Debatable whether more monster or tree, Lausgiann’s Trees are horrid creations first birthed by a purehearted mage in terrible love. Found everywhere and sometime in the least likely of places, these mockery of odd but innocent willow trees are sentient, mobile, and, perhaps most fearsome of all, clever. Their true intent is no well known, and if truth may be, perhaps there is no purpose they hold beyond to protect the location of the first of their kind, Lausgiann’s Spousal Tree.

Most Lausgiann’s Trees take the form of a peaceful, evergreen birch tree. However, others may resemble other species, such as ash, cedar, and maple. All of them have a peculiarly distinctive reddish tone to their bark, with leaves tipped in the same shade. This is said to be because they absorb the blood of the vmonths without interference.

Unlike normal trees, a Lausgiann’s inner bark is smooth, without knots or circles, and of all a deep red. When cut, they bleed a thick red sap, much like blood. Drinking this sap is a grave mistake, for it is said to bring on nightmares on one’s worst fears that do may not fade for weeks.

Regardless of the type of tree the individuals take, they all bear the same fruit in appearance; a black, pear-shaped organism that drops year-round after two weeks on the branch. These fruits, which emit aa strangely pleasant fruity smell but produce a most vile tasting flesh, take root in the earth and immediately start growing.

Technically, the Lausgiann Tree can be found anywhere, usually in small colonies or clumps in otherwise barren fields or meadows where few other things grow, animal or plant. They are, however, a rare sight – rarer still, since most who dare to rest against their bark are often killed, and cannot report their sighting. One more reason a tree can be found anywhere is Lausgiann’s are not immobile.

If one is fortunate enough to see, at night the Lausgiann removes it far-reaching roots from the ground. The roots reach across the earth and, snake-like, crawl forward, dragging the tree’s body with them. They

Lausgiann’s Tree primarily speaks a language unfathomable by any but its own kind. It sways back and forth in purposeful movements, its leaves and boughs frothing back and forth against each other, creating the soothing sound rustling foliage and creaking branches. Unbeknownst to many for a very longtime, these sounds are its tongue. With practice and time, one may come to learn the langague, even mimic it to some degree, but to fully comprehend its depth and nuance is near impossible if one is not a tree itself.

It is not known whether it was born with the clever ability to learn new languages, including Common, from merely listening to it for a time, a few days for the older trees, and, astonishingly, only a few hours for the younger trees. They cannot seem mimic true speech any more than a human could theirs, but can sound out breathy, rustling sounds similar to their natural sounds.
When approached, a Lausgiann may not attack immediately, instead “talking” to the other trees around it with its whooshing, swaying branches and creaking bark. Usually, though, the contact ends with the Lausgiann’s attacking with its branches, which became as flexible and mobile as a snake. They extend outward to coil around the victim, choking and strangling it to death, often slowly. Its sharper branches then pierce the victim so the blood flows downward over its roots., and the body is often buried there as well as the roots dig with their own branches deep trenches for graves.

Some debate whether the Lausgiann’s Tree is inherently evil or merely sees humans and other living animals as prey. When one does manage to talk to a Lausgiann’s Tree, the tree often responds with a noticeable lack of empathy or understanding of love and friendship. Even other trees around it see each other merely as tools for individual survival (e.g. safety in numbers).

Return to me, my love, in whatever form you must.

When a young mage’s beloved wife was taken from him and hung from the gallows of ancient tree, he could not bear the grief. Abandoning his honest trade as a merchant of minor, mystical items and curative potions for various illnesses, he turned to the darkest of arts – necromancy. Though innocent of true evil and ridden with guilt, Lausgiann worked tirelessly to learn the lore and power behind the raising of the dead to alter the fate of his wife. For it was said in that time that anyone hung from the gallows of a tree for witchcraft would burn forever in a black hell.

The body had already been burned to ash, so Lausgiann dug from the earth the body of a body already decomposed but serviceable. If the spells he studied taught true, it would be restored when the spirit he called welded with it. He would have his wife back, even if she might look like another woman. Who weds another, after all, if not but for their true self, their soul?

But perhaps the wife was indeed guilty of her crime. Or perhaps another being heard his call, cast in arcane words, gestures, and the blood of a number of creatures under the shadow of the new moon, beneath that very same cursed gallows tree.

Whatever it was, it rejected the body, and took instead the gallows tree.

By morning, Lausgiann lay dead, and the tree was gone. Gone to drop its evil fruits and grow more of its kind, where they would spread and poison the earth.