Tret


 * This article is about the character. For the dungeon, see Tret Tree.

Tret (トレト Tret) is one of the Waelda - a long-lived faerie tree-spirit that, along with Laurel, is located in Kolima Forest. The two make story-relevant appearances in Golden Sun and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, and Tret figures into the gameplay of Golden Sun both as a dungeon (see Tret Tree) and as a boss.

Biography
Tret and Laurel are two tribesmen of the Waelda, a race of plant-based beings that live rooted in one place for many human generations, and they gather immense knowledge over their long lives. Among the Waelda, Tret and Laurel have gained enough wisdom to be deified and known as enlightened trees by lesser folk. Tret and Laurel are the fatherly and motherly guardians of Kolima Forest, and the life of the entire forest is bound to Tret in particular.

In Golden Sun
The haughty Lady McCoy of Bilibin far to the west yearns for a palace of her own alongside that of her spouse, Lord McCoy. She drives her husband to commission the lumberjacks at Kolima Village, an allied village just south of the forest, to bring down all the trees needed for it. Tret is greatly angered by this affront, and the lumberjacks even bring their axes to Tret himself. This coincides with the eruption of Mt. Aleph at the opposite end of the continent, which showers Psynergy Stones all across the world. When these gems land into Tret's branches, Tret obtains Adept-like powers, primarily the power to lay tree curses, but also loses his original personality and sense of self in his anger.

Tret retaliates by spreading a glamour that turns the entire population of Kolima into trees. He had been cut badly enough that he is now withering away towards a gradual, certain death, and once he does, so would the entire forest bound to him. Tret vengefully intends for the humans he cursed to share his state of impending death as well. Bilibin's townspeople panic over the curse their lumberjacks set off and agree the holy tree should not have been cut down. Lady McCoy, however, says that the holy tree should be cut down now to solve the problem, so Lord McCoy sends warriors into Kolima Forest to try to finish the job. Tret turns each of them into trees before they reach him.

The traveling warriors Isaac, Garet, and Ivan, closely tied with the events that set off Mt. Aleph's eruption and pursuing a rival group intent on changing the world, arrive at Kolima Village and discover the human-sized trees that used to be townspeople. Tret remotely assaults their minds with a telepathic wave and renders them unable to move, and then attempts to shower them with glamour and turn them into trees. However, these warriors are Adepts, and their Psynergy reserves subconsciously form shields around them that save their lives. Tret is puzzled, and when Laurel's voice addresses the Adepts from Kolima Forest to the north and explains to them what has happened and what would be needed to undo the curse - which is to reawaken Tret's gentle side - Tret labels the concept futile and announces that the rest of the forest will die with him anyway.

Isaac and his friends are free to resume their quest, but they do not know for sure what they can really do for Tret and Kolima Village. Isaac follows Laurel's invitation into Kolima Forest, whereupon they encounter the two trees. They assume that Tret's exterior face is his wrathful side, and that they may find his kindly self inside Tret's body, so they climb into Tret's hollow interior. When they make their way into the base level of Tret's interior, they come face-to-face with a spectral representation of the heart of Tret's power, and Tret taunts them for thinking they were going to find his kind side and states that their powers will not protect them in here this time. Tret's spectre attacks them, and at the end of a tough battle, the warriors beat Tret back to his senses, so to speak.

Tret, suddenly brought back to his normal self, absorbs what has happened and thanks the Adepts for defeating the evil within him, saying that he could not bear to leave the world with so much evil in his heart otherwise. The Adepts exclaim that he needs to turn the people of Kolima back, and a shocked Tret attempts to release them before they die with the forest. However, near-death as he is, Tret's power no longer reaches Kolima, and Tret rhetorically asks the people of Kolima to forgive him. Isaac's group understands they cannot let the people of Kolima die with the forest, and so they need to find a way to restore Tret. As they leave, Laurel urges them to leave before the forest is destroyed, and does not tell them that the healing waters of Mercury Lighthouse might save Tret because its waters have long since dried up. However, with the Mind Read Psynergy, the party obtains this important nugget of information and resumes their quest toward Mercury Lighthouse to the northwest, which they would have traveled to on their quest anyway.

