"As for caring... we care about all living things. I confess we do not care for them, as caretakers, nearly as much outside the great forests." She sighs. "On Golarion, too, the forests used to be much larger before humans arrived and began farming. And so most of us retreated to the remaining forests, to protect them and to keep them from shrinking any further."

"The Verduran is in a better position than most forests in Avistan. Centuries ago, the human ruler who claims most of the lands around it signed a treaty with the druids. They do not fell trees or encroach on the forest, and in return we allow a settlement to grow and log trees in a carefully controlled area. The forest neither shrinks nor grows, and most of it remains untouched."

"It is far from perfect. You would probably be right in saying it is not Good. But we judged it better than eternal war, and one which we were not winning. And with the peace - or armistice - I have been free to spend more time outside the forest, and help more people."

"So I travel. I let humans talk to the animals they live and work with, so both can understand each other and lead better lives. I teach them about the plants they grow, help them increase their harvests so they need not plow more land to feed their people. And when I find someone harming others too much, or disrupting the life-web around them, I stop them, and teach others to avoid their errors." This is often best done by stopping them in a way which no others want to experience for themselves.

Some treants, and even some druids, see little difference between the managed logging of the Verduran and Awaiting Consumption. An evil done for the greater good, and the triumph of Law which imposes it. The true achievement of the treaty did not lie in convincing the human emperor; it lay in convincing most of the factions to turn their efforts against Andor.

Others left to Ravounel, never to return. And now Ravounel forbids all humans entry, and maintains itself even against the forces of Hell. Which is the better approach? Aria has gone back and forth on the subject, over the years. Perhaps it is best for both to be tried.

But for now, the uneasy peace of the Verduran with Taldor enables her own lifestyle.

"How the Elves change shape?"  Quickbeam shakes his head.  "Hooommm, it would be interesting to see one.  I reckon it is more like what you say of wizards, or at least that is how the other Elves sang about it.  I would wish even more to talk to those greatest druids you mentioned... but I am sure they have their own cares; both of our worlds have many cares.

"And you did say you came only by accident?  If I could, I might like to visit Golarion, if merely to visit the Treants there.  And maybe find a wife..."

He trails off wistfully for a moment, and then shakes his head again, more vigorously, with a rustling of his hair.  He has never had a wife of his own; before he had grown enough and grown enough trees to court an Entwife, they had all vanished.

"The peace-pact you name an armistice - alas!  Not good, I would say.  Alas for the trees that are felled.  But here too, we can do little but mourn... and many more of our trees are felled, 'tis likely, than yours; and many of ours awake enough to answer us back when we speak to them.  I trust that the pact at least has spared those in your land."

Quickbeam is a Shepherd of the Trees.  But he is a Shepherd who has seen much of his flock stolen and devoured, and his elders have seen even more, and he has learned harsh wisdom from the stealing.

He stares down at the earth for a time before continuing.

"Perhaps if we had made a similar pact long ago, the Forest would be larger today - or perhaps, even if the Men had not felled much of it when I was a mere sapling and felled more thereafter, the Dark Lord would have burnt and felled it nonetheless.  He might have sworn to the pact too, but we would have been fools to even trust him long enough to let him swear.  But regardless - it would be a dark day before I would swear away my power to take vengeance if a time came when I could win the fight.  An oath barring that is not good.

"Whether it is Good..."  He holds out his hands.  "I cannot say.  All your Language-spell tells me of that word is that it relates to how a god... perhaps the more friendly gods?... deem it.  And there, we are told that the gods disagree.  The Lady of Trees and Beasts and the Growing World is wife to the Lord of Forges - I know not how they speak with each other.  I was told they argued much in the days before the Sun first rose, but that much I could know without being told; and whether they have come to some pact of their own, or whether they still argue, I have not heard."

He pauses again.  "And even if I thought seeking out that hearing would have a chance of being rewarded - I would not seek it, if it might take me from my trees.  Though if someone like Master Gandalf came and told me he had spoken with the Lady of Trees and the Lord of Forges, I suppose I would ask him what they had said of each other."

