Treant Empire and their Vassal States

**Population**: 25% humans, 50% humans with treant ancestry, 25% treants (both Ents and dryads)

**Capital:** Kuhikugu

**Government:** Gerontocracy

#### **Nation**

The Empire’s territory and the world’s greatest jungle are one and the same. The Treants make sure it is so. And as wild as it seems, it is wholly designed for sentient plants. The heat and humidity is oppressive. The insects are as big as birds and the birds are big enough to carry off a child. The soil is a labyrinth of fallen branches, webs of vines so thick that they can make a whole tree disappear. Below the layer of rotten leaves there isn’t much soil, for it always seems as if the space between two roots is taken by a third one. The green canopy hides the sun and the moon, but the veins of luminescent brown fungus and orange lichens within the trunks’ grooves ensure that it’s never dark. Your nose will be assaulted by honey, garlic, rotten wood, pollen and a thousands other fragrances: all fresh, damp, sweet and nauseous at the same time. Your ears might never calm down due to all the shrieks, mating calls, rustling leaves, creaks that happen all day, every day. For those that do not submit to the Treant’s authority, it is a green hell: allies are marked by the pheromones that one emits due to eating certain fruits throughout his or her life. For the enemies, there are a thousand poisons, diseases, parasites and predators.

And the Treants plot millennia-long strategies so that, one day, all Gloria-Etalia becomes like this.

#### **Origin**

The treants have been around for a long, long time. They had no government until a high ranking explorer from the Celestia Subcontinent went to far into their terrority and got captured. He told the treants about nations, writing, and the outside world. When pressed, he told them about the Empire's govermental system, and they deciced to create their own by copying them. Following the outline of the empire they started to expand their terrority, slowly. They also started to keep time using a system the explorer told them about. The first recorded date of their empire was 1426, and was drawn in the dirt. The treants remembered this, and the words can still be found. (though in fact the Treant Empire reached its territorial peak in 1350)

### **Treant Vassal Nations**

75% humans, 20% humans with treant ancestry, 5% treants (both Ents and dryads) No capital (at least yet, or perhaps multiple ones) Tribal Confederacy

The Vassals of the Treant Empire are all the non-Treants which were slowly pushed out of the most fertile lands. Most of them are tribal humans. Those with noticeable Ent or Dryad descendance are commonly elected as chieftains and shamans. The hundreds of tribes have their own customs, languages and religions, although Treant worship is present in most of them.

The trade language is nhagatupira, a sign language which uses movements of the whole body. For those which don’t know it, a fast speaker may seem like a very bad dancer. Besides commerce, nhagatupira is used to perform ceremonies, tell stories and make speeches.

The Treant Vassal tribes act as buffers among the Treants and neighbors. During peaceful times, they trade lumber, healing crystals made out of Treant amber, silver, messenger-parrots, capybara jerky and ceramics for metal tools and weapons, educated slaves and wine.

Next, we shall detail some of the more distinct tribes:

#### Chamanza

Among the various tribes that form the vassal nations, it is common practice to regard the Treants with religious idolization, often treating the massive treefolk as living manifestations of some natural divinity. Over time and due to the tribes' unification, a semi-organized form of this worship has even emerged, with a focal point being the ever-constant cycle of life, death, and rebirth that nature endures.

Enter the Chamanza, known as "Ash-Walkers" in the native tongue.

Physically, they're similar to the rest of the vassal tribes. A tad small compared to the average man, dark-skinned, and ferociously quick. Where they differ is in their eyes, which contain a wild, blazing intensity that threatens to consume all in sight. This is because their magic often does.

The Chamanza focus intensely on the "rebirth" aspect of the cycle of life, and accordingly, have turned to a near-fetishistic worship of the concept of fire and ash. Their magicians wield the most taboo of magics in the Treant Empire, burning the landscape and their enemies to a charred crisp, their warriors covering themselves in the ashes of the fallen.

To them, they are the spark that sets flame to the dead undergrowth of the forest, so as to make room for new life to grow and spread. To most others, they are a band of pyromaniacs.

Why, then, are they allowed to stay in the empire, albeit under a short leash? For a few main reasons: 1. While taken to an extreme degree, they're not entirely wrong in their sentiment. At times, a cleansing is needed, lest rot and decay choke the life from a once-pure grove. 2. They serve as excellent, if sparingly and carefully used, auxiliaries for the Treant army. Few would expect the treefolk to bring such firepower (pun semi-intended) to the fields of battle, and it makes the Chamanza all the more effective as a result. 3. They serve as brutal enforcers for any politicking that takes place. The destruction that can be wrought with only a handful of pyromancers in the lands of the eternal forest is a capable threat, enough to keep any rebellious Treant or Tribefolk in line. 4. Lastly, they make effective fire fighters. As it turns out, having someone skilled in manipulating fire is helpful in redirecting any errant flame from destroying anything too precious. Equally as useful during warfare too, with fire being a common tactic against the Treants and all.