The next segment of the game plays out at Mercury Lighthouse, and by its end, Isaac's group obtains the healing water of Hermes from Mercury Lighthouse ironically because they fail their quest objective to prevent its activation at the hands of their antagonists. Isaac's party, newly joined by Mia, resume their quest in pursuit of their antagonists southeast, and along the way they stop back in Kolima Forest and pour the Hermes' Water into Tret's roots.

The entire forest seemingly lights up with green as Tret recovers. In thanks, Tret undoes the curse with one decisive maneuver. Tret confesses that he did not always have this horrible power to curse, and that the Psynergy Stones that fell from the sky twisted his anger over people laying waste to his forest into a force beyond his control. Tret and Laurel also shed light on how it was the Psynergy Stones raining everywhere that turned formerly pure-of-heart wild animals across the lands into vicious monsters. When they detect that the stones have caused an evil forest to spring up across the prairie to the southeast that Isaac's group will be going through, Tret warns them to be careful, but assures them that he now at least has the powers to prevent any axe from being taken to him again.

The people of Kolima and Bilibin gain a newfound respect for the holy trees in Kolima Forest and no longer possess a desire to cut trees down. Lord McCoy stops construction of Lady McCoy's palace and tells her it's so that she will not be cursed, but she does not take it well in the least - she thinks he is just trying to weasel out of his promise, and that he loves the holy tree more than he loves her.

Thirty years later
Tret makes a return appearance in Dark Dawn. Early on, in the Psynergy Training Grounds, a wooden representation of Tret appears as an obstacle Matthew's party must pass. In order to continue on, the party must shoot a Fireball at the picture of Tret's angry face, which burns away to reveal a nicer expression, in a nod towards the original boss battle in Golden Sun. Later on, Briggs sends Matthew's party to speak with the real Tret on his behalf. Tret is shown to still live in Kolima Forest, though the forest has been moved eastward as a result of the Golden Sun event. His tree is next to Laurel's, and he seems to "nap" a lot. However, he awakens while Matthew's party is speaking to Laurel. While being introduced to the group, he senses that Amiti is related to Rief, hinting at Amiti's father being Alex.

When asked, Tret will give the group information on the Mountain Roc, including how to wake it. Because Matthew's group does not currently possess the Slap Psynergy necessary, they ask Tret how to infiltrate Belinsk's fortress. Tret will reveal that the fortress has a secret passage the Adepts may be able to use. However, it can only be accessed with the use of a Magma Shard, which comes from the Mountain Roc. Tret will suddenly decide to go back to sleep, while the Adepts continue the conversation with Laurel.

As a boss in Golden Sun
At the base level of the Tret Tree dungeon in Golden Sun, Tret is fought in a boss encounter that you are required to defeat in order to climb out of the base level. Tret resembles an enormous skull head with blue flames, and is fought at level 14.

As Tret is fought fairly early in the first game, whether he is difficult as a boss battle depends on how well adapted to the game recent players are and how much equipment has been amassed at Bilibin. He will be a trivial boss battle if the much more difficult Mercury Lighthouse dungeon and boss are completed first before Tret Tree is begun.

Tret is especially likely to be affected by Resistance-lowering effects. His statistics are as follows:

Tret uses the following battle commands with :

Trivia

 * Some of the internal logic governing the plot of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is dependent on the fact the Warriors of Vale had not told their children many of the more nuanced details of their quest thirty years earlier. As such, while Matthew, Tyrell, and Karis had heard Isaac mention having encountered one "Tret" in the past, and Rief had also heard Kraden speak of Tret before, none of the adults in these cases had divulged to these four the truth of Tret's guise being that of a talking tree, resulting in the young Adepts' surprise upon discovering this in Kolima Forest later in Dark Dawn. In a particularly glaring plot hole (albeit one with little significance to the story's progression), Matthew and his first two companions would have had Tret rather explicitly identified and depicted to them earlier in the game at the Psynergy Training Grounds. The audience would have to assume that not everything shown in-game to be part of the Training Grounds' thematic curriculum is canonical to square away this lapse in knowledge.