Galatea was the current queen of the Spriggans, which was definitely more than a ceremonial position. From her magic new Spriggans were born, and as such she viewed them all as her children.

Over time she had looked at the foolishness of their human neighbours, stripping forest to plant ground level plants with no understanding of the cycles behind it, leaving the soil exposed and weakened, and she despaired. At this rate in a few hundred rings the soil would start to weaken, the land would slide, and everything they had built would crumble to ruin. Then the humans would move on to new places, and start the whole cycle over again like worthless parasites, leaving her to spend hundreds, and hundreds of rings undoing the damage they could cause in two hundred or less.

At first she had tried to negotiate with them, to make them see reason. But they really couldn’t get to the root of the problem, and their older allies the Dryads moved away rather than see the scenes that would destroy their home all over again. But after a few rings she had quickly abandoned that idea, humans were as dense as bedrock and twice as stubborn, and so she was left with no choice but to attempt to drive them out. Nothing overt of course, humans were a violent bunch and she valued the lives of her children and the animals in their care far too much to endanger them in a war they had no way of winning. Besides it seemed that among them were the occasional intelligent specimens who noticed to an extent the problems they were causing, and left long thick hedgerows and small clusters of trees between those hideous flat places.

It wasn’t a lot, and it definitely wasn’t sufficient, but she was a single mother of two thousand. She really didn’t have the energy left to do much besides compromise, though her children occasionally pulled tricks on the humans nearby, like hiding their tools, mixing stones into the flat places. (The humans hated that, it damaged their iron tools and slowed down their expansion a little.) Still gradually over time their domain was shrinking, and any human attempts to plant new resulted in nasty little mono-cultures. (Those endless rows of useless bloody pines really needled her.)

Then it had happened, under the cover of night several humans clad in obnoxiously pink robes had snuck into her territory, entered a newborn dungeon, and done something to it. Giving it way too much energy and power, and causing the beginnings of a potential stampede. She had no idea why, nor did she care, but if she ever got her hands on them it really would be a visit to the woodshed for them. (A threat that really means something when the being considering it is made of timber.) First though she had to survive the onslaught, and make sure it didn’t spill out to harm her children.

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At first resisting it had been a simple matter, it may be overpowered, but it was still a newborn monster spawning abomination. But as time went on it started getting clever, it suggested alliances, offering the power to take back the forest, and start over. That would have been so much easier to resist if she wasn’t so damn tired. But it had been a long and very tiring few centuries, and every time she put her head down for a quick nap (a year or so should do the trick) something was coming along and making stuff worse.

Then just when she thought things couldn’t get any more complicated a human royal had showed up, and waded into the fight in typical human fashion. That is by lashing out indiscriminately without even realising the consequences. That pissed her off, but fighting an endless battle hardly seemed productive. So she’d spawned a few woodgard (they weren’t quite Spriggans, being about as intelligent as those tree peeing fluffy wannabe wolves the humans kept around for some inexplicable reason, but they could take basic orders like “sic em” and that would prove quite useful at this time she felt.)

Then the pain had started, it wasn’t as bad as what would happen to her real children, but it hurt, a lot, and also reminded her that dealing with humans via violence would have some pretty dire consequences. That left her with only one choice, she was too weak to hold back against the dungeon, but controlling it was not an option. She reached out and crushed the core, knowing she would be buried. But her children would be safe, and given a few more rings one of her children would grow up big and strong enough to become the new queen. With that she was content as the world fell in around her.

Wait, she was alive? How? Well not like it mattered, it wouldn’t last forever and even when she was gloomy she needed her sunny disposition. She couldn’t really make light of that issue. Then, she was pulled out, by the human? What in Yggdrasil’s buds was going on here? Well at least she could extend an olive branch here, maybe if they escorted her out they could at least buy the time to prepare for evacuation before the forest was thoroughly flattened.

She went along too, tired and fed up as she was she wanted to see them leave her domain. She was thoroughly sick and tired of all this human Bole-ocks. They seemed politer than usual at least, nobody had assumed her children were monsters yet, that left her stumped all by itself.

Then things got even more confusing, when they got to the end of their terrain the humans seemed reluctant to leave, instead pulling fruit from their bags. Humans ate that stuff? She always thought they only ate the big stinky mooing things, the plants from the flat places, and occasionally (if they got hungry enough) each other.

That done the humans took the seeds from the fruit, and they carefully planted them. Like that an idea took root.