Lashweed

A lashweed is a cluster of veined stems twisted around a black, porous central stalk that oozes the digested blood of its prey. Its dark green, saw-edged leaves are stained crimson at the margins, and its 'feet' are a squirming mass of veined fibers. While hunting it booms like a drum, likely a form of echolocation such as bats and dolphins use; some claim it is also speech, but no one has survived long enough near the plants to confirm it.

Lashweeds feel the tread of anything small-sized or larger within 20 feet of the patch and slowly shamble toward it. Hidden in dense growth, they give victims -2 on surprise, though alert characters who hear the foliage rustle negate this. Just before attacking, a plant drums several quick beats to pinpoint its target.

It always opens with a black poison spray, a 10-foot cone 6 feet wide at the end. Those inside must save vs. poison or go blind for 1d4 days, attacking and saving at -4 while blind. Each plant can spray once per three hours. It then attacks with four barbed tendrils that each deal 1-4, on one target or several, and every other lashweed in the patch joins in, crazed for blood.

Foliage never slows a lashweed, as with the 3rd-level druid ability, and each can cast entangle thrice daily, so escaping its whips is nearly hopeless.

A patch holds 2-20 plants spaced 20 or 30 feet apart, usually in a loose circle covering a wide area.

According to the wandering fortune-tellers, lashweeds were once druids defeated by a mighty necromancer and staked out in the fields to die. They spent the day chanting curses at him, and the dark powers of the realm, sensing their anguish, remade them as plants hungry for vengeance.