| Orcwort | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| |||
| Naming | |||
| Binomen | N/A | ||
| Morphology | |||
| Average height | At least 64 feet | ||
| Intelligence | |||
| Sapience | Non-sapient | ||
| Aggressivity | Very High | ||
| Ecology | |||
| Habitat | Forests | ||
| Diet | Carnivore | ||
| Lifespan | DD | ||
| Subspecies | N/A | ||
| Status | Least Concern | ||
| Behind the Scenes | |||
| Universe | Dungeons & Dragons | ||
An orcwort is a walking, bloodthirsty terror that prefers to make its home on the fringe of a populated area.
Overview[]
This giant plant wanders by night until it finds an appropriate spot to settle, then sinks some of its roots into the ground, making it seem that an immense tree has grown up in the spot overnight. Over the course of the next week, the orcwort produces five to twenty pods that, when mature, break open to release mobile fruits called wortlings. The parent plant then sends out its wortlings in hunting parties to bring back warm-blooded sustenance—usually livestock and humanoids. An orcwort is capable of devouring the entire population of a small village in a single feeding. Once it has stripped an area of warm-blooded animal life, it moves on in search of other population centres.
An orcwort looks like a gigantic, woody pitcher plant draped in thick creeper vines. It is crowned with a canopy of bramble-like branches and green, bushy foliage. Dormant wortling pods hang from the orcwort’s branches, resembling round, oversized prunes.
In combat, an orcwort reaches out with its vines to entwine nearby prey. It then uses other tendrils to pick out choice victims one at a time and drop them into its open maw. An orcwort recalls any wortling raiding parties it has sent out whenever it is under attack.
Wortlings[]
Wortlings are the mature fruits of the orcwort plant. When one of the orcwort’s pods ripens, it falls to the ground and breaks open to release a wortling.
When first "hatched," a wortling resembles a small, wrinkled, purple humanoid. Its body seems portly, and its arms and legs are somewhat lumpy compared with those of a real humanoid. Although its face resembles that of a humanoid, a wortling is blind and cannot speak, hear, or smell—its apparent sensory organs are merely blobs of plant tissue with no actual function.
A hungry orcwort dispatches up to twenty of its "ripe" wortlings at a time to hunt food and bring it back. The wortlings navigate terrain using their woodsense. When on the prowl, wortlings seek out similar sized prey because such creatures are easier to transport back to the parent plant than larger creatures.
The average life span of a wortling is a matter of days. If any wortlings are left alive when the parent plant is ready to move on, the orcwort commands them to arrange themselves well apart from each other at the extreme range of its telepathy and root themselves. If left undisturbed for one year, each of these wortlings grows into a new orcwort, which pulls up its roots and begins looking for food. During its maturation period, a rooted wortling is immobile and helpless.
Wortlings use very simple tactics — overwhelm, subdue, and return with the food. In melee, they prefer to gang up on one foe rather than attack separate enemies. They fight with a great sense of urgency, and when they do manage to bring down a foe, a few of them immediately carry off their prize to feed the orcwort, leaving any remaining wortlings to continue the hunt. They never willingly enter areas without natural vegetation because they are effectively blind in such places.