Infested Treant (Basic Lore)

Infested Treant (Legend; CR 18)
Pure Evil - Huge - Plant (Vermin)
This creature possesses the Legend role, and therefore counts as 5 monsters for purposes of encounter size, XP award, and treasure. This monster frequently has the Legend role, but may be set to other roles if desired. Treants are the living expression of the Green. These intelligent plant beings can be kind or savage, gentle or brutal, much as any other creature of free will can. That said, Treants are plants, scions of the Nascent Seed, closely tied to the Fount, and as a result, their view of the world is different from other beings. It is common for plant creatures to view all other living things as their enemies, and many Treants also fall into this category. In the eyes of a Treant, the 'civilized' races can mainly be viewed as fire and axe, the groan of toppling trees and the gnawing bite of saws. Sadly, there are a lot of civilized races, and as a result, the Treants are often forced into hiding, deep in their forests, swamps, estuaries, and taigas. Those Treants that are of a gentle bent tend to set themselves up as mediators and negotiators, offering the bounty of the vegetal world in exchange for the largess of the animal kingdom. After all, simply by living, the blood-bearing races provide delicious fertilizers and the potential of help with pests and diseases. It is not uncommon to find Treants who adminster long-standing and profitable relations with their neighbors, to the enrichment of both the plant and non-plant life. Such Treants are the source of the many legends and stories of the 'benevolent tree-elders', kind, patient figures who are the friends of all they meet. Of course, there are also many Treants who are implacable enemies of everything that breathes or moves. You don't hear many tales about those Treants, because they rarely leave any survivors. An Infested Treant looks like a normal treant to the casual eye, but a close look will reveal that it has diseased spots discretely scattered across its leaves, and its many limbs seem to shiver in place, a side effect of the fact that the diseased monster is struggling to hold itself in reality. Some sages suggest that the plant monsters have made some pact with the Deep Dark, for power, and can prolong their existence in the Prime by sacrificing other creatures. A dark destiny, if true. In any case, their attacks all carry a touch of this awful taint. An Infested Treant is a classic example of the worst sort of Treant, that's made even worse by the fact that Infested Treants have been infected by...something. Something dark and terrible, an eldritch, awful wasting disease that gnaws at their sanity, rather than their bodies, and which grants them insane durability and access to horrible, corroding powers, powers that seek to tear apart the very fabric of reality and let everything slip away forever into the Deep Dark....