 IMAGE: group of rebel dryads |
Dryads, known by their own kind as Dyriadnaiad, are also called tree sprites. Beautiful and shy, many never leave the shade of the tree they were born under. If coaxed, dryads can reveal the location of forest treasures. They are only dangerous in large numbers, and then only if threatened. Angered dryads have been known to crush attackers under tons of rose petals. When awake, dryads are black and gray and white and red and red.
Dryads are mostly nomadic continuously moving from place to place, sometimes up the ocean coasts in pretty ships, and other times delving deep into the recesses of uninhabited woods. Always moving, they will not even wait around for their sick, leaving them behind to die unattended, or with another willing to abandon the rest.
Dryads believe that flowers are souls. When anyone dies, if their soul is beautiful and pure, it becomes a flower. Thus to pick flowers, Dryad ask permission of the flowers first, to do the flower much honor. Flowers die and are reborn. They also believe that when their own kind dies, that any dryad goes to be with the Great Tree of All.
Men were only able to see the outside of trees. But each one had a world within, with tree-hills, tree-rivers and tree-skies, each unlike another, each unique. The dryads, who were the only ones who could enter, played in those pretty worlds. Because of this, all dryads grow passionately attached to the trees, and find it extremely difficult, almost agonizing, to leave the forests.
All dryads know that humans cut down trees and make planks and logs of them. They accused humans of having limited sense, as they did not know the lands they destroyed. Thus these creatures are tormented when entering human cities, claiming that the stink of the corpses of dead trees.
During the Great Monster Uprising of the Second Age of Magic, dryads were reported in the following regions: The Casino in Port Foozle, The Coast Road in Greater Borphee, Forest of Youth, Gurth Woodland Trial, Mithicus Mountains, and the G.U.E. Tech Training Grounds in the Ethereal Plane of Atrii.
Dryads are members of the Supernatural and Fantastic Wayfarers Association.
| SOURCE(S): Sorcerer (A Field Guide to the Creatures of Frobozz), Enchanter (the novel), The Zork Chronicles, Legends of Zork |