Noran

A noran looks a little silly: a sickly, petrified treant pocked with knots and holes, its face sunk into the trunk. Two long, whip-like branches serve as hands for picking things up. A hollow at its crown funnels down through its body to a knothole just under its mouth. It speaks a crude Common and can talk haltingly with treants and other trees.

Its lashing branches strike with startling speed at targets up to 10 feet away, but the real threat is hidden inside. The noran drops stones into its crown hollow and fires them out of the knothole, which snaps open and shut, at tremendous speed, each rock dealing 2d8 at up to 60 feet. Normally it can shoot one stone per round only by skipping its other attacks. Before a fight, though, it can preload up to 10 rocks, and then it may lash two foes within reach and shoot a third in the same round.

Being petrified, it takes normal damage from fire but does not keep burning like other wooden monsters. Bludgeoning weapons deal it double damage.

Underground creatures clear out when a noran arrives, then creep back from hiding after it moves on. As a result it is a solitary nomad, always following fleeing prey and staying only as long as its food does.

Two norans that meet do not fight; they mate, by means no one understands, and both leave carrying an acorn. For a year afterward neither can fire rocks. Then each ejects a youngster that fends for itself and has full adult statistics from birth.

Sages assume norans are distant kin of treants, though how they ended up underground is anyone's guess. Unlike normal plants, a noran cannot live on sunlight, soil and water; only living flesh carries enough protein. It eats any meaty creature it can kill, preferring it bruised and bloody so it is tender enough to digest as the noran shuffles over the body.

Whatever it cannot digest, treasure included, it spits out on the floor. Following its trail can turn up useful loot, though other scavengers compete for it, and some creatures make a living trailing norans until one doubles back and eats them.