Chapter 1: Tree-folk and their derivatives

At some point in time a long lived tree became the centre of a village, which grew into a town, into a city, into a country. Until it wasn’t strange for people to be born and die under the tree, which having been taken care of dutifully since the villages infancy had grown very large. As a natural consequence of the trees age, it had gone from being regarded as a special tree to a friend to family to a beloved grandparent to a guardian spirit to a deity that watched over everyone. This gathering of faith and love transformed the tree into a Demi-god like existence with authority over the entire forest. Also gaining the title of World Tree. But a powerful, Immortal tree, is still just a tree, only capable of making life slightly easier.

When these peaceful peoples were invaded by foreign armies, having been sheltered by the tree’s blessings, were driven towards extinction. 

Hearing the cries of those it had watched over from birth, whose ancestors had watered it when it was but a tree, the World Tree sheltered it’s people inside it and drained the land of all its nutrients, creating a barren wasteland and forcing the invaders out.

Over a ten year period the tree revitalized the environment before releasing the humans it had sheltered. But when they left the World Trees embrace, they were reborn.

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Elves: Elf is the broad catch-all term for those born of the World Tree, however the term has been redefined to refer to the most common type of elf; the term tree-folk is now used in its place. Elves are the base form of tree-folk and the source of all their derivatives. Notable traits are; the ability to photosynthesize, pointed leaf like ears and the ability to absorb soluble nutrients and water from their skin, they have also gained the tree’s longevity. Just as plants cannot survive on water and sunlight alone, an elf that only photosynthesizes will be very sickly and malnourished, this can be fixed by using their skin as a substitute for roots or directly eating dirt.

Physically elves look like humans with pointed ears with no other distinctive features other than that their eyes are mostly brown and green, with their hair being either green or sun-blonde.

Spryggans: As elves become more reliant on photosynthesis, their skin and hair become greener and more plant like, occasionally even growing bark. Once an elf is entirely plant-like and loses all its animal-like body functions such as eating or defecating, it is known as a spryggan.

Spryggans are better described as humanoid moving plants as there are no functional differences between them and plants. They retain their will, but the process of ignoring their needs as an animal to become closer to The Tree leaves their minds in an odd state where they are avatars of the World Trees will.

Goblins: When an elf directly eats the soil, they drain it of all the nutrients beneficial to plants or animals and leave it as barren land that cannot support any life. When forced to stay on such land, they may resort to cannibalism for the nutrients they cannot obtain through photosynthesis. Thus leading to a tribal society where life is deliberately made harsh to cull the population and provide sustenance for those who survive. Goblins have the potential to be as intelligent as any other species of tree-folk but their culture is not conducive to any intelligent thought.

Their harsh environment also creates evolutionary pressures to produce as many children as possible.

Other: There are many other varieties of tree-folk such as subterranean falmer and semi-aquatic variants. However many of them can be described as goblin offshoots. Some of them, while not directly descended from goblins, show similar characteristics and behaviour and are therefore not worth mentioning.

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