Gallowsoak [Evil Treant]

Gallowsoak looks like an ancient oak a little over eighteen feet tall, with deeply furrowed, rough bark and long, twisted branches that never show a leaf, bud or flower. When he chooses to be recognized, a knotted face gathers in the cracks of his trunk: two gnarled eyes above a huge mouth shaped like an upside-down V.

He speaks with forest animals as most treants do, but his evil is so strong that the normally neutral beasts around him have turned neutral evil, so even a rabbit in his woods may be an enemy. He speaks the tongues of his domain and every neighboring land but has no concept of writing as a way to communicate.

Few who hunt him return; his forest kills most, and he kills the rest. He strikes twice a round for 4d6 per hit, with force enough to crush plate armor like paper.

His bark turns most attacks, but fire, magical or ordinary, is his great weakness: fire weapons and spells gain +4 to hit and +1 damage per die, and he saves at -4 against fire attacks. He therefore moves fast against anyone careless with flame in his woods, though he prefers to send wolves and other beasts first and confronts the intruder himself only if they fail.

The tainted soil has given him powers few treants have. Once per day each he casts these as a 12th-level druid, by will alone and without components. 6th: speak with monsters, antianimal shell. 5th: wall of thorns, antiplant shell, animal summoning II, animal growth. 4th: speak with plants, repel insects, hold plant, call woodland beings, animal summoning I. 3rd: summon insects, spike growth, snare, plant growth, hold animal. 2nd: warp wood, speak with animals, create water, charm person or mammal. 1st: putrefy food or drink, locate animals or plants, entangle, animal friendship.

He can also keep two trees of his forest animated at any time, obeying his mental orders. Each takes a round to tear free, then moves freely and fights as a mature treant with 10 Hit Dice and two 3d6 attacks. They have no minds of their own, acting as extensions of his will, and revert to normal trees if they stray more than sixty yards from him.

Gallowsoak was born a tree, not a treant: a magnificent, glowing-healthy oak that towered over the forest, so splendid that a druidic order made its home beneath it as guardians. When the three hags ruling the domain saw people turning to the druids' nature worship and away from the coven, they made an example of the order, warping each druid into a rotten, crooked tree whose taint spread to the plants and beasts nearby until locals shunned the woods.

The oak they saved for last. For a month they poured a vile cauldron brew over its roots each midnight, and under a blood-red full moon Gallowsoak awoke while the hags danced and cackled.

He has grown steadily more wicked since, watching everything in the witch-mountain woods through its plants and animals. The hags do not control his mind; he serves them out of admiration for their greater evil, hoping one day to take their place as master of the domain. He lairs southwest of a misty highland lake near the edge of the hidden shadow realm, and nobody crosses those woods without his notice, or without his anger if they are careless.

He feeds on the flesh of humans, demihumans and humanoids. The many goblins in the woods usually keep him fed without his troubling travelers on the main forest road, but roughly once a month he craves sweeter human meat. Visitors to his part of the forest sense its evil at once: the fruit is bitter, the streams brackish, stinging insects swarm, and thorny brush blocks every path.