Killer Copper Pieces: Mangraves

Brack-anchored predatory trees, the elegant arched spindles of their roots gathering scabrous silt. Their bark is alabaster, their leaves a delicate, sensual pink - but they are consummate vegetable shapeshifters, able to match their appearance to surrounding plant-life. The wary can still spot them by their accompaniment: carrion-beetles, corpse-nibbling fish, and suchlike - and of course they become obvious when their sucker-tipped roots rear up from the water.

They hunt by detecting animal heartbeats. In turn, they are hunted by the people who share their coastal environments for their rich crimson sap, which can be worked into the finest rubber and plastic, or made into gum that is chewed to promote vitality. These tree-hunters take drugs to depress their heartbeat, using pumps in their palms and heels to quicken their blood-flow and prevent themselves from passing out*. Paddling out in canoes like drunken crocodiles they may sneak up on the trees and tap their sap. It is still an enormously dangerous profession, due to the flailing of tapped trees' roots, complications from the pumps and the drugs, and the other dangers of the coast which those precautions render them vulnerable to.

The enormously wealthy sometimes keep these trees in their gardens, "taming" the things by feeding them so much blood they don't bother to attack or disguise themselves.

They are

Mangraves

HD: 6 AC: 14 ATK: 4 Sucker-Roots SAV: 10  MOV: N/A INT: Dumb animal ML: 12
No. Appearing: 1d3

Sucker-Roots: 2 of a mangrave's roots can reach 30', and the other 2 can reach 15'. A successful attack from a sucker-root represents it sticking to you - for every round thereafter you will take 1d6 damage automatically until it is severed or otherwise detached. Against anyone with a sucker-root stuck to them, a mangrave may also make a grapple action in addition to draining their blood - trip them, hold them underwater, drag them closer, etc. A sucker-root takes 6 damage to sever - only half this is taken by the mangrave itself.

Mangraves surprise on a 3-in-6 unless one is moving at half-speed. Conversely, a mangrave can never be surprised unless one has altered their heart-rate by drugs or some other means.

* When they're not on the drugs they can do this:

 

 

If you know, you know.