Forest

Leaf leshys tend to the well-being of trees, whether natural stands or cultivated orchards. In appearance, they have soft, pulpy-looking bodies and wear clothing made of dozens of leaves. Larger leaves cover their shoulders, often giving them the appearance of wearing cloaks, and most adorn their relatively featureless heads with helmets made from pine cones, nuts, or fruit rinds. This leafy layer of clothing functions as masterwork padded armor for a leaf leshy, but not for any other creature. Leaf leshys love to play at war. When not laboring on their trees, they wheedle any companions to engage in mock duels with their twig spears, resorting to private weapon drills when they must. In actual battle, they are much more cautious, sticking to cover and harrying their foes with hit-and-run tactics, as they have a strongly developed sense of self-preservation.

Sagaris haunt forest trails, hanging upside-down from tree branches by the grotesque tentacles that make up their necks. Unexpectedly intelligent, these cruel aberrations swoop down from their perches to attack unsuspecting travelers wandering through the forests. Their piercing whinny causes sickness within those who hear it, the sound waves reverberating within the victims’ chests and causing them to feel unwell. Groups of sagaris are particularly dangerous, filling the air with their terrifying neighs and diving upon utterly helpless, nauseated victims in a rush. The tentacle of a sagari is not strong enough to grab or strangle enemies, but serves the creature well as an additional attack to augment its bite. Sagaris are strictly carnivorous, and while they resort to feeding on carrion if necessary, they greatly prefer fresh meat. When a sagari makes its way into a settlement either to wreak havoc or by accident, it can be found hanging from the rafters of a barn or some other structure with a tall ceiling. Stabled livestock are ideal prey for sagaris, who can swiftly kill and devour the flesh of a trapped animal in minutes. A sagari will not attack a creature that it suspects is much stronger, though it will sometimes assault groups of creatures, hoping to sicken enough of its foes to distract them while it attacks the weakest individual. Sagaris are thought to have originally come from the vast caverns beneath the world’s surface. While sagaris can speak, they rarely do so with those they deem prey, seeing little point in communicating with food. Despite their relative intelligence, sagaris rarely form societies of any nature, at most traveling in roving packs in search of larger prey to take down as a group. A sagari is 3 feet long from mouth to tentacle and weighs 30 pounds.

Vanaras are intelligent, simian humanoids who live in deep forests and jungles. They are both agile and clever, but saddled with boundless curiosity and a love of pranks that, while normally harmless, hinder ingratiations with those they encounter. A vanara’s body is covered in a thin coat of soft fur, and individuals with chestnut, ivory, and even golden coats are common. Despite its fur, a vanara can grow lengthy hair on its head just like a human, and both male and female vanaras take pains to wear elaborate hairstyles for important social functions. The hair on a vanara’s head matches the color of its fur. All vanaras have long, prehensile tails and handlike feet capable of well-articulated movements. A vanara stands slightly shorter than a typical human. Males weigh from 150 to 200 pounds at most, with females weighing slightly less. Vanaras live for 60 to 75 years. Vanaras live in large, tree-top villages connected by rope-bridges and ladders. Homes are carved out of trees but usually left open to the elements except for woven leaf canopies and overhangs. Vanara villages are typically led by the community’s religious leader—usually a cleric, oracle, or monk.

VANARA CHARACTERS
Vanaras are defined by their class levels—they do not possess racial Hit Dice. All vanaras have the following racial traits.
+2 Dexterity, +2 Wisdom, –2 Charisma: Vanaras are agile and insightful, but are also rather mischievous.
Climb Speed: Vanaras have a climb speed of 20 feet.
Low-Light Vision: Vanaras can see twice as far as a human in conditions of dim light.
Nimble: Vanaras have a +2 racial bonus on Acrobatics and Stealth checks.
Prehensile Tail: See above.
Languages: A vanara begins play speaking both Common and Vanaran. Vanaras with high Int scores can choose from among the following bonus languages: Aklo, Celestial, Elven, Gnome, Goblin, and Sylvan.

