Semitropical Forest

According to some fey ballads, gathlains were one of the first peoples awakened in the primal world of fey. They were created from the seeds of an enormous magical tree, with the tree’s mistletoe grown into their flesh forming their strange wings. Mischievous and capricious, these creatures have discordant temperaments. They act purely to entertain themselves and sate their immense curiosity about the world around them. That very curiosity has caused many to migrate to the Material Plane and adventure there. These gathlains seek out and attempt to mingle with gnomes. However, gnomes often find gathlains too undisciplined, random, and foolish for their tastes.

Giant crab spiders are dangerous ambush predators that live in dense forest vegetation. Though crab spiders are not web spinners, they are truly gifted climbers and use this talent to clamber up into places where they can observe wide areas from on high. Named for their curious scuttling walk and wide-legged stance, giant crab spiders are rarely larger than a typical adult halfling.

Growing in the upper canopies of massive trees, leaf rays fly through the air in search of food. Barely sentient, leaf rays have just enough intelligence to find nourishment and pick out creatures suitable for harboring their seeds. These creatures are hardly picky in their quest for either, merely requiring a warm-blooded living creature, preferably mammalian, for each purpose. Leaf rays begin their lives as buds in the tops of deciduous trees, and form a symbiotic relationship with these trees, often leaving the husks of their victims under their host trees to decay and fertilize the soil. During its budding stage, a leaf ray spends its time flexing its body in reaction to blowing winds in order to prepare itself for flight. Once a leaf ray has matured, it can separate its stingerlike stem from the parent tree and soar through the air. A leaf ray measures 3 feet across and weighs only 2 pounds.

VARIANT LEAF RAYS
Leaf rays change color in depending on the season, but they do not die off during winter. The stats above represent a leaf ray in the spring and summer. The following variations follow the changing seasons.
Fall: A leaf ray turns shades of yellow and red in the fall, and its poison’s purpose shifts to deal Strength damage instead of Dexterity damage.
Winter: A leaf ray in the winter turns a dull range of browns and grays, and its poison deals Constitution damage instead of Dexterity damage. Because of this, few leaf rays are successful in implanting their seeds during this season.

Much more ill-tempered and dangerous than their domesticated kin, boars are omnivorous creatures common to temperate forests, although they are not unknown in tropical climes. Other variants exist as well, such as the particularly ugly warthogs that dwell in tropical plains and savannahs. Boars are often hunted for their flesh, which is considered delicious by most humanoids. Those who hunt boars often do so with a special spear fitted with a cross beam to prevent an impaled boar from pushing forward along the spear shaft to gore its tormentor. The boar’s stubborn nature and habit of eating even bones makes it well suited as a pet for certain folk. Many thieves’ guilds keep boars for the disposal of bodies, while orc tribes let them run loose in their lairs, where they do a relatively good job at keeping these warrens clean of refuse. A boar is four feet long and weighs 200 pounds.

Most giant toads live in dryer areas after maturing, returning to the water only to mate and give birth.

Related to pseudodragons, faerie dragons are whimsical, playful pranksters that spend most of their time either relaxing in cool forest glades or engaged in some sort of prank. Although such mischief is usually spontaneous, some faerie dragons have been known to spend months or even years in preparation of one truly spectacular joke. Travelers making their way through lands known to be inhabited by these good-natured—but sometimes annoying—tricksters are advised to keep up their guard lest they face all manner of creative annoyances (horses painted with berry juice, squirrels placed inside bedrolls, and clothing decorating high branches being a few examples). Unlike true dragons, faerie dragons do not grow larger with age, but their scales do change color, starting with red and moving through the rainbow to reach dark violet at old age. Faerie dragons grow in power as spellcasters as they age (typically gaining levels in sorcerer), learning more powerful spells to complement their innate abilities. The spells of faerie dragons tend to focus on tools that can be used to create or enhance pranks, and illusion and enchantment spells are particularly popular. Faerie dragons avoid combat unless there is no other option. If forced to fight, faerie dragons attempt to confound enemies rather than kill them, using both spells and breath weapon to weaken and scatter foes before fleeing. The only exception to this is when a faerie dragon’s clan or allies are in danger. As capricious as these tiny dragons can be, many prove quick to bond with goodly creatures, especially fey and others they find interesting or hilarious—adventurers often fall into this latter camp, particularly those most outraged by a faerie dragon’s tricks. Faerie dragons sometimes ally with spellcasters, serving as curious, occasionally reckless, but always true familiars.

