Dark Tree

A dark tree looks like a cypress with unusually dark bark and very little moss. Two pitch-black eyes are almost impossible to spot unless you know just where to look. It might pass for a treant at a glance, but anyone who sees one can almost feel the malice radiating from it.

Its bark gives it a superior Armor Class, and because that bark is wet and slimy it does not catch fire easily, so it has no special weakness to flame. Magical cold is another matter: it saves at -2 against it.

It swings two arms for 3d6 each. If both land, it has seized its victim and next round may bite at +4, draining blood for 4-24 damage. Each round it may also, on top of its attacks, try to confuse a target up to 50 feet away (save vs. spell negates). In battle this works like a confusion spell, but used on an unwary traveler it is subtler, stripping away all sense of direction so the victim becomes hopelessly lost in the jungle.

Standing still, it is 90% likely to be mistaken for a small cypress, though druids, rangers and other nature priests see through this only 75% of the time.

Solitary, they live deep in the jungle beneath a canopy that keeps direct sunlight off them, and they enjoy tormenting an unsuspecting band of adventurers before closing in to kill. Reports of them eating people began about 200 years ago.

They are the failed creation of Vessimar, a renegade wizard from a southern nation of mages who wanted servants as capable as treants. After long study of necromancy and other dark arts he was thrilled by his results, until the trees threw off his control and killed him. They have since spread through a handful of southern jungles and forests, and no other sightings are known.

Photosynthesis can keep them alive, but they prefer blood and must drink deeply before they can bud. Budding takes a year, after which the parent splits into d4+1 identical dark trees.