#### Guaxós

A large and rich tribe, with tens of thousands of members. They gather gold dust from a river which passes through their territory, exchanging it for metal tools and scythe-like blades. This makes them superior warriors and better farmers, explaining their numbers.

They live together in great halls. For a person or family to live in a house separated from the others is seen as suspicious, at the very least. These halls are surrounded by unique defenses: groves of trees in whose hollows live a type of poisonous wasp. To cross such woods, without knowing the right path, is madness.

The rite of passage is the same for men and women: trepanation. They believe that the soul resides in the head, and opening a hole in the skull creates a way for it to escape when death occurs. Their fighters, emboldened with the belief that their souls won’t be taken by the enemy, gather in warbands in which the members are sworn to help and guard each other. Then these same bands go forth to acquire that which the Guaxós prize more than anything: heads. They take the heads of their enemies, shrunk them and use them as amulets which increase their strength and give them the power to resist great wounds.

#### Iacarés

The Iacaré tribe is formed by dozens of nomad clans which travel all over the Empire’s rivers and coasts on their vessels. The common boat is the Bumbaré, a big canoe which can house one family, a fire at the center, a sail and can be covered by a leather canvas. Bumbaré flotillas group together for safety, fishing, trading, whale hunting and gathering pearls. Each clan has a totem, usually an aquatic animal like a frog, shark, crocodile and such.

Among the Iacarés, being a pirate is an honorable profession. The Treants forbid them from attacking other Vassal tribes, but allow them to prey upon any foreign vessels which come too close to the Empire and don’t have a permit to do so. A pirate crew is usually made of several families which build or buy a bigger ship. They elect their captain and follow him during combat. But in every other matter, like deciding who to attack, follow the will of the majority.

Each clan buries their dead on a specific Sambaqui. These are earthen mounds filled with layers upon layers of bones. Some Sambaquis can be mistaken for hills. Many precious offerings to the ancestors are also buried on them, some taken as booty from far lands. Every ten years, the Iacarés gather around the Sambaquis and perform competitions to select guardians.

#### Íbaros

The Íbaros are a tribe marked by a curse, although they don’t know who cursed them or why. Due to this, they are suspicious and even aggressive towards all foreigners. They suffer intense pain when under the sunlight. As they live in deep jungles whose canopy blocks much of it, the curse isn’t as bad as it seems. When they need to go elsewhere, they dress in mud, leaves, feathers and great hats.

Despite the curse, the Íbaros remain lovers of freedom, indomitable and even arrogant. They organize expeditions to plunder other lands, specially targeting the Merchant Empire which they suspect to be the ones which cursed them. They don’t even value the precious metals taken from the merchants, storing them in certain places of the jungle.

An ìbaro can be recognized by the zig-zag tattoos all over the body, a sign that he or she passed through the rite of adulthood, which consists of spending at least a day under the sunlight.

Each village consists of ten to twenty families. Polygamy is common. When they go hunting or to war, they elect a commander. He must lead by example, and if the hunt or fighting ends badly, must be exiled. They’re seminomad, changing places every three years. Their region is full of rivers, making them skilled in the building of wooden bridges.

The Íbaros divide themselves into three groups:

#### Arushus

The shamans of this group know how to make potions through internal alchemy. They swallow, smell and chew certain plants, then uses his body as a laboratory. Their sweat then produces the desired substance. They know how to create healing unguents, love perfumes, poisons and many others.

#### Aguushus

They practice an art of body domain, through fasting, meditation and a drink made out of a vine which makes them enter the spiritual realm. As a result, they can sleep less, survive with little food and have greater resistance to pain. Some aguushus can even live under the sunlight, but this leads the other groups to believe that aguushus don’t suffer the curse, and might be the ones that created it in the first place.

#### Avushus

The shamans of this group know how to produce tsentak, a substance used in darts, arrow tips and javelins. It poisons their enemies, but heals their allies. But to achieve this effect, they divide all people in allies and enemies, and to establish the intents of newcomers is paramount.

#### Icamiabas

Not all amazon tribes migrated after the Treants took over the region. A few remained. The better known local tribe are the Icamiabas. They are led by a dryad queen called Conhõri and have dozens of fortified settlements spread out through the borders with the Necroswampers, acting as frontier guards. Each settlement is actually a stone keep directly linked to the smaller houses (like pic related). They communicate between each other through “manhuarés”, drums made out of two hollowed tree trunks which can be heard 10 miles away. Their temples, called Caranaís, are silver-plated pyramids dedicated to the moon or the Treants.

