Green Man

The Green Man is a legendary folkloric figure who features prominently in old wives' tales as a sort of boogeyman who haunts the edges of the great jungle in the southeast of the Pāll-tanír. Il Hakira Inna in Arventiri, the Green Man has prowled the border regions of the Shār for as long as there have been Sharans to tell his story.

Summary

According to the legend, the Green Man is a powerful nature spirit, second only in strength to the gods themselves, who is tasked with the stewardship of the great jungle of the Shār. It is said that he mostly dwells within the depths of the Shār, acting as an insurmountable barrier to all who would enter the heartwood without invitation. However, the stories also say that when people become too arrogant, when they forget their place in the world and lose their respect for the world around them, acting with greed and without regard for the balance of nature, the Green Man emerges from the heart of the Shār and wakes its most ferocious beasts to dispense judgment.

Historical Basis

There have been numerous supposed sightings of the Green Man over the years but their veracity remains in question. It is likely that most of the accounts are embellished in one way or another. A good portion are accompanied by an anecdote about some sort of act of extraordinary bravery, where the witness courageously faced down beasts from the Shār while the Green Man watched, or one about extraordinary luck where the witness just barely escaped the beasts by some sort of intervention, supernatural or otherwise, just in the nick of time.
Scholars believe that a more reasonable explanation exists for the stories of the Green Man. The Shār is a dense, ancient, and largely unexplored jungle with many places for people to hide, survive, and possibly even thrive for an extended period of time. It is quite likely that druids who know of its existence are drawn to the jungle due to its abundance of thriving life. These individuals, who need to have some affinity for nature to survive in the harsh landscape of the Shār, are likely to see civilized activity that invades this space as an affront to their way of life, retaliating in a way that could potentially be consistent with the stories of the Green Man.
It is likely, however, that a begotten version of the Green Man exists in the Shardscape, born from the collective belief of those who believe in his existence.