"Humans, I cannot understand them - everything they plant only fruits death."
- Mylanthrevdi, the Greenwarden
Break the Stereotype
Tree-men, children of nature, they dwell in the deep woods. Treants spend days if not seasons in deep thought, pondering the health of their demesne, and wandering their woods tending their charges. Often sagacious sages, and sometimes solitary defenders of the woods, tree-men rarely have a reason to interaction with the outside world.
Hoooo-huuummmmmm. Life from a treant's point of view: daily men enter your wood to fell your silent brothers and sisters. And for what? Their fires choke the sky, their fields dominate the land that was once forest - their ways are wasteful and destructive. And worse, their numbers constantly increase, and they continue to require more land.
As nature is tamed and the wilds are slowly pushed back, one treant has had enough.
Birth in Flame
Mylanthrevdi awoke over a hundred years ago in the woods he still calls home. He spent his first couple decades in quiet solitude - wandering his woods, communing with his charges, and contemplating why he had been given the gift of sentience. Then the humans came. A foreign king had granted the land to a noble, if he could tame the wilderness. The noble's men entered the woods and cut down trees for their lord's manor and the new village. When the first tree fell, the treant felt it like a dull ache.
He immediately sought out the lumberjacks to ask their intentions, but the peasants ran in fright. Angered at the setback and the fact that "a monster" opposed him, the noble hired a band of mercenaries and entered the woods with his most faithful servants. Under guard, the servants began once more to cut down trees. The treant responded and walked into the trap - the mercenaries and noble attacked without listening to Mylanthrevdi entreaties. The treant tried to defend itself and it crushed the life from a number of mercenaries, but there were too many.
Mylanthrevdi begged and pleaded for his life, and the noble granted a reprieve. The noble proclaimed himself lord of the woods, not the treant, and he and his men would cull the forest as they saw fit. If the "abomination" wanted to live, it would leave the region and tell all the other brutes lurking in the wilderness to do the same.
Shocked by the brutal attack and the audacity, the treant retreated to the forest's heart to heal his wounds and plan. Mylanthrevdi was torn, he did not want to fight, but he could not leave the wood, he was part of it, and every day he stalled in acting he felt more of his charges falling to the ax. First, he tried to seal off his woods, but the humans came in droves and used force and fire to open paths. Resigned, the treant then called upon his charges to expel but not kill the invaders.
The noble responded with force, he gathered more mercenaries and rode into the forest. They set fire to the treant's personal grove and fought Mylanthrevdi once more. The treant knew there be no mercy - it barreled through the wall of humans and into the flames. A quarter of its body was charred and withered from the intense heat and flames, but Mylanthrevdi survived and escaped. (More...)
Tags: Uncommon Evil Rpg Wanderingmen
