 IMAGE: a Christmas tree monster |
Christmas tree monsters, decked with rattling ornaments, blinking lights and swishing tinsel sing chorus' of Christmas carols wherever they go. Vast herds of these luminous vegetables roam freely amid the glacial valleys of the southern Westland mountains. Residents fear the autumn migrations, in which the trees cheerfully trample everything in their path. They march relentlessly, choking the valley with their foul gifts and blasphemous songs.
Some of their most favorite carols include, "Dwaarnyn the Dark-Nosed Ur-Grue", "Winter Bozbarland", "I'm Dreaming of a Black Cavern", "Good King Flathead", "Dornbeats Roasting on an Open Fire", and "Plover the River and Frotz the Woods."
Christmas tree monsters are repelled by caterpillars, but nobody can explain why. Having sighted one, the monster stop dead in their tracks; the youngsters taking root behind their mothers, and the leaders singing an emergency verse of a carol. Any adventurer with a caterpillar is permitted to pass by the horde, no matter how dense and monstrous.
In 966 GUE, a horde of 69,105 of these creatures descended on Thriff village (which had reached its final location south of Miznia Jungle). For a few days the village was protected by magic glyphs designed by the enchanter Orkan, until a nearby volcanic eruption caused by an unknown peasant destroyed not only much of the horde, but also the glyphs. The pine-scented survivors planned to continue their delayed migration into Thriff once the lava had cooled, but that same peasant inscribed a fresh glyph into the cooling magma, thus forever barring their advance.
During the Great Monster Uprising of the Second Age of Magic, Christmas tree monsters were reported in the following regions: Mirror Lake, The Road Road near Borphee, Forest of Youth, Gurth Woodland Trail, The Lonely Mountain, and the G.U.E. Tech Training Grounds in the Ethereal Plane of Atrii.
TRIVIA:
Christmas tree monsters are called "tree demons" by many.