"We don't Awaken trees that would be felled," she confirms. "We do not let leshy-spirits settle in them, or dryads. A few druids still come and speak to them on occasion, those who are still opposed to the treaty, who think preserving the forest does not justify - this. There is some debate regarding how much plants can sense and understand, even when no-one has spoken to them in their lifetime."

"But most druids who think as they do left when the treaty was signed. They joined their friends in Ravounel Forest, to the west, and helped defend it so fiercely that it stands untouched to this day, and not for lack of trying on behalf of the surrounding people."

"To do this they had to make the forest hostile, full of beasts and plants that attack on sight, traps and spells for the unwary. They have shut it off from the wider world, perhaps for good. And for those who only wish to defend one forest, that is probably a better choice than compromise. But most of us still care about the whole world. We will stay part of it, so we can help to shape a better future."

"As for the gods... Gozreh is patron of all nature and all life, and many druids do worship Gozreh. But they are a god as much of creation as of destruction. They raise forests, and they bring the storm that tears them down. They are the god of the great cycle of Nature, promoting life over death in the long term; but they are not a god of prosperity, of safety, or stability."

"And there is a god, Erastil, who is the patron of farming. He empowers most of the healing clerics in little villages, he teaches his followers Good and Law. He is my favourite god for humans to follow! He doesn't tell his followers to leave forests and Nature alone, but he doesn't tell them to hew down the forests either."

"And the god of forges and smithing is probably Torag, who is also Lawful Good, and a patron of the dwarves in particular. Erastil is married to someone else, though. I think smiths mostly use coal when they can, not charwood."

"I have no idea if Gozreh debated the other gods, or has an agreement with them. But it's sadly true that, over the past ten thousand years of recorded history, nature - and forests - have receded greatly, and the humanoid races - mostly humans and orcs - have cleared most land for farming or pasture."

"I do not advise you to make a tree-felling pact with Saruman! Not until all other ways have failed you, in the last extremity. And it could only be done by agreement of all the forest's dwellers, treants and others; it is not my place to promote it."

"For now, though, I think you have not yet tried war. Killing or driving away those who come to the forest for wood, making it too costly for them even if not impossible; or threatening Saruman himself. With our help, something might be possible that you have not managed on your own."

Ugh, forest politics. Tora was born long after the treaty with Taldor, and doesn't appreciate the constant background tension over what is to her established fact.

And she doesn't really see the difference between gnomes growing trees for wood and humans raising sheep for the slaughter, and Neutral Good druids don't make war on followers of Erastil in every village in the land. Is it really so much worse for the sheep to be raised by humans than to live wild and be hunted by tigers? Of course the humans have to take good care of their animals, but Erastilians advised by druids actually do pretty well on that score!

"You'd want to take a wife from Golarion?" she interjects, trying to steer the conversation away. "Because of, uh, hybrid vigour?"

"You have not heard... well, of course you have not heard."  He shakes his head again sadly.  "The Entwives disappeared long ago.  Their gardens were despoiled by the Dark Lord, and if they were not all slain, we do not know where they might have gone.  I went searching for them, and others too, but we did not find them.

"But yes, hybrid vigor."  He laughs a hollow laugh.  "That would not be all I had to offer a wife from Golarion, but I would have that.

"... if I survive the war.  For yes, if you know how to make a forest hostile like your fellow-druids did, and if you would be willing to help... I think many of us would agree to a war."

"Your females... wives... all disappeared? What happened?" Tora is horrified. "Why were they separated from all the other treants?"

"That is another long story."  He sighs.  "We loved the wilder forests, but they loved the tame and ordered fields.  We... the Ents and Entwives, I mean; I was too young at the time... tried to live in harmony, but eventually we decided to live separately for a time; they in their fields and we in our forest.  It worked well... until they vanished, and none of us had been there to know what happened."

Aria is pretty horrified too! Golarion has no shortage of evils and horrors, but this one seems particularly vicious, as if designed to offend a druid's sensibilities. It is not merely selfish, like logging or hunting; it stinks of strategic cruelty.

