Forest Lords
Forest Lords (Hur Dir En) are powerful Forest-Spirit Jagglings.
Background
Forest Lords are powerful Jagglings that watch over and product entire forests. Forest Lords are keenly aware of the goings-on within their domain, and are effectively a gestalt of the numerous tree-spirits within the forest, the animals that inhabit it and the land which it rests. At one time, Forest Lords were much more powerful, but usually quiescent; they were content to slumber most of the time. As forests have shrunk in size in modern times, however, more and more tree-spirits have awoken. These, in turn, whether by accident or design, began to waken the Forest Lords of which the tree-spirits were a part. Some Forest Lords have fallen into a state of violent despair, and now pose a threat to anything that trespasses within their chosen woods.
Forest Lords are neither hostile nor benign; they are at once predatory and weak, beautiful and hideous, violent and calm. They are not capricious beings, mind, just... complicated. This complexity makes them extremely difficult to understand, and even canny Ithaeur must exercise great caution when dealing with Forest Lords.
Description
No two Forest Lords look alike. One might appear as a great stag, another as a wandering tree-spirit, and still another as a chimeric beast. Some have even appeared as human beings, typically from tribes that are strongly attuned to the forest and its inhabitants. No matter a Forest Lord's appearance, the Forest Lords has a powerful presence that commands respect.
Stats
Rank: 4
Attributes: Power 12, Finesse 9, Resistance 12
Willpower: 24
Essence: 25 (max 25)
Initiative: 21
Defense: 12
Speed: 21 (or 31 or highly mobile spirits)
Size: Variable
Corpus: 17+
Influences: Forest ****
Numina: Blast, Call Water, Discorporation, Forest Communion, Harrow, Materialize, Material Vision, Nature's Vengeance, Plant Growth, Reaching, Speak With Beasts, Wilds Sense
- Blast: This manifests differently for each Forest Lord. A humanoid spirit might throw a spear, while weather-oriented spirits might let fly with bolts of lightning. If appropriate, a Numen more appropriate for the spirit's form may be substituted for blast. A stag might have Furious Charge, for instance, while a wolf might have Death Grip. Chimeric spirits can have just about anything.
- Call Water: As the one-dot Elemental Gift.
- Forest Communion: As the three-dot Nature Gift.
- Nature's Vengeance: As the one-dot Nature Gift.
- Plant Growth: As the five-dot Nature Gift. The Forest Lord need not roll to activate this Numen; doing so is automatic. If the spirit spends an extra Essence, the Numen is treated as an exceptional success.
- Speak With Beasts: As the one-dot Nature Gift.
- Note that more unusual wilderness-spirits might have different arrays of Numina. The lord of a desert might have Weather Gifts, for instance.
Ban: While Forest Lords must certainly have a ban, the exact nature of said ban varies considerably from spirit to spirit, and is always difficult to discern. Some wonder if Forest Lords are banned from interacting productively with others, but most agree that, while it would fit the facts of their interactions reasonably well, such a ban would be... perverse, at best.
References
- WTF: Territories, p. 96-97
