Orcwort

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Orcwort • Wortling

An orcwort is a walking, bloodthirsty terror that prefers to make its home on the fringe of a populated area. This giant plant wanders by night until it finds an appropriate spot to settle, then sinks some of its roots into the ground, making it seem that an immense tree has grown up in the spot overnight. Over the course of the next week, the orcwort produces five to twenty pods that, when mature, break open to release mobile fruits called wortlings. The parent plant then sends out its wortlings in hunting parties to bring back warm-blooded sustenance⁠—​usually livestock and humanoids.

An orcwort is capable of devouring the entire population of a small village in a single feeding. Once it has stripped an area of warm-blooded animal life, it moves on in search of other population centers.

Orcwort ⬆️

An orcwort looks like a gigantic, woody pitcher plant draped in thick creeper vines. It is crowned with a canopy of bramblelike branches and green, bushy foliage. Dormant wortling pods hang from the orcwort’s branches, resembling round, oversized prunes.

Combat

In combat, an orcwort reaches out with its vines to entwine nearby prey. It then uses other tendrils to pick out choice victims one at a time and drop them into its open maw. An orcwort recalls any wortling raiding parties it has sent out whenever it is under attack.

Entangling Roots (Ex): As a free action, an orcwort can twist its roots around all creatures within 15 feet of it, holding them fast. This effect otherwise functions like an entangle spell (caster level 10th; save DC 24).

Improved Grab (Ex): If an orcwort hits a Gargantuan or smaller opponent with a slam attack, it deals normal damage and attempts to start a grapple as a free action without provoking an attack of opportunity (grapple bonus +54). If it gets a hold, it can transfer the opponent to its maw in the next round. Alternatively, the orcwort has the option to conduct the grapple normally, or simply use one tendril to hold the opponent (–⁠20 penalty on grapple check, but the orcwort is not considered grappled). In either case, each successful grapple check it makes during successive rounds automatically deals slam damage.

Paralysis (Ex): An orcwort secretes digestive juices that can paralyze creatures in contact with it. Any creature swallowed by an orcwort must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC 35) or be paralyzed for 2d4 rounds.

Swallow Whole (Ex): An orcwort can swallow a Huge or smaller creature by making a successful grapple check (grapple bonus +54), provided it already has that opponent in its maw (see Improved Grab). Once inside the orcwort’s pitcher, the opponent takes 2d8+8 points of acid damage per round and is subject to the paralyzing effect of its digestive juices (see Paralysis). See Swallow Whole for escape methods and other information. An orcwort’s pitcher has an AC of 16 and 20 hit points and can hold 2 Huge, 8 Large, 32 Medium, or 128 Small or smaller creatures.

Telepathy (Su): An orcwort can communicate telepathically with any of its wortlings within fifteen miles.

Woodsense (Ex): An orcwort can automatically sense the location of anything within 60 feet that is in contact with vegetation, even objects or creatures that are not in contact with the same vegetation as itself.

Wortling ⬆️

Wortlings are the mature fruits of the orcwort plant. When one of the orcwort’s pods ripens, it falls to the ground and breaks open to release a wortling.

When first “hatched,” a wortling resembles a small, wrinkled, purple orc. Its body seems portly, and its arms and legs are somewhat lumpy compared with those of a real humanoid. Although its face resembles that of a humanoid, a wortling is blind and cannot speak, hear, or smell⁠—​its apparent sensory organs are merely blobs of plant tissue with no actual function.

A hungry orcwort dispatches up to twenty of its “ripe” wortlings at a time to hunt food and bring it back. The wortlings navigate terrain using their woodsense. When on the prowl, wortlings seek out Medium-size or smaller prey because such creatures are easier to transport back to the parent plant than larger creatures.

The average life span of a wortling is 1d4+1 days. If any wortlings are left alive when the parent plant is ready to move on, the orcwort commands them to arrange themselves well apart from each other at the extreme range of its telepathy and root themselves. If left undisturbed for one year, each of these wortlings grows into a new orcwort, which pulls up its roots and begins looking for food. During its maturation period, a rooted wortling is immobile and helpless.

Combat

Wortlings use very simple tactics—overwhelm, subdue, and return with the food. In melee, they prefer to gang up on one foe rather than attack separate enemies. They fight with a great sense of urgency, and when they do manage to bring down a foe, a few of them immediately carry off their prize to feed the orcwort, leaving any remaining wortlings to continue the hunt. They never willingly enter areas without natural vegetation because they are effectively blind in such places.

Poison (Ex): A wortling delivers its poison (Fortitude save DC 11) with each successful claw attack. The initial damage is sleep for 1 minute, and the secondary damage is sleep for 1d10 minutes. Both of these sleep effects work only against living creatures but otherwise function as the spell of the same name.

Swarming (Ex): Wortlings can swarm over and around each other with ease, so up to three of them can occupy the same 5-foot-by-5-foot space. They are likewise adept at attacking as a group; for every wortling that is grappling a foe (grapple bonus +0), every wortling gets a +1 competence bonus on attack rolls against that foe.

Plantmind (Ex): All wortlings within fifteen miles of their orcwort parent are in constant communication. If one is aware of a particular danger, they all are. If one in a particular group is not flat-footed, none of them are. No wortling in such a group is considered flanked unless they all are.

Woodsense (Ex): A wortling can automatically sense the location of anything within 60 feet that is in contact with vegetation, even objects or creatures that are not in contact with the same vegetation as itself.

Source: Monster Manual II, page 165. These creatures’ statistics blocks have been updated to version 3.5 as given in the D&D® V.3.5 Accessory Update for Monster Manual II.