A weedwhip is an animate plant that rarely attacks unless provoked. Its unpleasant smell (reminiscent of decomposing fish) and tendency to sprout in any passable soil makes it a nuisance to farmers and settlers. Those who don’t know of the weedwhip’s dangers quickly fall prey to this plant once they target it for culling. Farmers have to deal with it in croplands and orchards, groundskeepers find it climbing walls like ivy, druids spot it encroaching on sacred groves, and even cave dwellers find it growing in dung heaps. Animals don’t eat it because of its stench and poison, and fire is a risky way to destroy it because the weed mixes with other plants or wraps around trees or buildings. A mature plant consists of a torso-sized bulb with small, ambulatory roots and three large, lashing vines, each as long as a whip, with blade-like thorns that secrete an irritating toxin. When the weedwhip is blooming, the bulb is crowned with a large flower and its scent is especially strong, often attracting pollinating flies. In rocky areas lacking suitable soil, a weedwhip can root itself in a corpse, leading some adventurers to think it prefers feeding on dead bodies or plants seeds in its kills, but it does so only in extreme circumstances.

The yellow musk creeper is a hideous plant that grows in haunted graveyards, grisly battlefields, and other places where death hangs heavy in the air and thick in the soil. The yellow musk creeper’s method of procreation is singularly frightful—it slays the living, infests them with its seeds and pollen, then animates them as zombies. These zombies serve the plant as a guardian for several days, but when new zombies are created, older ones wander off into the surrounding wild, collapsing and breaking apart within 2d6 days to give seed to a new yellow musk creeper.

Whereas the boar is ill-tempered and generally unfriendly, the towering daeodon (known as the dire boar to most commoners and hunters) is legitimately hateful and violent. Although omnivorous like its smaller kin, the daeodon prefers to feed on flesh, and its razor-sharp tusks and keen eyesight make it particularly well suited as a predator. While the daeodon is primarily a scavenger, it isn’t averse to attacking smaller creatures it encounters while searching for easier meals, or those who stumble unwittingly into its territory. Particularly brave or skilled orcs are fond of using daeodons as mounts, and orc cavalry mounted on dire boars make for a fearsome force indeed. A typical adult daeodon is 10 feet long and 7 feet tall at the shoulder. It weighs approximately 2,000 pounds.

The megaloceros is a powerful and enormous elk, also known as a “great elk” or “king stag.” It stands about 6 feet tall at the shoulder and has antlers spanning up to 12 feet. It weighs 1,400 pounds.

The megatherium is a massive sloth weighing 10,000 pounds. It can balance on its hind legs and tail, allowing it to reach up to 20 feet high.

A tendriculos is a creature brought into being through a corruption of nature, often where foul magic has seeped into the environs for many years, or where the boundaries between the Material Plane and the mysterious realm of the fey have worn thin. Tales and myths speak of arcane manipulation from other planes, while others speak of a tendriculos as being the manifestation of an angered spirit of nature. A voracious carnivore, the tendriculos is an active hunter when it needs to be but it prefers to rely on ambush tactics, choosing well-traveled areas in the forest where it can lie in wait in the undergrowth. The creature is quick to swallow any prey it happens to catch in its vines, relying upon the acid-filled reservoir in its trunk to finish off prey that may still have a bit of fight left in it. This acid not only consumes organic material with shocking ease, but also contains a powerful paralytic enzyme that further reduces a creature’s chance of escape once it’s been gulped down by the plant. Although incapable of speech itself, the tendriculos generally understands a handful of words in a single language (usually Sylvan). While they tend to see all smaller creatures as nothing more than food, tales exist of certain creatures, particularly fey or druids, having secured a sort of alliance with local tendriculoses. In such cases, the tendriculos is more than willing to serve its ally as a guardian, so long as the ally is diligent at providing the plant with a regular supply of food. The fact that a tendriculos displays a curious mix of plant, fungal, and even animal traits (in the form of its almost fleshy, toothed maw) has long intrigued sages. That the creature is a plant is firmly established, yet it lays egg-like spheres when the need to reproduce strikes. These “eggs” are in fact massive, puff ball-like fungi filled with spores—when jostled, the cloud of spores that is released can carry for miles, ensuring that a single tendriculos can seed a huge territory. A tendriculos is 20 feet tall and weighs 3,500 pounds.

