Dryads
“Before there were gods and devils, the Earth dreamed of desire. From that bloomed the first dryad, and no one was ever safe again.”
Human history is littered with myth and mystery. Stories told over time both to entertain and teach. Warnings about what lurks beyond the firelight, past the walls, and into the waiting dark about the Children—or Creatures—of the Night. A dangerous hidden world just one step removed from the one most everyone knows.
Those myths get many things right, but so much more wrong. Nothing has been more wrong or misnamed than the dryad. Another Creature of the Night, the dryad may be one of the most persistent predators the world has ever known. One with a pollen-born enchantment that drives straight to the victim’s core.
Cunning and seductive, these are nature spirits given human form. They’re terrible in their immense beauty, preying on humanity and other Night Children since time’s first bloom. They are—at least they believe—the nobility of nature. To them, all of nature’s creations are their garden to grow, nurture, and even prune as they see fit.
Root and Branch of Desire
Dryads are ancient. Some would whisper almost as old as the dopplekin, but the dryads claim to be older. They are impossibly beautiful, plant-born predators. Spirits of root and vine given human form, and often calculating minds to match. Most often, they appear as attractive human men or women with deep green eyes. But this is nothing more than a spun illusion grown from their Darklight enchantments. The most common way a dryad walks among humans, or others, for amusement or prey.
In their natural form, dryads are most commonly graceful, at times athletic, beautiful human men or women with deep green, gray, or bark-like skin and sharply pointed ears. They’re as tall as most humans with naturally striking features that are both alluring to see, yet almost terrible to behold.
Living leaf patterns openly vein their skin from neck to foot, almost like tattoos. But these tattoos are as alive as the dryad, occasionally shifting with their mood or emotions. Their hair is long and flowing, with colors of russet, gold, green, or deep earthly brown. It adjusts shades in sync with the seasons, and with some dryads, even their moods. Last, and most striking, are their emerald eyes. This is the one part of themselves that they can’t change or hide, no matter how powerful a pollen glamour they spin over themselves.
Beyond their plant-like aspects and dryads are almost ageless. They are born, grow until about the age of a 30-year-old human. Then their physical state freezes in a type of persistent stasis. They still grow older, but barring physical harm, they practically cannot die. Practically, as in they have a lifespan, but it’s rumored to last several centuries, if not longer.
Those who survive meeting a dryad in its true form often mistake them for myths of the fae. They are nothing of the kind, even if they are one source of those stories. Dryads are older, wilder, and infamously deadly beyond measure.
A Certain Kind of Magic
“It begins as a kindness. A touch, or whisper of a word. That brush of breath that smells like rain on petals. But by the time you feel the sting behind the kindness, you’ve already given them everything they wanted.”
Despite their appearance, dryads aren’t weak. Most are as strong as any human, and some dryad bloodlines are even stronger. As for agility, their grace is often inhumanly breathtaking. But physical attributes aside, their greatest tool—if not weapon—is their adeptness with a type of nature magic. One born of their mysterious dust-like pollen that all dryads create.
It’s called pollen, but a dryad’s pollen is much more than that. This gentle dust is rich with the power of nature, magical Darklight, and how it affects the world. They are seeds of potential that a dryad can blend into various illusions and charms. Magic that they use on themselves, others near them, and the world to bend reality to their whim. Most often, it’s used to alter the perceptions of humans and non-dryads to suit a dryad’s need or carefully spun deceit.
This pollen can cause plants and nature to grow faster, more vibrant, or decay. As illusions, they can conceal a dryad as a human, or even hide the dryad from view. The magic is terribly strong, but even this only lasts for so long, as impermanent as the seasons.
Dryad pollen-born illusions fade quickly, lasting at best a day, which causes the dryad to recast their enchantment the following morning. A slight irritation that most dryads complain about, and often try to find loopholes around. But so far this seems to be an immutable law of their kind, set down by Mother Nature herself.
An exception to this is when a dryad uses their pollen magic to enchant the natural world. This is permanent, lasting beyond sunset and the seasons. Most dryads of any kind will use this to shape elaborate hidden natural mansions or estates—or larger—outside the boundaries of human cities and settlements. Sometimes grand halls that echo the myths of ‘underhill’ while also making those myths pale by comparison.
Names and Naming of Dryads
“Every name in the Verdancy is a seed. Plant that carelessly, and what grows cannot be uprooted.”
Dryad names are as much grown as they are given. Each young dryad is given a word taken from sap and syllable when they first sprout. These are melodic, like Avellana, Pellitea, or Rhen. Each one almost song-like in its own way. As a dryad matures, they weave new syllables from the lives they’ve touched. It could be a victory, a betrayal, or even a vow to this living trunk.
But this is the dryad’s whole and true name. A secret known only to the dryad and key to their power. If a dryad gives that name, it’s a sign of the deepest trust. But saying a dryad’s complete name out loud without permission? Without being told it first by that dryad? It’s the highest insult, drawing bloody wrath down from the dryad as payment.
The First Bloom
“When the world first dreamed, the forest loved the sunshine, wind and water. It loved too much, and love became hunger.”
The oldest dryad legends say the first dryad rose where the sunlight lingered on a field of wildflowers surrounded by a mist of Darklight. The soil remembered that warmth and wanted more. Out of that yearning came motion, then from motion, grew shape and form. From that lost day until now, it’s said that each dryad still carries that spark of hunger inside them. A deep, bloody desire to keep what the world would let go.
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