Editing Treant (section)

==Dark Sun==
The treants of [[Dark Sun|Athas]] are highly unusual in that they are not natural creatures... well, "natural" by the standards of a D&D world. Instead, they are a kind of [[druid]]ic golem, created when a druid successfully entreats a Spirit of the Land (water subtype) to enter a mystically prepared Tree of Life and bind with it, creating an enchanted sentinel set to protect a specific area. The ritual involves the spells ''Liveoak'', ''Reincarnate'' and ''Tree of Life'', and is not undertaken lightly; when the water spirit takes up residence in the tree of life, the water source originally inhabited by that spirit quickly dries up and disappears.

Still, the Athasian treant is an unflinching guardian; whilst it will seek to preserve its own life where possible, it will happily die to protect the wilderness, not least of which because its magical nature makes it immortal. Unless destroyed, an Athasian treant will live forever, and even if the treant itself is destroyed, the water spirit will simply be set free. Admittedly, it can't materialize again for a period of time equal to the time that it spent as a treant, but even so, it leaves the spirit completely unharmed. That said, the spirit and the treant do think of each other as separate entities; the treant retains no memories of its past existence as a water spirit, and will not give up its life just to resume its spirit form, whilst the spirit can remember what it experienced as a treant.

Athasian treants are most commonly used to safeguard groves of trees of life, since conventional forests are pretty much unknown on Athas. Regardless, it bears mentioning that they are actually not that powerful by the standards of Athasian monsters - in fact, the water spirit is all around stronger and more dangerous, and the splatbooks even call this out! But, being rooted more firmly in the physical world makes Athasian treants far quicker to react to despoilers and [[Defiler (Dark Sun)|Defilers]] than a spirit, so the tradeoff is useful. 

Compared to standard treants, Athasian treants are ''brutes'', doing a whopping 6d6 damage per strike from their branch-claws - for comparison's sake, an '''elder''' treant only does 4d6! They're capable of lifting up to 500 pounds, and can hurl a single boulder as a ranged attack each round, doing 4d6 damage on a hit. They're even more vulnerable to fire than regular treants, lacking the usual resistance to magical flames, but possess a natural affinity for water magic, which allows them to cast each of the following spells once per day: create water, purify food and drink, create food and water, lower water, reflecting pool, conjure elemental (water), part water, and transmute water to dust. Each of these is an innate ability of the Athasian treant and is cast without verbal, somatic, or material components at an initiative rating of 2. However, this spellcasting comes at the forfeiture of the standard treant ability to animate trees... which is no great loss, since Athas doesn't really HAVE that many trees.