The treants of Golarion don't have garden-tending sects, to her knowledge, whatever may count as a garden, and if they did she doesn't expect they'd separate by gender. Ultimately, though, none of that matters.

"To remove all the females of a long-lived race and leave the males to a slow death, prolonging the pain and the struggle, gradually withering the life-web that depends on them, not even clearing the space for new life to replace the old... This is a very great evil that was done to you, and a great crime against Nature." She looks Quickbeam in the eye. "Any one who does such a thing I hold an enemy, and so would any druid. And if I can do anything to repair it, I will. If they might still be found, I will help search for them. I can turn into a bird, and talk to other birds, and visit many lands over a few years."

"If it was long ago, though, we should probably handle Saruman and his loggers first." Also, Aria would very much appreciate someone on whom to take out her rage. If she was too Chaotic before, this is a ripe opportunity to be Lawful, as long as she proves to be stronger than a man who calls himself a wizard but who is probably a ranger with a fancy tower.

"I do know how to make a forest hostile, though knowing is far from enough with only one druid doing the work. And some of the dangerous creatures imported or encouraged to breed more on Golarion might not exist here, or we might not know where to find them."

"I can also fight the loggers directly; this will drive them off, at least until Saruman sends many more people, and I could still harass them at little danger to myself. I don't know what he might deem a worthwhile tradeoff of lives for trees, or what force he might send of more than ordinary archers and spearmen, or how long it might buy us."

"When I spoke with Gandalf, he did not seem to me like a wizard from Golarion. He had few of the same skills and magics. And he could not detect magic at all, and was sure Saruman cannot either. It may be that I can strike at him directly, without going through his army. What do you know of his personal abilities, and his most powerful servants?"

Quickbeam bends down - almost a bow - and smiles at Aria.  "Thank you.  It has been many years - but that would be the most anyone has helped us in many years."

Straightening, he strokes his beard thoughtfully.  "If making the forest hostile means introducing new animals, not just spells or traps... then we should definitely bring this to an Entmoot.  I would want to talk with Skinbark, perhaps, to gather one... or Treebeard...  And Treebeard would know better than me about Saruman's powers and his servants.  They used to talk, years ago."

He nods and takes a couple long Ent-strides eastward, before looking back to Aria and Tora.  "Shall we visit Treebeard?"

Gladly! Aria can describe some ways of making a forest hostile as they walk. 

It is easy, relatively speaking, to make the inside of a forest hostile to intruders. Animals and plant creatures can both be asked to attack them; traps can be planted; the trees can shift to make them lose their way and never come back out; even ordinary plants can become poisonously deadly.

The problem with loggers is that they attack the trees on the very edge of the forest, just as a predator attacks the vulnerable members of a herd. They don't have to come into the forest to do it, and they can use fire to cut off sections or to clear the undebrush (is there a dry season here?). So the forest's defenders must go out to meet them.

Creatures of the forest can be asked to do it. This approach can be attractive, because it has the simplest mechanism of action - it doesn't get any more obvious than 'owlbears eat all the woodcutters' - and it only amplifies a side that any forest already has to some degree. Actually applying it, though, requires very deep understanding of the forest and its existing inhabitants, to avoid disrupting anything and to make the creatures self-sustaining and happy in their new role, and of course to pick out creatures that would not just get themselves killed by a bunch of orcs. She wouldn't dream of trying it in an unfamiliar forest without local help. (Also, it requires some owlbears.)

Traps, including magical ones, can also be left outside the forest proper to achieve a similar effect. Aria isn't an expert trapper, but one doesn't have to be very proficient to trap people who cannot detect magic. The only limit here is that it takes time to create traps; over a few years she could make the forest almost unreachable on foot, but this probably isn't the optimal use of her time.

Attacking the loggers makes them concentrate their forces; they begin to move in larger groups under guard, which in turn makes them vulnerable to retaliation from the forest's heavy strikers. A druid attacking people who don't have any magic-users is a one-sided slaughter that only ends when the druid runs out of spells, and often not even then. Depending on the forces Saruman sends out, a few treants might be enough on their own, considering that she can heal them afterwards so long as they come back alive.