These insidiously malicious fey lurk in the untainted depths of primeval forests. As nocturnal creatures, chaneques spend their days burrowed into the highest hollows of rotten trees. When night falls, they unfurl themselves from their resting places to hunt the forests for fairy heads and mortal souls. Chaneques are ambush predators, preferring to stalk their prey to study its habits before attacking. Despite being a clumsy flyer, the batlike chaneque maneuvers well in the forest canopy, leaping about and using its winglike skin folds to glide from tree to tree, just waiting for an opportune moment to strike. When a chaneque attacks, it pops out without warning, attempting to startle victims before pelting them with tiny skulls capable of stealing their souls. Driven by malice, chaneques see themselves as dutiful punishers of the fey. They hunt heads of brownies, pixies, sprites, and nearly any other fey they encounter. They collect these creatures’ skulls and through dark rituals transform them into powerful, soul-stealing weapons. The chaneques then hurl the skulls at any creatures that dare transgress upon their territories. Anyone struck by a skull risks having his soul ripped from his mortal body and imprisoned within the fey skull. These skulls are created in a special ritual that involves nearly all of the chaneques in the colony. But first, the skulls must steep in a special stew prepared from mashed fairy brains, a rare variety of black mushroom, and a magically potent nectar that chaneques secrete and collect over time. Once a chaneque uses the skull as a weapon, it then collects the foul instrument and uses it to control the victim of its attack. Chaneques typically enjoy sending the victim off on some false and fruitless quest to recover his soul in a far-off location, while in reality the chaneque simply buries the skull in some unknown region of the forest. Those who fall prey to a chaneque’s attack are doomed to walk aimlessly about the woods, vacant and driven only by the purpose set out by the chaneque, until they starve to death or fall prey to wild beasts. A typical chaneque stands about 3 feet tall, with blackish-red, rubbery flesh. It has long, filthy claws it uses to cling to trees. Between the creature’s legs and arms hang wide, webbed flaps it uses for gliding. A chaneque also has long, ridged, batlike ears and needlelike teeth.

Mockingfey originally stem from the otherworldly realm of the fey, where they’re regarded as entertainment by locals and nuisances by visitors, who are the usual butt of the creatures’ pranks. The pint-sized fey often congregate in large colonies called japes or “mockingdells,” inhabiting the trees near a commonly traversed path or meadow. When an intelligent creature enters the grove, one of the bird-sprites flies down to perch on the traveler’s shoulder or some nearby vantage. It then promptly uses its mock ability to appear as a perfect, miniature version of the creature in question, proceeding to cavort and imitate the newcomer in a most convincing and unflattering manner, mimicking the creature’s tone but chattering only gibberish.  This gibberish is not solely for comic effect. While mockingfey are eager (if distractible) students in most matters and can speak and understand Sylvan when necessary, they generally refuse to use verbal language of any sort, believing that words unnecessarily constrain whatever they wish to describe. Instead, they communicate through gestures, pantomime, and elaborate dances.  While many people find mockingfey’s antics irritating, the little creatures can make surprisingly useful allies, with a loyal, friendly nature toward those who treat them well and an insatiable curiosity that makes them surprisingly informed about their surroundings. This same curiosity extends to things most folks would leave alone, such as portal-like breach scars between the Material Plane and other realities. When such planar rifts occur between this world and the realm of the fey, mockingfey are often some of the first creatures through, and their presence in a region can be a reliable indication that such a breach between worlds exists somewhere nearby. In such situations, mockingfey often seek out more powerful fey creature to dwell near, as a source of both protection and entertainment. Of course, even fey can grow frustrated with the constant attention afforded by a jape of mockingfey!  Mockingfey can serve spellcasters as familiars, and often enjoy the opportunity such servitude affords to travel and see the world with the safety and protection provided by an allied spellcaster. Illusionists and other spellcasters who seek such puckish familiars often find them worth the resulting hassle—if just barely. A spellcaster must have the Improved Familiar feat, be chaotic neutral, and have a caster level of 4th or higher to gain a mockingfey familiar.  A mockingfey is 8 inches tall and weighs 2 pounds.

