![]() ![]() These guys are basically evil dwarves, living in the Underdark, the subterranean network of dark caves deep underneath the earth, and they're kind of assholes! They're what the Dark Iron Dwarves in Warcraft are based off of, and they're basically gray-skinned dwarves that are lawful evil, warlike, and wanting to expand and conquer as many areas as they can. Which is pretty impressive artwork (my D&D group uses the 4E Dryad as a substitute for stronger Blight variants), but not every single monster needed to look creepy and non-conventionally-humanoid, y'know? Never been the biggest fan of nature spirits and whatnot, but there's a place in D&D worlds for both happy, inquisitive forest spirits like the classic dryad, as well as the myriad other murderous nature spirits that exist in the D&D world. While throughout other D&D editions dryads have been fairy ladies with a plant theme, 4th Edition reinvents the Dryad as this horrifying, large humanoid tree monster with no mouth, a body made out of wood, and bramble-hair. Depending on the edition, when you cut a dryad's special tree, they'll instantly die or be driven insane. And they'll straight-up be hostile against people that attack their patch of forest. It's just that being a fey lady, dryads tend to not understand human culture and sometimes do things like, well, abduct and/or magically charm people away. They're not exactly harmful, they just are really inquisitive and curious. It's really interesting, because the dryad's fate, youth and sanity are all bound to a tree, which is a neat little gimmick. The dryad is thus bound to the tree, able to move in and out of the tree freely and tend to the forest around her (they can teleport to other trees, but they're still bound to a specific one). According to 5E lore, though, dryads are apparently specifically fey that are cursed and bound to a single tree for punishment because they fell in love with mortals. Another monster taken from Greek mythology is the dryad, who are fairies that take the form of feminine figures that dart in and out of trees, and are completely neutral, not evil, but not technically 'good' in the way we silly humanoids understand it. ![]()
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