With just one druid, though, who can't be everywhere at once (although she can find intruders and chase them down very quickly indeed), they do need to know the strength of Saruman's forces, and being the forest's primary defender would tie her down in an essentially reactive role.

There's a dryer season.  Fortunately, it's the winter, so fire isn't as much a danger as it would be otherwise.  Saruman's orcs haven't used fire or magic yet, as far as he knows.  He'd be surprised to see orcs using magic; he hasn't seen any of them doing magic, and he's heard hardly any of them can.  It sounds like it's different in Golarion?

So perhaps, even if the Entmoot can't decide anything, Aria could attack the next logging party?  Or does she think that would make them escalate to fire?...  Quickbeam isn't used to fighting armies of orcs with a wizard behind them; he'd appreciate Aria's advice there.

... And if this long fast walk is getting too much for tiger legs, Quickbeam would be happy to carry them?  Or at least Tora?

She has lesser restoration for when they get tired, but they can walk at a reasonable pace for many hours between castings! They are, in fact, rather stronger than ordinary, non-magical tigers. (Well, Tora is; Aria isn't as strong as a normal dire tiger even with her belt on.)

They could definitely attack the next logging party. She's not sure if it's better to make it vanish altogether, or to leave survivors to tell the story; they might want to keep her presence and abilities secret, if they're going to strike at Saruman more directly.

Quickbeam doesn't want to leave any survivors, and it sounds like that's wiser as well.

They're getting into lower parts of the forest now, with wider streams and thicker trees.  There're few rowans, and more moss-covered oaks, and broader streams.  A rabbit runs across their path.  A faint bellow can be heard in the distance - perhaps something like Quickbeam's "hoom"?  With her Permanencied tongues, she can make out a faint "Hello" and "here".

After some time, they pause by a pool, and Quickbeam throws back his head and calls out "Hoom, hoom!  Treebeard!  Come-stride to the sharp-cool-Wellingpool; there is a surprising-of-many-years refreshing-invigorating friend-of-us-and-the-Forest here you must-you-and-I-both-want-to see-and-share-refreshment from strange-of-many-years lands far-not-by-walk away!"

(He's speaking in a different language now from the Sindarin he was first using with Aria, one that takes far more time to say a given word.)

A faint call answers:  "I come-by-stride when-soon I have completed-all tending-shepherding-helping this sick-but-unsurprising tree-of-mine."

Quickbeam nods, and switches back to Sylvan.  "Ah, Treebeard is coming.  But it may take him some time - he is still tending to some trees, and I am hasty as Ents go."

They can wait! Tora is going to bathe in the pool - oooh, that water is surprisingly cold!

And then she'll take a nap. She can walk all day, but it doesn't come very naturally to a cat; her mind gets more tired than her body, so to speak.

Quickbeam is wetting his toes in the pool, and softly chanting to himself some of the "Song of the Ent and Entwife":  "When wind is in the deadly East, then in the bitter rain, I'll look to thee, and call to thee; I'll come to thee again..."

He's happy, happier than he's been for many a year.  His trees are soon going to be safe, or at least defended; he has a new friend who loves the Forest almost as much as he does and has promised to find the Entwives; and now he knows there are other Ents and Entwives in another world!

In a couple hours, they can hear Ent-strides and see moving leaves behind a small hummock lined with oak trees, and a voice a little deeper than Quickbeam's booms like a low woodwind in the same language, "Hroom, hroom!  Hello-and-well-met-again, my friend-longlasting-comrade Quickbeam!  And I wonder-with-good-humor-and-eagerness what is this surprise-of-many-years you have-and-come-with-bringing here-to-me-in-the-Forest!"

With the last booming long Entish word, his head comes into sight.  He has a sweeping grey beard even longer than Quickbeam's, and deep piercing slow and solemn eyes, brown but shot with green light like the sun shimmering on the ripples of a deep lake.

