Viper Tree

Legend names viper trees the bastard brood of the great serpent at the roots of the World Tree. From afar one passes for a white beech; up close the bark is scaly hide and every branch ends in a live snake's head. The limbs can coil and strike but usually just sway, wind or no wind.

They speak only the tanar'ri tongue, and groves hiss and whisper all night about kills, hunger and treasure.

A lone tree rarely attacks anything over size S. Groves, such as a serpent-infested forest of the Abyss, will take on weak-looking groups or size M creatures, and given time they manage to gulp down size L victims.

Of its dozens of serpent limbs the tree controls only a few; its brain sits in the heartwood, so a slain head is replaced by a dormant one and it keeps full attacks until near death. Bites deal 2d6.

The venom acts after 2d4 rounds; victims save vs. poison at -3. Failure means 48 hours of paralysis, enough to be swallowed, plus a permanent 4-point Dexterity loss. Success still brings 48 hours of shakes and a temporary 4-point Dexterity loss. Neutralize poison instantly restores Dexterity (and within an hour prevents the permanent loss) but not movement; remove paralysis ends the twitching and paralysis but not the Dexterity loss. Viper trees cannot be poisoned by their own venom.

Sleep, hold person, charm monster and other spells aimed at one or a few targets fail unless they can affect a number of creatures equal to its Hit Dice. Venom, acid and cold do nothing to it, electricity does normal damage, bludgeons deal half, and fire deals double, for the sappy wood (cuts weep brownish-amber) burns quickly.

Against missile fire a tree may snap off limbs to slither at the archers; these share the parent's hit points, THAC0 and damage but die within an hour, so it does so reluctantly.

Part fiend, part reptile, part plant, viper trees abound in a demon kingdom on the Abyss's 45th to 47th layers and guard gardens, gates and moats elsewhere. Each lays a monthly egg that rests at its base until it hatches, after which the young is abandoned.

Vast groves crowd old battlefields of the endless war between demons and devils. Tanar'ri may pass and shelter beneath them and mercenary fiends are usually left alone, but the trees attack baatezu on sight, to the last tree if need be. Tanar'ri say the trees were once their own kind, either captured manes reshaped by the lords of the hells for sport or a thousand least demons punished by Abyssal lords for refusing a hopeless charge. The tale is told to deter deserters, and a few devil lords may still know the secret.

A militant faction of order-keepers once polled 47 trees in three groves. Favorite meals were small, easily swallowed things like squirrels, then terrified shelter-seekers, then eyewings, and last nesting birds (too feathery; bats are fine). Large trees also devour the deserters they call walkers (dretches, lemures, manes, mindless devils, twisted demons), which reportedly sting and taste of fear. Four in five said lean times can be survived on spells, sleepy river-of-the-underworld water, or blood-soaked earth. One in ten overpowered its pollster.

Hatchlings are mobile three-headed snakes of 2 Hit Dice. The middle head is a dormant runt carried by the other two until it wakes in about a month and takes charge, seeking a place to root. Ravenous, a larva gobbles up manes, cranium rats and similar small fry, biting one foe with two heads while the third watches its flanks. Its venom brings 1d10 hours of twitching paralysis; saving vs. poison at +2 means only a 2-point Dexterity loss lasting a day. When it kills something big enough, it pierces the carcass with its tail into the earth and starts becoming a tree.