Spiteful, nasty creatures with a taste for the flesh of sentient beings, zoogs lurk in the shadowy, moldering places of the world. Often mistaken merely for otherworldly animals, zoogs possess base intentions and vicious demeanors that set them apart from lowly beasts. Congregating in loose, tribal societies, these sinister creatures claim the depths of dark woodlands or moldy forests as their homes, favoring lands where the boundaries between worlds and planes grow thin and strange creatures—not unlike themselves—slip between reality’s cracks. Although lone zoogs shy away from attacking larger creatures, when zoogs outnumber an invader they launch deadly ambushes, leaping from sagging boughs and hidden dens to swarm foes. Only strangers with quick tongues and items that appeal to zoogs’ interest in magical curiosities might manage to barter for safe passage through zoog territory. While many victims of zoog attacks are consumed on the spot, some less fortunate few are dragged back to the mystical, strangely carved stones that mark the center of zoog communities. There, such captives become the doomed focus of strange ceremonies before being sacrificed to the zoogs’ depraved deities. Commonly, zoogs eat fungi and plants, but they also have a taste for the meat of sentient creatures, treating the butchering and consumption of such beings as a rare privilege. Zoogs also detest cats, and go to great lengths to slay felines of any sort and devour them. Occasionally a zoog allows a spellcaster of especial depravity, or with interests in the mysteries of realms and creatures beyond the mortal world, to employ it as a familiar. A spellcaster must have the Improved Familiar feat, be chaotic evil, and have an arcane caster level of 5th or higher to gain a zoog familiar.

Tatzlwyrms are thought to be primeval relatives of true dragons, having branched off the line millennia ago and evolved in a way that sets them notably apart. Undersized compared to their larger cousins, tatzlwyrms are nonetheless ferocious in their own right. And while tatzlwyrms are hardly impressive specimens when put beside their notorious relatives, most other reptiles can’t compare to them mentally. They understand Draconic, though other languages are beyond most tatzlwyrms’ limited comprehension. Nevertheless, tatzlwyrms are deeply cunning, building complex lairs and rudimentary traps. Tatzlwyrms are quite rare, and only a few particularly curious and lucky adventurers can claim to have seen a living specimen. Reports do agree on some basic features, however. About the size of a full-grown human, tatzlwyrms have only two limbs and no wings, and possess a weak poisonous breath similar to the breath weapons of their true dragon relatives. An adult tatzlwyrm is 6 to 8 feet long, including its winding, organless tail, and it weighs between 400 and 500 pounds. A tatzlwyrm’s scales give the creature limited camouflage, ranging through various shades of green, brown, and gray. Like true dragons, tatzlwyrms are strict carnivores. They spend most of their time hiding, waiting to attack any prey that ventures too near. They consume their food slowly in the dark security and seclusion of their lairs. Tatzlwyrms have a remarkable knack for ambush and camouflage.

In their humanoid forms, wereboars tend to be stout with upturned noses, bristly hair, and a noticeable overbite. They usually have red, brown, or black hair, though a few are golden blond, pale blond, or even bald. Chin whiskers are common, but males often can’t grow full beards. Because they can be stubborn and aggressive when riled up, wereboars usually live in their own communities rather than mixing with non-lycanthropes; a wereboar’s farm or ranch doesn’t look out of the ordinary. Wereboars tend to have large families with many children. Many wereboars are known to have especially bad tempers, rivaling those of murderous werewolves, and even other lycanthropes tend to avoid them. This suits the wereboars fine, especially as some weretigers and werewolves have been known hunt young wereboars. Note that the statistics presented here for wereboars assume that the creatures are in their barbarian rage—if the creatures are encountered at another time, simply adjust their statistics accordingly.

