Ghosts, Goblins, Ghouls. Since time immemorial humanity has been utterly fascinated by creatures they could never understand. They call them fables, faeriefolk, monsters, freaks, beasts, aliens, demons, angels, gods and dragons. To humanity they are...
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The Elder Tree - Grandfather Oak
Category 6 Giant
Elements- Water/Earth/Wood
There are many brutal giants out in the World. With many frightening and fearsome powers. Some can conjure storms, others can cause Earthquakes, some can summon dragons. Giants truly are a terrifyingly powerful bunch. Brutal beyond compare. This.....is not one of the giants. Well, don't get me wrong, I meant he is not brutal, in fact he couldn't willingly hurt a fly. However make no mistake, this is one mighty giant. Category 6 in anything makes you god tier levels of power and none have deserved this Category more than my old friend The Elder tree.
Most of his time is spent wandering his forests across Europe and Asia, disguising himself as trees and weary travelers, when you find him he has the strange habit of speaking in riddle and rhyme which made him one of my best friends because my kin and me love to play riddle games to a point of obsession and so me and the Oak played a game of riddles for hours. I don't like to toot my own horn but I am considered an expert riddle maker and solver but I lost to this giant. He reminds me of my grandfather and so I began to call him Grandfather Oak, to catch him is surprisingly difficult considering each of his steps makes the ground tremble in awe and surprisingly I found he not only spoke English but spoke it fluently with many many other languages. Grandfather Oak is literally millions upon millions upon millions of years old. He is a force of nature unto himself, he reminds me of a Hurricane that grew legs and a conscience. Because the Grandfather Oak is literally one of the gentlest souls I have ever come across. But he is a tricky one.
The first and the progenitor of the Dryad race, this fellow is in a category all his own. Standing at a whopping 72 feet tall you'd think he is hard to hide but you couldn't be so far from the truth. The old codger can shape shift into the form of a tall man and appear to be both young and old and then can become a tree that is indistinguishable from a normal one. So at any point in time the trees can literally have ears. At random points in time he heads into towns and villages at night to test people every now and again. He asks for shelter from the cold for the night and if you comply he will do one of 2 things, either leave you a pile of treasure at the foot of your bed the next morning and disappear or stick around for a week and grant you 4 wishes, one for each season of the year. The wishes can't be harmful to others or to the planet but aside from those 2 limitations there are no other rules.
However, if you should refuse to give him shelter, he will curse you and your family for 9 generations with extremely bad luck in anything regarding nature, animals will bite you, trees will fall out of nowhere, lightning strikes seem to follow you....etc. You'll never know who he is until it is too late, and he knows this. He wants you to learn kindness, generosity, compassion.
His abilities thus far are an impressive array:
1. Weather manipulation
2. Terrakinesis (Earth manipulation)
3.Control over plants
4. Shape shifting
5. Riddle making (Trust me, in this day and age it is truly a superpower XD)
6. Camouflage
7. Wish granting
8. Super Strength (Duh he is over 72 feet tall!!!!!!)
9. Multilinguistic
10. Kindness
11. Wisdom
When it comes to giants, Grandfather Oak is the gentlest one, I look forward to finding him once again some day down the line, perhaps when I am old and I have children and my children have children so he can teach me how to be old and mystical. Until then....
Respect every tree and river.
A giant most gentle wanders in the wood.
His eyes the color of deepest blue flower.
The heart as strong as his wooden hide.
Wisdom his greatest and chiefest power.
He is both the mountain and the tide.
For he wanders so slowly, he stands tall, old and defiant.