The hangman tree prefers to lie in wait near remote forest tracks and game trails, waiting for victims to wander by. These carnivorous plants are incredibly patient, and can wait for months in a single location for food to approach. When prey does draw near, the tree’s vines lash like striking snakes. The tree often uses its pull ability to hoist grappled foes 10 to 15 feet in the air so that they are out of reach of allies while they slowly strangle. The tree generally only swallows one foe whole at a time, letting its other captured victims dangle and ripen until it is ready to feed on them. A hangman tree is 30 feet tall and weighs 12,000 pounds.

The largest of their kind, titan centipedes are thankfully also the rarest. They attack other living creatures fearlessly, and require constant sustenance to nourish their vast bulk. Humanoids are in most danger from titan centipedes when mounted rather than afoot—a good-sized horse makes a much more satisfying meal to the centipede than a few bites of human. Titan centipedes are solitary by nature and because of the demands of their appetite, though when food is plentiful, multiple centipedes sometimes lurk in the same area.

Vehement defenders of the unusual locations of the natural world, kapres have a complicated relationship with the “civilized” races. Formed of dense tree matter, they are as much part of the forest as their botanical brethren. Their intimidating physical size, territorial nature, and unusual approach to friendship often bring them into conflict with local tribes and aggressive explorers. With slender limbs and thick, gnarled torsos, kapres are awkwardly humanoid in appearance, and if not for the soft glow of their eyes they could be mistaken for treants. Exceedingly secretive and wary, kapres prefer to avoid conflict, using their imposing size and confounding auras to intimidate any would-be invaders. Leaning out of huge trees, they blow smoke onto lost explorers, persuading them to flee.

A voracious, flesh-eating carnivore, the viper vine has a single enormous bloom arising from a thick, leafy tangle of snake-like vines. When the plant senses the approach of suitable prey through its sensitive, shallowly buried root system, it rises up like an agitated snake and unfurls its brightly colored bloom, an act that releases a cloud of mind-numbing pollen. While stories speaking of the plant’s ability to lure prey into its clutches by virtue of its swaying motion persist, this effect is in fact created by this invisible, odorless pollen cloud. Since viper vines gain nourishment through the consumption of creatures rather than through moisture and soil, they have developed rudimentary locomotion and are able to drag themselves along the ground with their tentacle-like root system. They even possess a form of rudimentary sentience, allowing them to not only discern differences in prey and make limited tactical decisions, but also to avoid creatures that are particularly large or dangerous looking. The area around the hunting grounds of these predators is often strewn with the remains of victims, and it is not unusual to find the rotting corpses of wild animals, ill-fated adventurers, and even giants in their immediate vicinity, along with a scattering of incidental treasure left behind by the plant’s victims.

Plants of frightfully advanced intellect, bodythieves cannot abide the irrationalities of other intelligent life, particularly emotions. They seek to create a world of perfect order by replacing other life forms with nearly perfect duplicates spawned by the bodythief itself. Indeed, these duplicates improve on the originals, as they can communicate telepathically with the bodythief, and they lack wasteful emotions. Individual bodythieves vary as to their specific plans for building a perfect society of duplicates. A common, though recognized, flaw in their plans is the infertility of their duplicates. To maintain a stable society, the bodythieves must capture creatures to replace the inevitable loss of healthy duplicates. Bodythieves are nearly immobile, though they can drag themselves along with their vines in extremis. When they must move large distances, they enlist the aid of their spawn.

The jubjub bird is a rare and dangerous bird that resembles a giant dodo bird, but with long, muscular legs and wings that provide functional, if awkward, flight. When attacked with magic, a jubjub bird’s plumage shifts randomly in hue and pattern with each spell hurled against it. Like the bandersnatch and other legendary creatures such as the jabberwock, the jubjub bird originally hails from the primal world of the fey. It has the dubious honor of being the least powerful and least intelligent of these creatures, which are known collectively as the “Tane,” yet one should never assume that the jubjub bird is a pushover—its penchant for snapping off heads with its razor-sharp beak can quickly put such ideas to rest. Powerful fey sometimes keep jubjub birds as guardians, and there are even reports of giants (particularly powerful tribes of jungle giants) using them as mounts. Such avian allies must be carefully trained, for few giants and fey are able to comfortably exist alongside a creature so prone to uttering such stunning shrieks so often. Jubjub birds stand about 20 feet tall and weigh roughly 6,000 pounds.