Serpent Vine

A magical blend of giant constrictor and climbing plant, the serpent vine lives in vast underground forests. Heart-shaped leaves and fine tendrils wrap its slim green body, and the leaves act like tiny feet that speed it through brush. It can shade itself to match its tree or foliage. Even a viewer who knows the creature and is searching has only a 25% chance to spot it; anyone else has 5%. It crosses bare ground only in passing, preferring to hang among real vines high in tall trees with a clear view of prey.

It considers humans and demihumans delicacies and seeks them out, usually by hanging over a path. Three times daily it can cast spectral force, often to drape luscious fruit over itself, especially near its mouth. Once daily it can use each of hold person, mass suggestion (up to 5 creatures), charm person and suggestion, urging victims to relax, draw near and touch it.

When its magic has someone in its power, it drops from the branch and wraps the target, biting and squeezing together for 4d4 points of constriction damage; against a spellbound victim these first-round attacks hit automatically, but the spells break after that first strike. It takes victims under suggestion first, then the held and the charmed.

If its spells all fail, it melts into the undergrowth using its speed and camouflage, never fighting at bad odds. It leaves parties made up purely of dark elves alone, since they resist its charms, but may attack up to three unaffected foes, coiling first and biting once they are pinned.

Solitary even toward its own kind, the serpent vine nests high in underground trees, laying 1d6 eggs in hollow limbs or trunks every four months. It warms them for the three to four weeks before they hatch, hunting only for food in that period. The foot-long young are soon chased down the trunk to fend for themselves or be eaten.

Serpent vines kill more than they can eat, and their leftovers feed smaller carnivores and nourish both ordinary and sentient plants in these isolated forests. They hunt every warm-blooded creature there but prize humans and demihumans, gnomes and halflings above all for their sweet flesh. Rangers and druids hunt them as a serious danger.