The Great Father Tree/The Bearded Man

Towering above the surrounding forest stands the formidable ruin of the Bearded Man. The long, bare limbs of this gargantuan dead tree stretch out for hundreds of feet, and a webwork of dead white vines hangs from its trunk like a beard. A ravine opens up at its base where huge, twisted roots have collapsed to form a moat filled with brambles. A large crack at the dead tree’s base leads into its hollow core.

The Bearded Man was once the mightiest tree in the forest known as the Howling Wood, but it died long ago.

Very few know the true origin of the Great Father Tree. Popular stories and gossip describe it in such a way that it appears that the tree has always been in our world. A permanent fixture that has accompanied the humanoid races since the beginnings of time. But that is not true at all. The written memory of humans and other races covers only a sliver of time in the Material Plane. Yes, the Father Tree is old, but it too came from a faraway realm. The true story is known because the Father Tree itself told it to an elvish explorer and student of history. The tree was younger and healthier back then.

The Father Tree has a long name that can never be pronounced by bodily organs such as tongues and throats. It is in the ancient form of the Sylvan language. Its long words and sentences can only be expressed by the sounds of the wind, the movement of the trees, and the unconscious interactions of mindless critters. And the name of the Father Tree takes a full month to “pronounce” in its entirety. Thus, the mortal creatures from the Material Plane named it the Great Father Tree. The tree did not mind such title as it understood that the locals were limited in their understanding of nature and their physical bodies.

The Father Tree is a primordial entity from the Feywild. It embodies the force of life and the verdant strength of the forests and plants. Back when the world was young and the two planes of existence were closer to each other, the primordial spirit of the tree walked across the veil and entered the Material Plane. Back then it was a trivial thing to do. The different properties of the plane forced the spirit to anchor itself into a physical representation of itself. That is when the spirit became a grandiose tree in the middle of a valley. It fueled the land and the wildlife around it with only its presence. After only a few decades, a great forest surrounded the Father Tree and its purpose to take care of such repository of life became the only reason for its existence. The strong spiritual presence in the area also became the focal point for other foreign Fey creatures to converge. Centaurs, satyrs, and all kinds of fairies and pixies became part of the permanent population within the forest.

However, the usual state of affairs in the forest is about to change drastically. The Father Tree is sick. A ravenous, morbid aberration eats the tree from the inside. It all started almost a hundred years ago.

For a few decades, the tree knew its fate but it was strong enough to fight it. But the tree is running out of strength and the will to fight little by little. Over the past thirty years, the Father Tree has grown weaker and old. Now its foliage looks pale and sick. The trunk’s bark looks dry and cracked. It seldom speaks anymore, even in the Sylvan tongue which used to fill its corner of the forest most days.

The other sentient Fey creatures are well aware of the tree’s bad health but are unable to help. They found out when a team of satyrs and one centaur entered the tree to cleanse it from whatever threat they could find. The strange disease manifests itself in the shape of dark plant-life abominations that twist and whip anyone who dares enter their domain. The Fey invaders did not flinch and continued until they found the Heart of the Forest, the source of the verdant energy that keeps the great forest growing. The heart was poisoned and consumed by the same disease. Not only was it infested, it appeared as if the very nature of the heart had been perverted by some evil magic. It was the heart that produced the dark plant creatures and a cloud of poisonous gas that killed any Fey creature who breathed it.