He looks down and gives a slow appraising look to the two tigers Tora and Aria.  After a bit, he speaks, now not in Entish or in Sindarin like Quickbeam had used when greeting Aria, but in the same language the humans of Rohan used.

"Hroom, hoom, what have we here?  Two large cats - but no, I will not be hasty; you are acting like more than just cats, even beyond what my friend has said of you.  Very odd indeed, leaf and twig!  But uncommonly kind, to come into the forest in the forms of forest beasts!"

The treants' language suits them. It is slow, but not because it conveys things slowly; they say a great deal, because to say less would lessen them. Tongues will probably struggle to produce anything remotely idiomatic in it; it requires not just knowledge of words and rules but the right mindset, a little like learning to become a treant yourself. 

Aria has studied the treants of Golarion until she can become one - a smallish one - but these are clearly of a different race. She won't pretend to assume their shape when she can't even speak their language well.

"Greetings, Treebeard," she says in Rohirric first. And then, in careful but probably horribly broken treantish, "Hello-and-well-met sought-out-new-friends, protectors-shepherds-healers of the Forest-trees-lifeweb. I am Aria -" she has to pause to stop the spell's attempt translate or explain her name, that can't end well "- originally-once-from a strange-distant-Forest called the Verduran. I regret... apologize-seek-improvement that I speak your-treant language badly-ugly-wrongly." Ugh, this doesn't flow at all, not like when they speak it.

In Rohirric again, then: "I am sorry for mangling your beautiful language. I have a spell that lets me understand and speak any language - it's better at understanding, in this case - and I didn't want you to mislead you into thinking your conversation was private."

"I can also share knowledge of a language I actually know with you, using another spell. I've done it to Quickbeam and I would like to do it to you as well, Treebeard, so we can speak in it. Tora doesn't have a translation spell and can't talk to you otherwise."

"Ah," Treebeard says (in Rohirric) with a smile, "do not feel bad.  You reminded me of a little Entling just starting to speak.

"Hoom, I have never heard of this Verduran Forest.  Perhaps I know it under some other name in some other tongue, or if not, it must be far away indeed!  But then, there are many surprising things in this world, and a tiger that can speak and cast spells is already a surprise such as I have not seen in many years.

"But yes, cast this spell on me?"

Share Language (Sylvan) on Treebeard! It's a good thing it lasts a day and night.

"I am Aria, and this is my friend and companion Tora. As for the Verduran Forest... I met Gandalf earlier - he told me to seek you out - and he thought we were from another world entirely. We did not come here deliberately; we were teleported - a trap, or perhaps an accident. At first we thought we were in some distant part of our own world, because so much seems familiar and I expected other worlds to be more alien. But the more we talk to people here and find no common knowledge, about the landmasses or peoples or gods or the magic known in each world or its history, the more it seems Gandalf was right."

"We would have come to talk to you anyway! Because Aria's a druid, and this is the nearest proper forest, with treants even if there are no druids here. We hurried, because Gandalf said the forest is being logged, and we want to help protect it." Tora knows that when treants (at least her treants) want to emphasize something is deadly urgent, they say it's worth hurrying for.

"From another world, you think, and Master Gandalf agrees!  And here to help protect the Forest!  Hroom, that's uncommonly good of you!  I would love to hear more about a forest on another world?"

Quickbeam answers first.  "They have spoken about it some with me, and little about the trees surprises me, but many of the animals are different - not just from this forest, but as far as I know anywhere in Middle-Earth.  But, there are Ents there too - and Entwives."

"Oh!"

Treebeard's eyes widen, and he strokes his beard.

"Why, that is indeed the best news I have heard in many years!  Thank you!  Even just knowing there are still Ents and Entwives and little Entings somewhere brightens up all my leaves.  You say you came here by accident... do you think you can go back and return here?  With others?"

He strokes his beard.  He's not going to visit this other world himself; he is too old and too tied to this forest.  There's a reason the Elves named the forest after him.  But others would... perhaps not many now, while the forest is under threat, but later...