Contrary to other amazons, the Icamiabas allow men to live among them and even wage war, but they must also accept a lower social status: men herd common capybaras and fight as skirmishers, while the women are full-time warriors, priests and officers. Men which wish to mate with an amazon must beat them at a “jungle marathon”, a three-day race among the jungle which includes puzzle-solving, traps and hunting.

Icamiabas have a wide range of skin colors and body shapes, due to freely accepting warrior women from all over the continent into their ranks. Both men and women wear little more than clay thongs. To better deal with the heat and insects, they use intricate body paint which also denotes their social status, fighting club membership and other details. Deciphering one’s paint is the basis of Icamiaba etiquette. All adult women must dedicate themselves to training and warfare. Their rite of passage has them hunting Necroswampers, either coming back with one’s head or not at all. Those that succeed sharpen their teeth, the signal of a true warrior. Their common weapons are bows, two-handed clubs, bolas and a type of single-stone bolas which can both be thrown and used in melee.

#### Vegegós

This tribe has an exclusive duty: they are the shapers, entrusted by the Treants to make living tools and other items out of wood, sap and all the products of the jungle. This power is only possible due to deep ties with the Treants themselves. All families of the tribe have direct ancestry to one Treant or another. They are seen as witches by the other Vassal tribes, both respected and feared. They create bioluminescent candles, razorgrass blades, amber ceramics, petal plates, greentowers, bark pickaxes and spades. Vegegós were the ones to craft the underground rootways which the Treant Vassals may use to travel through the Empire, as well as the podships that form the imperial Treant fleet.

Their most prized and unique power is to cover themselves with vines, roots and wood in a sort of living armor. Some Vegegós spend so much time in this state that they fuse with their armor, becoming half-man, half-plant. The latter can be very hard to distinguish from Treants.

Unknown to the Vegegós themselves is that the Treants see them as a successful experiment of their objective of slowly making all the other races closer to plants, both mind and body. This is how they plan to, one day, remake all of Gloria-Etalia in their image.

#### Zangós

Zangós aren’t part of any particular tribe. Only the Treants know their origin. What all know is that they are a secret society of people possessed by night spirits which can smell thieves, witches and murderers. They wander from tribe to tribe, acting as a supernatural police force. The rumor of a coming zangó is often enough to make people confess. Thus they provide the law and order the Treant Empire needs. All zangós wear a mask, which is said to house the spirit, and a leather cape which hides their whole body.

Once the zangó reaches a village or wandering tribe, he will fall into a trance. This might take hours or days, and the natives must protect him or the Treants will punish them. After the zangó starts moving again, he will dance towards the evildoers, singing in an unknown language. Then it falls for the tribe to arrest, force a confession, judge and then apply the sentence.

### **The Master Plan**

In recent years (since the last War of Iron and Wood) the Treant Empire has been apparently quiescent, and has been trading unusually much. In particular, it has been allowing many treants and dryads (especially those who have expressed some dissatisfaction with the way that the empire has been run) to leave via the Morloux trade missions. This is in stark contrast to previous policy, which was to forcefully overwrite the minds of any individual who dissented too noticeably.

But this is not any form of softness on the part of the gerontocracy!

Instead, this is part of a long-term plan to establish a major new outgrowth of the Empire in Westrasia. The plan is simple, and based on the huge (and inhuman) capacity of the treants for ritual casting.

1. Build up a number of treants in Morloux. The treants in question must have no idea of the existence of this plan so they cannot reveal it. Low-level dissenters are excellent candidates for this. They will be accompanied by substantial numbers of dryads in their most peaceable form.
2. Perform the (very difficult and long) ritual casting to do the forceful overwriting of those treants minds with absolute loyalty to the Empire (who in turn will trigger the dryads to convert to combat forms). This will trigger the collapse of Morloux and possibly other countries in the area, and rapidly build up the Empire in an area where there is little knowledge of how to oppose a nation of treants geared for war.

The plan requires an extremely rare casting. Though the core spell itself is well known among Treant casters, arranging for it to affect many treants on the other side of the continent and all at once is exceptionally difficult and would be impossible without focusing virtually the entire ritual might of the Empire on it (excepting the effort dedicated to maintaining the Treant biome) for a substantial amount of time, and even so needs ley lines to guide it that far. Fortunately for the plan, such a line (a line of Permanence) leads straight from the northern Empire to Morloux. The plan is believed by Treant sages to be viable, if moderately dangerous.

A more detached view might describe the plan as exceptionally foolhardy due to the utterly unknown consequences of pushing that much power along a ley line.