Thursday, September 17, 2020

Goblin succulent

When water is plentiful, the succulent is content. Its leaves stand, plump and green, off of their petioles, limb-buds barely discernible. As its stored water dwindles, though, and the leaves begin to shrivel and droop, their body plan becomes better-defined. Eventually, some of them fall to the ground, stagger to their feet, and go hunting for water.

A hunting leaf is dull green and brown, and wizened. It has between three and six limbs, each ending in long thorn-claws, but no obvious head. It walks on two or three of its limbs. It's faster than you'd think.

Leaves can smell water. Any water, whether in the open or contained in living tissue.

They prefer exposed water to any other source. They immerse themselves in it, opening stomata across their waxy skin to absorb it quickly.

If the only water they can find is bound up within other plants or animals, they will attack, slashing with thorn-claws to free the water inside and grappling to get their "mouths" as close to the wounds as possible.

When it is full, a leaf's skin is taut, and a deep glossy green. It will totter back to the parent plant and pull an unoccupied petiole down to connect to a stoma. The plant drains it dry, and drops the desiccated husk. Larger containers of water - such as, say, the bodies of animals larger than a dog - might be dragged back to the parent plant to be drained directly, rather than absorbed by the leaves in situ.

The ground near a succulent will be strewn with the flammable husks of defunct leaves. Pouring water onto a husk may revive it, whereupon it will continue hunting.

Stats

Hunting Leaf: as goblin, unarmed.

Succulent: probably just a bag of HP. It takes no actions. It's a plant.

Special abilities

Smell Water: leaves are aware of all water sources on a clear scent-path within 100 yards.

Rehydrate: water poured on a leaf husk will revive it on 3-in-6.

Drain (parent plant ability): any water-filled creature (or object) attached to a petiole on the parent plant will take 1d6 damage per round until it is dead, drained, or forcibly detached. Dead creatures attached to a petiole for 3 rounds are damaged beyond easy resurrection.

Cultural notes

Steppe herders make a thick alcoholic mash from the flesh of the leaves. They will capture a hunting leaf, stake it to the ground, and pump it full of water (plus a little bit of mash as a starter culture). After a week or two of fermentation, the leaf is ready to be pulped into mash.

The yellow chariot riders protect the barrows of their dead with simple traps of natural materials. Covered pits full of hunting leaves have been found, as have more complicated setups involving water poured onto leaf husks.

Comments

The idea here is a monster that players can reason about.

I also like trying to gesture at ecology without getting bogged down in details that don't make it to the table.

If you want to be mean, give the leaves an anticoagulant venom on their thorn-claws (1d2 or 1d3 bleed damage for 1-3 rounds after a slash).

Are the leaves intelligent? I assumed not, but you might disagree. Maybe the longer they spend away from the parent plant, the closer to sentience they get. (This makes the steppe herder concoction above a lot darker, of course.)

There's no reason why the parent plant couldn't be intelligent enough to talk to.

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