Old Knotty
Old Knotty
Old Knotty is the name given to an ancient and very powerful elder Treant known to reside within the Greenbrae Forest. He is rarely encountered, but when he has recently been seen, he has ignored his observers entirely. The last interaction anyone had with Knotty was more than 65 years ago in the western fringes of the Greenbrae. He was noted to have been standing several hundred yards away from a camp of loggers from Rolar and watching them mark trees for felling. The Treant would give a very slight but discernable nod of its great head at trees it would allow to be cut down, and a firm shake for those that it would not want cut down. It did this for an afternoon, and was not seen again for nearly 12 years.
There are no records of an encounter with Knotty that resulted in violence or attack, but no one that has ever seen the creature can doubt that were Knotty to become angry it would be a devestating event that few would survive, let alone forget.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
More than 25' tall and 7' across his shoulders. Covered in knotted ropes of what seem to be vines and branches, with several large and magestic branches eminating from its head in a vast crown-like array. No records exist of the creature ever speaking, but frequently using hand gestures or head nods.
Special abilities
There is an ancient manuscript in the Royal archives at Jemptal describing a giant Treant in a northern forest leading an entire grove of trees across a plain of grass. For more than a century, this manuscript was dismissed as a fantasy put to pen, but some now wonder if that parchment might not be describing Knotty herding trees from one forest to another. It has long been known that elder Treants have the ability to command mature trees to move from one location to another, but it has only been very rarely observed in action, and even then it was usually observed by people facing the very real and devestating wrath of an angered Treant.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
The oldest possible desciption of Old Knotty is from a manuscript written by a Gnome slave to a campaigning Archon of Naru that was travelling through the eastern regions of what is now Cobal more than 850 years ago. The three-page velum document describes a large Treant leading a marching grove of large mature trees westward across the plains of the Caldar Valley. The description, while incomplete in many ways, does seem to match what is known to be Old Knotty today, and the area detailed is probably within 40 miles of the Greenbrae Forest.
Even with this very old but clearly dated document as a baseline, Old Knotty is usually estimated to be at least 2,800 years old. Some scholars, including Versin Getorix, believe Knotty is more than 4,000 years old and is quite possibly older than the Greenbrae Forest itself. Master Getorix has even gone so far as to suggest that Old Knotty was responsible for establishing the Greenbrae in the first place.
More modern references to Old Knotty show him to be a solitary caretaker of his chosen forest, the Greenbrae. He has, in the past, observed the work of foresters and lumbermen working in and around the Greenbrae Forest. He will occassionally give his silent approval or concern while watching these operations, but has never openly displayed violence or anger towards them. Cobalian subjects working the forest today are careful to watch for signs of Knotty's presence and all are instructed to follow his directions concerning the felling and harvesting of trees anywhere in the region.
