Arboreal regent

Arboreal regent Treant1E
(Creature)
Common NG Huge Plant Level 8 Alignment LG NG CG LN N CN LE NE CE Adjective Arboreal Images of arboreal regents Source: Bestiary, pg(s). 24–25 Type Plant CR 8 Environment Any forest Alignment LG NG CG LN N CN LE NE CE Images of arboreal regents Source: Bestiary, pg(s). 266

Arboreal regents, also known as treants, are massive, intelligent, sentient arboreals who tend to and protect an individual forest from the intrusions of the smaller races.

Appearance

Arboreal regents resemble humanoid-shaped trees and plants. They can grow to 30 feet in height and 2 feet in trunk diameter, weigh 4,500 pounds, and move slowly and deliberately.

Ecology

Arboreal regents are grown from a single green acorn about the size of a human head. If planted, the seed will grow into a young arboreal regent after five years of careful tending.

Habitat

Arboreal regents live in and maintain a forest.

Society

Arboreals are long-lived creatures who take a long view of life and history, and rarely meddle in the affairs of short-lived mortals. They tend to act only to protect themselves and the forests under their care from harm. Likewise, many are solitary outside of times of crisis, or meet in communal groups known as "groves" to share knowledge. The largest meetings occur only under the most serious of circumstances, when a region's groves meet for months at a time to plan action against an especially large threat. One such moot is believed to be taking place at the Century Root in Kyonin's Fierani Forest.

Arboreal regents have the ability to imbue normal trees with a semblance of life, allowing them to uproot themselves, move about, and fight in the forest's defense. A normal arboreal regent can control only two such awakened trees at a time, and the animated trees immediately return to their natural state if they move outside the arboreal regent's range of control, or if the controlling arboreal regent becomes incapacitated or dies. Arboreal regents can also cause great damage to inanimate objects or structures, a trait that is handy when they must destroy buildings that encroach upon their forests. Although they prefer to communicate in their own slow, long-winded language, they generally can also speak Fey and Common tongues such as Taldane, and can also communicate with any intelligent plant creature.

Older regents and powerful arboreals have access to the fungi that connect trees within a forest, and can use this connection to sense danger far from their current location.

Nodrim

Arboreal regents of the Verduran Forest brew a special beverage known as nodrim from fermented apples, wood chips, and clean water. Drinking an excess of the brew causes them to become intoxicated.

On Golarion

Arboreal regents can be found in the larger forests throughout Golarion, although the jungles of Garund are home to a related species known as the tobongo. Arboreal regents are known to be most prevalent in the Fierani Forest of Kyonin (where they are simply referred to as the Fierani), the Fangwood Forest of Nirmathas, and the enormous Verduran Forest of central Avistan. The forests on the Isle of Terror in Lake Encarthan are home to a thoroughly evil species of arboreal regent warped by prolonged exposure to the foul energies of the Void.

The frost firs are speculated by some scholars to be descended from arboreal regents that preferred evergreens and colder climates, although if so there is very little affection between the two species of sapient plants left in the present day.

Tobongo

The Mwangi Expanse is home to a variant arboreal regent known as a tobongo. Their curse can turn a victim into a tree. The hunched tobongo Dimari-Diji is possibly Golarion's oldest living creature.

References

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