Tree-Top Town

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A village built, as the name suggests, entirely out of treehouses. Rope bridges typically connect the structures to one another, and ladders are typically used to access the community from ground level.

A common form of Bamboo Technology, although more magical versions can be seen as well. Can often be found within The Lost Woods.

Wood Elves are frequent inhabitants of such a place, and it has become a often-used version of the Hidden Elf Village. Often, undying or otherwise long-lived elves may outlive the trees and have to relocate every few decades or centuries.

Compare Treehouse of Fun.

Examples of Tree-Top Town include:

Comic Books


Film

  • The Ewok village in Star Wars is one, as are the Wookiee dwellings on Kashyyyk.
  • The fey, mask-wearing bandits in Quest of the Delta Knights have a hideout consisting of a bunch of rope bridges and wooden platforms. When the heroes escape from their flimsy jail cell, they get chased around and around the set ad nauseum.
  • In the remake of King Solomons Mines with Richard Chamberlain they meet a tribe of people who live entirely in the trees, never touching the ground.
  • The Hometree from Avatar.


Literature


Newspaper Comics


Tabletop Games

  • Canonical for the Wood elves in many Dungeons & Dragons settings.
    • Basic D&D supplement The Elves of Alfheim (Mystara). In Alfheim the elves have various tree houses connected by ladders and catwalks. The area "Sky City" in Alfheim Town is a network of rope bridges and catwalks connecting "treeforts" in the huge Sentinel Trees.
    • And then "you'll walk right under it and never notice" type of Wood Elf settlements everywhere.
  • The old Role Aids supplement "Giants" has a race of forest-loving giants, who live in a Tree-Top Town that moves.


Toys


Video Games

  • The Trope Namer is one of two Donkey Kong Country levels in this setting.
  • The Channelwood Age in Myst includes one.
  • The elven village in the Tularean forest in Might and Magic VII.
  • Both elf cities in Arcanum.
  • Fortree City in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald. This is taken to new heights (literally) in the Pokémon Special manga, where Sapphire and Winona have their Gym battle (Winona's the Gym Leader, naturally) in the city proper rather than an actual Gym.
  • The Viera in Final Fantasy XII live in a tree town, though it doesn't seem to be quite as high as the tops.
  • In Final Fantasy X-2, Kilka Town appears like this.
  • Level Six in Turok: Dinosaur Hunter.
  • Several of the stages in the video game Klonoa are set in one of these.
  • There's one of these in Threads of Fate, with tons of respawning mooks that are easy to grind with.
  • Ellinia in Maple Story.
  • In Wizardry 8, Trynton, home of the Trynnie, is an uber-example of the Treetop Town: seven "boughs" (varying areas), with one of the boughs being infested by the Rattkin. They do have elevators, just not from the ground level (aside of Rattkin, they have problems with Rapax). There are also a few bridges to nowhere and even a Rope Bridge that snaps on one side and needs to be fixed.
    • To some extent, Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant did this as well with the "Rattkin Ruins," although without 3D the effect is far less dramatic.
  • Played with in World of Warcraft: Arakkoa villages are textbook examples: Ground access is via a winding staircase within the tree, and most inhabitants live on interconnected platforms on top of the strongest branches. Darnassus, the Night Elven capital city is built on top of the giant tree Teldrassil, but is fairly level and has streets and stone structures. Troll villages, like Zabra'jin, are on the ground but are constructed out of wood and have rope bridges connecting the upper floors.
  • The wood elf city of Kelethin in EverQuest is this, complete with a lack of railings on the platforms and bridges, and numerous newbie corpses littering the ground below.
  • Dwarf Fortress has elven settlements called "Forest retreat" - all buildings are shaped from living trees; there are counterparts of workshops, but instead of being produced from raw materials, useful stuff Grows on Trees.


Web Comics

Leggolas: Alas, our numbers are dwindling... as humans multiply in their cities of stone, the elven race is dying off! Only a few ever get past level one and forth to a life of adventure!
Ohforf: Why?
Leggolas: Who knows? *sigh*
a new PC: Yo, guys, where's the bankaaaaAAAAAH

  • Schlock Mercenary has Tree-Top Towns In Space! That is, colony trees of the Esspererin ("solar powered robo-fairies); there seems to be a whole ecosystem based on those, thanks to Mechanical Evolution.
    • The Fethrell (sapient dinosaurs from Earth accidentally doomed and then saved from extinction by passing aliens) built a treetop house (on Cretaceous redwoods) as an "embassy". The visiting side is somewhat desensitized, seeing how the locals just gave the ambassador a ride on Tyrannosaurus Rex and all this happens in a "park" inside an extragalactic worldship the size of a modest gas giant to begin with.

Sorlie: Bonus points for sense of wonder, but I'm not really keeping score.

Web Original

  • On the website UniCreatures, there is a place like this in the Pet Adventures section.
  • Windy999 reminds about some inevitable problems with this solution.
  • In Quest of Camelittle, Elfdust City is a magical Tree Top Town hidden within Elven Forest.


Western Animation

  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Jet and his freedom fighters live in a treetop village.
  • The Warrior Maidens' village from Thundercats.
  • The Simpsons: Bart Simpson thought he and his friends could build one when they got trapped on an island, but it turned out it was hard to do so they went all Lord of the Flies instead.
    • Also when the Simpsons went to Africa thear hotel was in the trees easily twenty feet in the air.


Real Life


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