Brain Seed

This big, purple-stalked, thinking plant is always in white and yellow bloom. A bulb partway up its central stalk holds the brain, with the mouth at the stalk's tip.

Every week the plant scatters thousands of seeds. Anyone passing within 200 yards must save vs. breath weapon at +2 or pick one up, though a successful Wisdom check spots it in time to brush it off. An unnoticed seed on bare skin sinks tiny roots within 1d6 rounds, giving the plant psionic contact. Its psionics, used under normal psionic combat rules, are telepathic (domination, mind link, mind thrust, phobia amplification, ego whip, contact, attraction, id insinuation) and psychometabolic (life detection, flesh armor, displacement, immovability).

With contact made, it tries to dominate the host. A host with one to three companions leads them all back, then turns on them while the plant joins in with its life draining power; when the rest fall, the plant drains the host and any survivors too. From a larger group, the host quietly slips off and walks home alone to die.

If threatened physically, it uses flesh armor and displacement to improve its Armor Class and lashes out with three whiplike reeds, each dealing 1d6.

Brain seeds grow on a forested ridge and in nearby mudflats. Each is solitary, never speaking to others of its kind, and its seeds serve for both hunting and breeding. A seedling sprouting nearby is torn up by the adult's next puppet.

It hates wizards, above all life-draining wizards. If one picks up a seed, the plant tries to dominate that wizard before anyone else, and if that fails it dominates another victim and sends it against the wizard.

This carnivore eats whatever it can lure in, and no creature on the desert world preys on it. Its weakness is life-draining magic: a spell of 3rd level or higher from such a wizard kills the master plant outright if the plant lies within the radius the spell drains.