The Strange Bestiary
Woe to the wilderness traveler unaware of the veridial, for such ignorance could lead to doom. Veridials are intelligent, animate plant creatures that look a little like large trees, with several massive, rootlike legs and two nasty claw-branches.
Veridials spend most of their time asleep, in which case they are indistinguishable from normal trees. They appreciate the gentle sounds of nature—birds singing, animals scurrying, creeks babbling, and so forth—but any sound foreign to the forest or anything excessively loud wakes them. And veridials are always angry when woken.
Like most plants, veridials draw their nourishment from the soil and the sun. Though fairly intelligent, they have no interest in the affairs of other intelligent creatures, or motives like wealth or power. They want only solitude and peace.
Moving past a sleeping veridial without waking it is a difficulty 5 stealth task.
Motive: Seek quiet
Environment (Ardeyn | Magic): One or very rarely two, sleeping in any wooded wilderness area
Health: 20
Damage Inflicted: Moderate wound (5 points)
Armor: 2
Movement: Short
Modifications: Initiative as level 7 (when in the woods).
Combat: If awoken, veridials attack with their huge claws, making two attacks (against one foe or two) as a single action. Also, the touch of an angry veridial destroys inorganic crafted objects. Whether they touch a shield or a stone wall, a battle axe or an iron door, if the object's level is lower than 5, it is automatically destroyed. This means that while a foe's plate armor can protect against a veridial's initial strike, she is likely unarmored against subsequent attacks, for her armor is destroyed unless it is somehow atypical (level 5 or higher due to magic, special alloys, and so on).
A veridial can forgo its normal attacks and specifically target an inorganic crafted object, such as a door, a wall, or an opponent's weapon or shield. If the veridial successfully strikes, the object is destroyed if it is lower than level 7.
Interaction: Once veridials awaken, angry, it is very hard to calm them down (difficulty 8 task). However, if this is accomplished, they can be excellent conversationalists, and they know virtually everything there is to know about the area in which they dwell (usually a radius of at least 10 miles [16 km] around where they plant themselves).
Use: Deep in the Green Wilds is a meadow called the Conclave of Nine. Here, nine of the most aged and knowledgeable veridials meet once every nine years to make decisions beyond the ken of humans or qephilim about the state of the natural world. A meeting soon approaches, and the elders of Telenbar have determined that someone needs to go to the meadow and spy on it, to learn what is discussed.
GM Intrusion: The veridial's touch destroys an inorganic object of particular importance to the character.