Dryad

We created them and couldn't kill them because it felt wrong to kill such intelligent creatures. But now? We curse and hate them because of their way of living even though they mostly live away from people. Why? Because they cast curses whenever we hurt their homes.

Dryads are representations of forests and trees, invoked with spells and attached to a tree. They live in forests, stuck to the place where they have been invoked, taking care of their homes, cursing whoever might hurt it, and trying to kill whoever showed intentions to destroy their tree. They are experts in Conferrence yet will share only their knowledge to someone they deem worth. It is known that parts of their bodies are powerful ingredients and sometimes they are invoked to be killed.

Origin/Ancestry

Artificial / Magical

Status

Protected

Geographical distribution

Forests around the world (rare to find)

Colours

Colours

Anatomy

A dryad has a humanoid aspect, with only two arms rather than the four that humans have, and their bodies are green and earth tones. Their skins show marks resembling tree bark and will be in a green tone if the dryad or its tree is healthy and brown otherwise. Their bodies are androgynous and doesn't seem to have any kind of biological sex. Details on their skin will vary depending on what kind of tree they have been attached to; sometimes their bodies will be able to even grow leaves, flowers, or even (although rarely) fruits.

The size of the dryad and their physical appearance will depend on their tree. If the tree is making plenty nutrients for both itself and the dryad, the dryad will be bigger and fatter; if the tree is not making enough, the dryad will be smaller and thinner. Seeing a specially big dryad is considered good luck, while seeing a tiny dryad is considered a bad omen to crops but is believed that it can be rid by helping the dryad grow.

Artifical life

Dryads are created from an ancient ritual that gathered the knowledge a forest had gathered from its flora and fauna and gave it a physical body. These created bodies must be attached to a tree of the forest in order to be connected to the web of knowledge the forest may hold as well as to maintain alive as it uses nutrients that the tree creates to keep their bodies alive. Their lives are tied to their tree and if the tree die, they do as well; killing a dryad's tree is the only known method of making a dryad disappear. Destroying their bodies doesn't seem to kill them as a copy of it will grow out of their tree, it will take some weeks if not months thought.

Aerial photography of pine trees by Federico Bottos

Conscience?

They have a sense of self, recognizing themselves as a person and passing recognition tests that animals don't tend to pass. Because of this, it is debated whether they can be considered an Ithakill or not. As of right now, they are majorly not considered Ithakill yet it is considered criminal to kill them. Since they seem to be immortal as long as their tree is fine and killing them has become illegal, invoking dryads was also illegal before the summoning rituals where lost with the Thraksark temples. Making their killing illegal was a necessity because it is known that parts of their bodies are powerful ingredients for potions, rituals, and as spell components; and thus people were hunting them and killing them for their bodies and without possibility of summoning new dryads, their numbers were quickly falling yet there was a need for what they could offer and, having a dryad in a forest made the forest more lively, healthy, and safer.  The knowledge and power of a dryad is based on what their forest knows about, but the older a dryad is, the more complex and in-depth is the knowledge they hold, as if they had been doing research themselves.

Magic

Dryads can't normally cast magic, but there are two cases where they can: when they feel their forest damaged and when they feel a death threat. When they feel damage to their forest, they will find the origin and curse it, driving it away from their forest. When they feel a death threat, they will command surrounding flora to protect their tree. There have been cases where an old dryad has been able to grant a boon or blessing, but these case are so rare that cannot be confirm to be true. It is unknown if the dryads are aware of the consequences of their curses as the only effect they see is that the afflicted leaves their territory, but not the following effects.

Evergreen trees covered with snow by Niklas Hamann

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