In their humanoid forms, werebears tend to be muscular and broad-shouldered, with stark facial features and dark eyes. Their hair is usually red, brown, or black, and they look like they are used to a lifetime of hard work. Though by far the most benign of common lycanthropes, werebears are shunned by most normal folk, who fear and mistrust their animal transformations. Most live as recluses in forested areas or in small family units among their own kind. They avoid confrontations with strangers but do not hesitate to drive evil humanoids out of their territory. Some werebears are angry and violent, because of either temperament or a lifetime of harassment from others, and these mean ones aren’t afraid to put an axe in a trespasser’s face or eat someone who pushes them too far. Cool-headed werebears don’t like to speak of these individuals with strangers.

Forest drakes are the degenerate cousins of green dragons, possessed of cruel cunning but little actual wit. Like most drakes, forest drakes are bullies, prowling deep forests in search of their favorite prey—elves and fey. Forest drakes eagerly attack communities of such forest creatures unless driven off with arrows or other shows of force. Like many other drake types, forest drakes organize themselves in packs called “rampages,” and keep communal lairs in secluded forest locations. Such packs are usually made up of siblings who break from the pack only during mating season. A forest drake pack has a distinct pecking order, with younger and newer members receiving the least desirable portions of pack kills and the fewest mating options. Forest drakes mate once a year, but do little to raise their offspring. A female lays a clutch of four to eight eggs, but abandons her young as soon as they hatch. Forest drake hatchlings immediately band together in a pack. While few survive so long, forest drakes can live up to 200 years. Forest drakes are typically about 10 feet long with equally long tails, and weigh around 1,000 pounds.

Leechroots emerge from the remains of plants poisoned by the blood-drenched soils of war-torn forests. Chaotic intertwinings of rotten roots, these monstrosities quickly spread their curse, soaking other dead plants in their sap to spawn horrid offspring. A leechroot is driven solely by an insatiable thirst for blood. It hides among undergrowth and below the earth while waiting for unwary prey. With its razor-sharp roots, a leechroot slashes at anything that comes its way, snatching victims and feeding directly from their wounds. The absorbed blood mutates into a thick, dark-red sap that runs through the leechroot and oozes from its unhallowed body, helping to heal and sustain the predatory creature.  An adult leechroot averages about 12 feet across (not including its thick, lashing root appendages) and weighs 700 pounds. By consuming enough blood, however, leechroots can grow significantly larger.

LEECHROOT HIVEMIND
Sometimes a network of leechroots can reach a state of sentience, creating a creature called a leechroot hivemind. The hivemind has an Intelligence score, which increases depending on the number of plants that compose the leechroot hivemind. This single mind shares a limited sentience, and it holds a bloody grudge against any who dare to slay a member, its cunning giving it the ability to plot against such hated foes.

Tigers stand more than 3 feet tall at the shoulder and are about 9 feet long. They weigh from 400 to 600 pounds. Tigers are usually the top animal predators in their territories, and have been known to kill bears, crocodiles, giant snakes, wolves, and even other great cats. Even humanoids are far from safe, especially in cases where a tiger has developed a taste for humanoid flesh. Tigers prefer terrain with plenty of cover and proximity to water as their hunting grounds.

