Environment

Special abilities

Dark vision 10 | Aura vision 5 | Magic vision 5

A tree man who does not move is indistinguishable from a tree. When he walks through the forest, he resembles a giant about five meters tall with skin like bark and leaves instead of hair. He does not like to be seen, and so few besides druids can confirm his existence; passers-by usually walk past him as if he were an ordinary tree.

The Tree Folk live in solitude in deep forests and tend the trees. They age very slowly and in lifespan surpass even elves and dragons. They know everything about their forest, they know every creature from the hare to the oldest tree. They overlook minor interventions such as occasional felling or hunting, but whoever truly threatens the forest has a mortal enemy in them. They leave their forest only rarely, for example when moving to another; then they travel by night, and by day they stand in the landscape like a tree.

After roughly five hundred years, a pair of the tree folk enters into a bond similar to marriage, which lasts about a thousand years and during which two or three offspring are born. Toward the end of his life a tree man lives alone with his trees and gradually loses the ability to move, until finally he “turns to tree” and becomes an ordinary tree.

Combat

He fights with arm-like branches in which he has unusual strength, and for his woody origin he moves surprisingly fast. Although he is essentially good, he has no sense of knightly honor: he likes to wait motionless like a tree and crush the enemy with a blow from behind.

Rousing trees: in need, when other means fail, a tree man begins to walk around a tree, which after about ten minutes becomes an Evil Tree. One tree man can maintain at most five Evil Trees; if he rouses more, some of them turn back.