[Botany] Monster - Fleshroot (Patreon)

A more simple plant. I needed some ranged attack plants and I really liked the image of an adventurer succumbing to a writhing mass of plants/vines. There's also a little body horror here and leans into the fantasy relationship between adventurers and monsters. There's probably an even cooler version of this where the seeds stay embedded for days before sprouting.

---

The fleshroot’s small size is deceiving to amateur botanists and unwitting explorers unaware of their deadly potential. Though these plants can grow slowly on their own, fleshroots prefer to hunt as they reproduce quicker with a bloody food source. With a quick flick of their stems, they can launch dozens of seed pods that burrow into a target’s flesh and begin growing new fleshroots. A couple fleshroots pose little danger even to civilians, but a cluster can completely incapacitate and devour a party.

Fleshroots grow in subtropical coastal wetlands with plenty of decomposing biomatter. Residents of fishing villages take care to avoid certain deltas and swampy rivers with high concentrations of fleshroots, isolating fleshroots against expansion. Accidents are few and far in between, caused mainly by previously unnoticed clusters of fleshroots.