Revered by druids and rangers for their attunement with the wilds, kodama, known also as tree kami, are the guardians of the wild trees of the forest—they do not protect trees cultivated and grown in civilized areas. (Those trees are protected by different kami, if at all.) A kodama takes a single tree under its protection; typically, all of the trees in a forest that are protected by kodama are clustered together in one particular area. A kodama in its physical form resembles a barely humanoid creature with only the vaguest of features on its semispherical head. A tree kami is 3 feet tall and weighs 60 pounds. While one might expect the kami of something as large as a tree to itself be larger, the fact that forests are made up of so many trees tends to diminish the singular “presence” any single tree might have. In cases where a tree is particularly ancient or immense, however, the kodama associated with it is much larger—statistics for such rare kodama can be generated by advancing the kodama given here by several Hit Dice and increasing its size—theoretically, a Colossal kodama with more than 20 Hit Dice could exist somewhere in the world. Not all kodama increase in power by gaining racial Hit Dice, though, as some instead progress by gaining class levels, particularly levels of druid, though a rare few kodama kami—those possessed of minds more ordered and structured than is normal for their race—take the path of the monk. Kodama are more curious about visitors than most kami, and often manifest their physical bodies simply to watch and observe newcomers to their groves. A kodama usually manifests on the far side of its tree, or in the shadows of the undergrowth, so that it can slowly step out into visibility to quietly observe with its distracting, empty-eyed gaze. This gaze can be particularly unnerving. Those who have fallen under its supernatural effects often have different descriptions of how the gaze made them feel (ashamed, frightened, curious, amused, and nervous being the most common reactions), yet the end result is essentially the same. While under observation by a curious kodama, few are those who can continue their actions without being at least somewhat distracted by the kami’s attention. When a kodama must fight (typically in order to defend its tree or other kami), it moves quickly—kodama work best in groups, and when confronted alone generally use tree stride to travel to another part of the forest to raise a small host of allies to aid it in defending its home.

Born of tragedy and sorrow that have warped into hatred and fury, tiyanaks are formed from the souls of infants or young children that died near locales tainted with strong necromantic energies or demonic presences. The young soul blends with the corrupted energies, birthing a stunted and mocking apparition of the deceased, obsessed with devouring nearby sentient life. Humanoid in shape, tiyanaks resemble gray-skinned children with shriveled skin, deformed limbs, and patchy hair. A tiyanak’s arms end in sharp claws and their mouths are lined with rows of needlelike teeth. A tiyanak typically reaches a height of only 2-1/2 feet, but weighs between 50 and 75 pounds. Tiyanaks use telepathy to communicate their own wretched anger to all those that come close, and infuse their teeth and claws with despair, making them sharper than any blade. Tiyanaks hunger for the blood of humanoids, and use their mimicry to emulate the sounds of crying children, attempting to lure unsuspecting people to their side. Once one of these helpful souls draw close, a tiyanak either tries to dispatch its prey with natural attacks, or uses its suggestion ability to convince its target to bring it closer to a humanoid settlement of any kind, where it can torment the family that takes it in and find additional victims. Against multiple enemies, a tiyanak uses its crushing despair and shout spell-like abilities before picking a specific target and attempting to gorge itself on its victim’s blood. Despite their single-minded hatefulness, tiyanaks will flee if overpowered, but they typically do not wander far from their point of origin. They have not entirely forgotten the children they once were, and though they loathe their former communities, the sorrowful echoes of their lives make them reticent to move far beyond the places they once thought of as home.

The giant tarantula is an imposing predator. In addition to its potent venom which saps strength, this tarantula's most daunting weapon is its ability to propel barbed hairs from its back. These hairs cause a powerful sense of nausea in any who encounter them, and the giant tarantula has evolved to use them as an offensive as well as defensive weapon. It looms large in its territory, its mass making it a daunting presence against any who might challenge it. Despite its agility, giant tarantula’s can weight as much as 2500lbs.

Hateful and melancholic, the psychic marsupials called su can feel their minds weaken as they mature, and take out their frustration on any creatures who enter their forests.  All su bear young. After mating, they implant each other’s back-pouches with oily, tumor-like eggs which hatch over the next year into tiny, psychically gifted humanoids. These young su cling to their parents’ backs, feeding on parasites and scraps. Born at the apex of their psychic abilities, baby su slowly change shape and lose their powers over their first year—by the time they reach their full predatory form, all psychic magic has vanished. These furious new adults then leave to become providers for their own whelps. A grown su is 5 feet long and 90 pounds.

A wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing appears at first to be little more than a tree stump sitting in a clearing, perhaps with a small animal sitting atop it. Only when a predator comes close does it become clear that the small animal is in fact long dead, given false life by tendrils springing up through its form, but by then it’s too late, as the wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing drags the would-be hunter into its waiting maw. Though intelligent, these monsters see little need for the company of others. Their method of reproduction is as hideous as their tactic of using corpses as lures, for they implant their parasitic eggs in living hosts, giving their spawn a fresh meal to eat upon hatching. A wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing is usually about 4 to 5 feet across and weighs 200 pounds.

Forest dragons, or dilung, are fickle and malevolent dragons that dwell in deep, rugged woodlands. While a forest dragon can fly, it prefers to stalk the earth, flying only to pursue objects of its wrath.

These massive plant juggernauts were not created by nature, but grown by druids who use them as protectors and dispensers of savage judgment. Pruned into a form resembling a stout ram, a barometz is granted a degree of intelligence by natural spirits bound into its verdant bulk. Barometzes are typically found in the service of the powerful druids who cultivate them and help them protect sacred primeval forests.

A manitou is a powerful, benevolent spirit of nature that safeguards entire regions from danger, heals the sick and wounded, and preserves the balance among all creatures. When not invisible, a manitou looks like a powerfully built, long-haired humanoid with skin made of tree bark and rose quartz. A manitou stands 20 feet tall and weighs over 5,000 pounds.

Bandersnatches are consummate hunters, and only the deadliest predators or the most cunning intelligent prey offer them sport. Once a bandersnatch has marked a creature for death, it runs it to ground without fear, rest, or remorse. Bandersnatches rely on speed, shock, and terror to bring down prey. They pace their quarry from a distance, hidden among the trees, then break from cover, savage their target, and dart away again. They drag smaller creatures away to dispatch at leisure, while engaging larger ones in skirmishes until they gradually wear their prey down. An outmatched bandersnatch withdraws at full speed, stopping only to pick off pursuers that distance themselves from their allies. Once its wounds heal, the bandersnatch returns to the scene of its defeat, picks up the trail of its assailants, and eliminates them one by one. In appearance, a bandersnatch resembles a tawny, six-legged great cat, but with wickedly barbed quills running the length of its body and down to the tip of its long, flexible tail. Its quills serve to deter attackers, but also act as a formidable weapon. With a single flick of its muscular tail, a bandersnatch can fling as many as a half-dozen quills at distant foes with surprising accuracy. A bandersnatch captivates any prey that meets the gaze of its saucerlike, luminous eyes. A bandersnatch measures 40 feet in length plus another 10 feet of tail and weighs 12,000 pounds. Despite their bulk, bandersnatches move with speed, grace, and even considerable stealth when required. Bandersnatches were once native to the primal world of the fey, where they preyed on the greatest hunters of that ancient realm. As with other legendary creatures from this realm, such as the jabberwock, bandersnatches belong to a group of creatures known collectively as the “Tane.” Whether the fey were careless in guarding their portals or released the first bandersnatches into Material Plane deliberately cannot be said with certainty. Rare in the extreme on the Material Plane, bandersnatches lair within forgotten forests where ancient beasts walk the world. Bandersnatches mate only rarely. A female becomes fertile perhaps once or twice per century, leaving the male soon after mating and giving birth to only one or two kittens per litter. The mother brings meat to her ravenous young, which mature into lesser bandersnatches (see below) within a year. Bandersnatches live for a thousand years or longer.

