Vampire Cactus [Carnivorous Plant]

Vampire cacti look like century plants. Its twelve fleshy, five-foot leaves sag earthward, leaving the body just three feet tall, and an inch-long white needle tips each one. The leaves are dusty green edged with a thin band of yellow. A single golden-yellow spike rises 5 to 6 feet from the center, and each midsummer one small blood-red flower opens at its top. Once pollinated, it becomes a small red fruit, sweet and juicy, that birds can hardly resist. Rooted in place, the plant can nonetheless move its leaves quickly, and dried husks and skeletons of small desert animals such as kangaroo rats usually lie around it.

The cactus fires its leaf-tip needles at targets as far as three yards off. A heavy elastic cord, paid out from inside the leaf, keeps each needle tethered and serves as the straw through which the plant drinks. A needle hits for 1d2, and each later round every needle still embedded drains 1d3 points of blood. Victims can rip the needles out, but the barbs deal 1d3 each when pulled.

All 12 needles can fire at once, no more than six at one target. A needle that misses is reeled back and ready again by the next round, and when a target dies the plant pulls those needles in to use on someone new. After draining 50 hit points it is satisfied, retracts everything and rests for 48 hours.

Threads are AC 8 and break after 4 points of damage; leaves are AC 7 with 1+1 Hit Dice each. Losing them reduces the plant's attacks but does no lasting harm, since a leaf regrows in 1d4+1 days. Only destroying the core (AC 6, 3 Hit Dice, separate from leaf damage) kills it, and while any leaves remain, three blows in four aimed at the core strike a moving leaf instead (75%). Its roots ground lightning and electricity harmlessly, but fire deals double damage. Mindless, it ignores sleep, charm, illusion and other mental magic.

These plants are natives of a scorching inland desert, where stolen blood tops up a scarce water supply. They have also adapted with dusty leaves that slow evaporation, a single small flower that saves moisture and conductive roots, important because the cactus is often the tallest thing around and draws frequent desert lightning. Their seeds appear to have ridden with migrating flocks to the edges of arid steppes nearby and even into a forbidden waste of dust. The only treasure nearby belongs to its victims.

Nothing feeds on the plant itself, which is too tough and bitter, though its fruit is the opposite. Any warm-blooded creature can become its prey.