphorism. After all, how can you trust the advice of someone who cannot maintain his own lands properly? Fortunately, the glacial pace of Treant social politics prevents this informal system of leadership from interfering with relations with outside societies. By the time a given elder has faded from the political scene, many generations have passed among the mayfly races. Even among the druidic circles that make up most of Treant kind’s social contact with other races, the extended lifespan of the treefolk means that much of Treant politics goes unnoticed.

While Treants ordinarily maintain their territories as individuals, occasionally a small group will gather together in one territory for a period of time for one reason or another. These groves can remain together for hundreds of years, until the reason for their assembly has passed. Most often, the Treants who make up a particular grove are neighbors, but occasionally a grove will include treefolk from distant forests who’ve become acquainted through the Vine of Tales.

There are three basic varieties of treant groves.

Seedling Groves

The most common is called a Seedling grove. Seedling groves are normally formed around an older treant, who is preparing to pass on. The elder treant contacts a few of its neighbors and occasionally one or two distant acquaintances and proposes that they gather and form a Seedling grove. This is seen as a great honor, and it’s extremely rare for a treant to reject such an invitation. Occasionally, the neighbors of a treant who died unexpectedly will form a Seedling grove in order to raise a replacement. Those invited to join usually merge their lands into one larger territory, allowing other neighbors on the outskirts to accept temporary charge of the outer areas. Treants travelling from farther away will generally divide their lands among the adjoining territories for the few short centuries that they’ll be away. Most Seedling groves consist of three to five treants of varying ages, who’ll remain together for three or four hundred years while they raise their sapling. These groves are nearly always made up of the same subspecies of treant. At least one of them will be a leafsinger. The focus of attention for all of them is, of course, the healthy raising and proper education of the sapling. A sapling is never left alone; two or three of its parents remain with it at all times, answering its incessant questions, demonstrating proper forest management, and recounting educational tales and homilies. As the sapling grows older, it is allowed to visit neighboring treants in the care of one of its parents, expanding its horizons and making friendships that will last for thousands of years. The subjects of these visits welcome the newcomer gladly, sharing personal forestry techniques and homespun wisdom with the young treant and rejoicing in the renewal of their kind. Toward the end of its childhood, a sapling may be introduced to a particularly trusted druid grove, where it can study the humanoid races in their most balanced and reliable form. Once the sapling has reached maturity and ventured out on its wandering time, the parents slowly part and go their separate ways. Occasionally, a parent from a distant forest will travel with its wandering scion for a time, on its way home. The parents will remain close friends for the rest of their long lives. Although it is extremely rare for the same group of parents to produce more than one scion, often one will include a partner from a previous Seedling grove when it comes time to raise its own replacement.

Note: This material adapted to my world from 'The Complete Guide to Treants' by Goodman Games and articles from Dragon and Dungeon magazine.