Editing Treant (section)

==Evil and Undead Treants==
One of the subtler themes of [[Gothic Horror]] can be summed up as "Nature is Evil". As a result, the treants of [[Ravenloft]] are uniformly malicious. Even a treant brought into the [[Demiplane of Dread]] from another world will soon find itself infected by the evil energies of the demiplane and corrupted into a murderous parody of its former self.

For the most part, evil treants are... well, treants but evil. They despise all that is good and innocent, and go to great lengths to torment and terrorize travelers in their domains. Whereas regular treants photosynthesize, evil treants are carnivores with a particular fondness for the flesh of sapient creatures - the more innocent and pure, the better. Such is their malice that most evil treants believe that meat is only digestible if consumed whilst a victim is still alive and screaming, and they will discard the corpses of those they accidentally torture to death before they can feed to rot rather than eat them. Forests where these creatures settle invariably become twisted, dark places, haunted by [[ghost]]s, magical predators and evil [[fey]]. 

Legend has it that smearing one's body in sap taken from an evil treant will imbue the individual with supernatural durability, as if targeted by a ''Barkskin'' spell.

The most famous of all the evil treants in Ravenloft is '''Blackroot'''; once a sacred [[druid]]ic oak tree in Tepest, he was ritually corrupted by the Sisters Mindefisk, the [[hag]] [[darklord]]s of that domain, turning him into an abomination poised to take the realm for his own should the hags fall.

An even greater abomination than the standard evil treant is the '''[[undead]]''' treant; an evil treant that has refused to accept the end of its life and instead of deciding to go out in a final wild orgy of violence and death, has transformed itself into a kind of [[lich]]plant to continue its evil. Distinguishable by their lack of leaves and lusterless, almost brittle-looking bark, undead treants lose the ability to animate trees, but possess an instinctive command of [[druid]]ic magic (typically having the equivalent of 2-6 levels in that class), can extrude blood-sucking roots to drain victims dry, and wield a number of the typical undead resiliences... however, they are also immune to the effects of sunlight, holy water, and the [[Turn Undead]] abilities of both [[cleric]]s and [[paladin]]s, as well as being immune to spells that specifically control either undead or plants.

Such is the malevolence of treants of Ravenloft that undead treants are not outcasts, but instead regarded as respected, even revered leaders amongst the circles of their still-living counterparts.

Alone amongst the treant variants listed on this page, Evil and Undead Treants made it into [[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition]].