VARIANT BANDERSNATCHES
Though no bandersnatch is ordinary, some are rarer than others. The most famous is the frumious bandersnatch, brimming with rage so fierce it burns. Variant bandersnatches may combine two or more of the abilities below.
Confounding Bandersnatch (+1 CR): Confounding bandersnatches drip infectious madness from their quills and claws. Poison (Ex) Claws and quills—injury; save Fort DC 29; frequency 1/minute for 6 minutes; effect confused for 1 minute; cure 2 consecutive saves. The save DC is Constitution-based.
Frumious Bandersnatch (+2 CR): A frumious bandersnatch seethes with barely repressed rage and anger. If it misses with its bite attack or falls below half of its hit points, it succumbs to such uncontrollable fury that it bursts into flame. While engulfed in these flames, a frumious bandersnatch is affected as by a haste spell (this effect cannot be dispelled) and causes an additional 2d6 points of fire damage with each of its melee attacks and its quill defense ability. The fury lasts for 5 rounds, after which the bandersnatch cannot enter a fury again for another 5 rounds. A frumious bandersnatch has fire resistance 30.
Lesser Bandersnatch (–4 CR): Smaller or younger bandersnatches are still fearsome predators in their own right. A lesser bandersnatch is Huge, with 4 fewer Hit Dice than a typical bandersnatch. Reduce its physical ability scores by 4 each and its Wisdom and Charisma by 2 each. A lesser bandersnatch lacks quick recovery and deals 1d8+4 points of damage with its quill defense and pain abilities. Lesser bandersnatches never have any additional variant powers.
Magicbane Bandersnatch (+3 CR): These bandersnatches radiate an antimagic aura in a 20-foot radius. Should the aura be brought down, it returns automatically as a free action on the bandersnatch’s next turn. Magicbane bandersnatches lack gaze and quick recovery.
Primal Bandersnatch (+2 CR): Primal bandersnatches have kept their ties to the ancient world of the fey. They have the extraplanar subtype, SR equal to 11 plus their CR, DR 10/cold iron, and the advanced creature simple template.

Forest blights’ constant urges to seek out and destroy civilization drive them toward isolated lumber camps, wilderness trade routes, and forest settlements. Forest blights are particularly fond of sending plant monsters to do their bidding, and their innate cruelty often compels them to allow one or two survivors to escape their clutches to act as a lure, drawing prospective heroes to attempt foolish acts of retribution against the powerful and egotistical oozes. Forest blights are always eager to add new would-be saviors to their collections of transformed trees, after all.  A forest blight is 7 feet across and weighs 350 pounds.

Humbabas are monstrous humanoids of tremendous size and power that prowl the forgotten places of the world. Although a humbaba has the body of a powerful, muscular human, its face is a twisted mockery that seems more leonine than human. They often braid portions of their manes or otherwise decorate them with skulls and weapons, and prefer to wear half-plate armor and fight with longswords. The first humbabas were once the favored minions of the demon lord Pazuzu. In those days, humbabas had magnificent birdlike wings. But when the mightiest of the humbabas dared to attack Pazuzu in an ill-conceived attempt to claim the demon lord’s throne, Pazuzu punished the entire humbaba race by stripping them of their wings and casting them into the Material Plane. There they now dwell, forever denied the skies and cursed to live lonely lives, incapable of forming even the barest of friendships or alliances with others of their kind.

The sard is an ancient elm, oak, or pine tree that has been infused with lightning and raw life by one of the strange gods of the fey realm. One of the legendary beasts known as the Tane, a sard has “sap” that consists of red lightning—all of the sard’s electrical attacks manifest with this same eerie-colored energy. A sard can pass for an old dead tree—especially when the creature uses its tree shape spell-like ability. Yet despite its enormous size and ungainly shape, the sard is in fact a swift and agile monster. It can move with unsettling grace and speed, crawling across the ground on long spidery roots like an immense insect. It attacks either with a single slam of its immense trunk or by launching volleys of foot-long thorns that inject the creature’s poisonous, electrified sap. Sards are nearly as intelligent as most humans, but few actually use this intelligence for productive purposes—the first sards were created as a form of living siege engine, and they quite enjoy this destructive role, often seeking out fortresses or even towns to systematically destroy.

