Planar Bestiary
It's not an insect that looks like a stick. In fact, it's a stick that resembles an insect. A tiny but terribly thorny insect, with eyes as red as ripe berries and an ominous ovipositor-like spike at the end of a thick tail.
A lone nettle blight is odd, but not especially dangerous. Unfortunately, where there's one nettle blight, several more likely hide in nearby foliage waiting to ambush prey. Nettle blights are perceptive to vibrations of anything moving nearby.
The nettle blight is a fey creature, but it's also an intelligent plant; it's a hybrid that would draw more curiosity if the blights weren't such a nuisance. Nettle blight thorn groves are dangerous places to explore because when the blights are gathered in sufficient quantities, a flowering of blights can bring down even much more powerful prey.
Nettle blights are almost always driven to find sources of fertilizer for another thorn bush from which a new generation of blights can grow. Most living creatures are suitable targets. Victims who fall prey to such nettle blight attention could become host to newly germinated growth destined to sprout more nettle blights.
Motive: Implant seeds in living flesh
Environment: The Feywild, most worlds of the Material Plane, in groups of three to twelve
Health: 6
Damage Inflicted: Minor wound (3 points)
Armor: 1
Movement: Short; short when climbing
Modifications: Speed defense as level 4 due to tiny size; climbing as level 5; perception as level 6
Combat: A nettle blight attacks with its thorns. A group of four or more blights can attack as a single level 4 creature that inflicts a moderate wound (5 points).
A group of four or more blights can target a creature within short range with a magical "hungry seed" ranged attack every few rounds. If an attacked creature fails a level 4 Speed defense task, the seed strikes, inflicting a moderate wound (5 points) as it takes root in the target. All the victim's physical tasks are hindered as the seed extends thorny tendrils that snag and interfere with the victim's movements. The seed can be dug out as an action with a successful difficulty 2 Might task.
If a victim becomes host to two or more hungry seeds, they can no longer take any physical actions until at least one seed is removed. If a victim is killed by any means while a hungry seed is actively growing in their flesh, a great thorny bush germinates from that spot within a few days, from which about seven nettle blights arise a couple of days after that.
Interaction: The only time nettle blights, which have the intelligence of industrious insects, are not actively seeking prey to implant is in the middle of winter on a Material Plane world where these vicious little things have become invasive.
Use: Intelligent plants and intelligent undead are never targeted by nettle blights. Which is why nettle blight groves are sometimes encouraged to take root near locations where such creatures lair, as added protection against potential intruders. However, nettle blight groves do best in the sunlight. Even so, an entrance to a subterranean "fungus monster" lair could be flanked by a nettle blight grove on the surface.
The nettle blight's hungry seed is charged with magic of the Feywild.
GM Intrusion: A character trips over an unseen nettle blight and falls prone. This allows a group of four waiting blights to immediately attack the character as a level 4 creature.