Sussurus

A distant relative of the shambling mound, a sussurus looks like a headless, four-limbed humanoid pile of decaying bamboo shuffling along on all fours. Its body is a shell of many layers of rotting cane bristling with bamboo spikes.

Its forelimbs end in razor-sharp bamboo claws that pierce for 3d6 points of damage each. A victim struck by both in one round is crushed against the spiked shell for an extra 3d8.

The layered shell gives AC 3, and weapons that hit deal only half damage as the blows lose force passing through the soggy layers. Lightning does not hurt it, but unlike a shambling mound it gains nothing from it either. Fire and cold deal half damage, or none if it makes its save. It hates fire and immediately attacks anyone holding a torch or lantern or casting flashy fire spells. Plant-affecting spells work on it, though it saves against them at +2, and warp wood is said, unconfirmed, to deal 3d10.

Air whistling through its hollow tubes makes an eerie drone known as the dronesong. Listeners who fail a save vs. spell drop into deep slumber lasting 3d4 hours unless struck first. It even works on undead with no more than 4 HD, whose trance is called the sleep of the dead: turning and destruction cannot touch them while it lasts, though a physical attack rouses them to fight back.

With no brain or vital organs, its intelligence spreads through a decentralized network deep inside. Severed limbs do not matter: the remaining mass forms a new one by the next round. It dies only when enough damage gets through the shell, and a heap of remains left together reforms in 2d6 hours with just 1d8 hit points and crawls home to heal and seethe.

It senses by feeling air movement across its tubes, so it is immune to magic that targets or depends on sight or hearing and can detect invisible things. Among bamboo or reeds it is nearly invisible (opponents take -3 on surprise rolls). It waits there, then charges out or starts droning to put victims to sleep first. Many groups have died by camping too near one.

Like their shambler cousins, sussuri live only in hot, rainy, heavily overgrown regions, lairing in dense stands of bamboo or reeds. Though solitary, they can talk through subtle shifts in the dronesong when, rarely, two live close enough. They may live over 1,000 years given enough food.

Sussuri compete with shambling mounds for prey and ground and usually attack them on sight.