Lotus trees grow in ancient forests and paradisiacal islands, feeding on the fantasies of sentient beings. Some lotus trees are curious and wise; others hoard secrets while claiming they provide refuge from reality. Intentionally or not, lotus trees attract those seeking wisdom or dreamy escape.

The jabberwock is a true creature of legend—a subject of poetry, song, and myth in many cultures. It is known to be a devastating creature in combat whose arrival presages times of ruin and violence; these stories also tell of the creature’s fear of the tools some say were created in ancient times for the sole purpose of defeating them— vorpal weapons. A jabberwock is 35 feet tall and weighs 8,000 pounds. The jabberwock is not a creature of the Material Plane, but one from the primal world of the fey. It comes from a region of reality where life is more robust, where emotions are more potent, and where dreams and nightmares can come alive. Even in such incredible realms, though, the jabberwock is a creature to be feared. It belongs to a category of powerful creatures whose shapes and types run the gamut of possibility—a group known collectively as the “Tane.” Of the Tane, the jabberwock is said to be the most powerful, but the others in this grouping are far from helpless. Said to have been created as goliaths of war and madness, dreamt and stitched into being by the strange gods of this primeval reality, the Tane are as mysterious as they are powerful. Two other creatures of the Tane are presented in this book—the sard and the thrasfyr. None of the Tane are lower than CR 16 in power and all possess the planar acclimation special quality, but beyond that, they generally share no specific abilities or characteristics save for their common source in the primal world. When a jabberwock comes to the Material Plane, it does so to spread destruction and ruin. Typically, the monster seeks out a remote forest lair at least a day’s flight from civilization, then emerges from this den once a week to seek out a new place to destroy. It has no true interest in amassing treasure, but often gathers objects of obvious value to bring back to its den in order to encourage heroes to seek it out—to a jabberwock, it makes no difference whether it seeks out things to destroy or lets those things come to it. Jabberwocks age, eat, drink, and sleep like any living creature, but they do not reproduce in the classic sense of the word. The creation of a new jabberwock—or of any of the Tane, in fact—is regulated by the strange and unknowable godlike entities that dwell in the primeval world. These fey lords create new jabberwocks as they are needed—sometimes varying the exact particulars (see Variant Jabberwocks, below), but always creating a fully formed adult creature. No young jabberwock has ever been encountered as a result. The strange vulnerability a jabberwock possesses against vorpal weapons has long been a matter of intrigue and speculation among scholars. Most believe that, once upon a time, only one jabberwock existed, a creature of such great power that nothing could hurt it. Nothing, that is, save for a legendary sword forged for a mortal hero by a now-forgotten artisan or god. So epic was this battle that it created strange echoes throughout reality, and as a result, these echoes, in the form of the vorpal swords and jabberwocks known today, can be found on many worlds.

VARIANT JABBERWOCKS
The notion of a “lesser” jabberwock is something of a misnomer, for even these creatures are powerful foes. A lesser jabberwock is generally a CR 20 version of the typical jabberwock—you can achieve a creature of this power by lowering the typical jabberwock’s Hit Dice by 3 and by reducing its ability scores by 4 points each. Alternatively, you can apply the young creature simple template, but bear in mind that such a monster isn’t technically any younger than a typical jabberwock. As creatures from the primal world of the fey, some jabberwocks are as varied as the strange terrains and realms in that primal world, as if these environs have more to do with their manifestation than most scholars suspect. Generally, these changes simply alter the type of damage a jabberwock’s eye beams deal and the types of energy it is immune to. A jabberwock from a primeval glacial world would possess eye beams that deal cold damage, while a jabberwock from a storm-lashed world would deal electricity damage with its eye beams. If the nature of a jabberwock’s eye beams change, its burn ability changes to match, and it replaces its immunity to fire with immunity to the new energy type (while gaining resist fire 30 in place of the lost immunity to fire).