Death's Head Tree

Until it matures, a death's head tree is almost impossible to tell from a weeping willow, and only an expert would notice its sturdier branches. A mature tree carries 4d4 foul-smelling 'death's heads', each resembling a severed human or demihuman head whose neck joins the branch. The heads have the waxy, slack-jawed look of corpses.

The tree's lure is unique. With its dim intelligence it animates the heads just enough to whisper 'help', and though anyone who comes to look recognizes the monster quickly, curiosity or the urge to destroy it brings many within reach. The trunk cannot move and has AC 10, but the limbs and heads are AC 7 and flexible enough that the tree gets one attack per head against a single target. Each bite does 1d4 and plants a seed in the wound. A head dies after 6 points of damage, and 10 points from a slashing weapon lops off a branch.

Each head holds 1d6 needle-like seeds and can also spit one per round at any warm-blooded creature within 30 feet, for 1 point of damage per seed. A natural numbing agent dulls the sting, so victims often forget them. Picked out like splinters within 24 hours, they cost 1 more point each. After a day they sprout and roots spread through the body for 1d4 damage on the first day, 2d4 on the second and so on, up to 10d4 per day. Cutting out rooted shoots inflicts half that day's growth damage and works only 50% of the time, since a fragment may stay and keep growing. Any spell that kills plants destroys the growths instantly, and at that stage they have no immunity to fire or magic.

A mature tree has some magic resistance and is immune to fire and fire-based magic.

Ripe heads break loose and float away on the gases of their own rot, smelling blood up to a mile away and drifting as far as 20 miles to find a warm-blooded host. A head spits until its 1d6 seeds are gone, bites for 2d4 rounds more and then drops dead. While on the tree a head is not undead, but once free it is, and can be turned as a zombie. Free heads keep the tree's magic resistance but lose its fire immunity.

The seeds need blood to sprout, so the trees cluster on battlefields, at altars of sacrifice and in the ruins of evil temples; an old tree often marks such a site. In theory one could grow from every corpse, and a forest of tiny saplings may appear days after a great battle. Seedlings are as easy to kill or uproot as any plant, and they sink roots into one another to steal blood, so in the end only one tree survives within 50 feet or more. Mature specimens are rare.

Maturity takes 50 + 1d10 years, after which a tree can live for millennia. Sages suggest its rings could date the battle or sacrifice that seeded it, but few who know what it is will volunteer to fell one. Beyond germination it needs no blood, feeding on sun and soil, and it grows on any terrain where blood has been spilled.

Mature trees bud every other year. Within 1d6 days the heads swell from walnut size to full size, take on their look and smell, and begin murmuring 'help' in the language suited to the head's race. After another 3d6 days they ripen and fall. Because the fruit always looks humanoid, most believe only humanoid blood works; attempts with animal blood have failed so far, though sages think it should be possible since the heads spit at warm-blooded animals too. Some say each head bears the face of the person whose blood fed the seed and is an undead echo of that soul; others call it mere mimicry.

Its fireproof, magic-resistant wood is a key part of many magic items, especially fire-resistant shields, and a component in fire-protection spells. The tree has no treasure, but there is a 15% chance a body lies at its foot holding treasure type U and 1d10 coins of every type; 90% of such bodies have a sapling growing from them.