Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Encounter: Putrid Flowers

A continuation on The Black Forest posts. This is also my first post about traps, to more fully flesh out the ideas I had for the mutated flowers. I'm going to make another post about the reanimated creatures and plants, including what I mean when I say that the plants themselves have become undead. There is actually no image this time, so it's not that I forgot one. 


Type: Trap, Environmental Hazard
Theme: Magical, Evil

Description:
The different flowers are arranged haphazardly around the forest. They are all different colors, though each has the distinctive tinge of rotting color. Their petals writhe and grasp anything near them. You can feel different magical auras around the flowers, and have the suspicion that they are trying to kill you.

Dangers:
  • Fire Flowers
    • Cone of fire emitted towards a living creature
    • Immune to fire
    • Incapable of movement
    • Located on trees, bright red in coloration. Easy to detect.
  • Undead Flowers
    • Drain life force of anything that it touches
    • Weak to positive energy
    • Empowered by negative energy
    • Located on ground, dark in coloration. Difficult to detect.
  • Grasping Flowers
    • Shake petals slowly, brushing against everything near it.
    • Anything alive that it touches is immediately latched onto with large vines that are hidden among it's roots. They are grappled and slowly eaten by nearby flowers.
    • Tall and located on ground, pale in coloration. Moderate to detect.
  • Spores
    • Sleep, Paralysis, Poison, Mind-control spores
    • Bright blue, yellow, green, and purple in coloration, respectively. Very easy to detect.
    • Float around in the air, emitted by corrupted trees and mushrooms.
    • Each require a Fortitude save to resist the effects.
  • Reanimators 
    • Kill small insects and reanimate them as undead
    • Also poisons and brings trees as undead plants
    • The undead insects are a nuisance and swarm large creatures
    • Mostly harmless to larger creatures, but can make them sick
    • Grows as moss, grey in coloration. Difficult to detect.

Info:
The various plants in the Black Forest are the real danger. They have been so mutated by evil magic that they are no longer natural, and have many different effects. The plants have effectively taken over the forest, and are now a system of traps upon traps. Mostly the plants have no impact on each other, though if they burn an area, those plants may be destroyed. 
The main danger is that some of the flowers are indistinguishable from the non-corrupted plant life. The coloration can be detected after a few encounters with the different types of plants, but the traps until then are very difficult to see. They are very dangerous, and seek out living creatures to kill and consume. They are strictly evil in nature - pun fully intended - and are also considered undead. 
The plants are persistent throughout the entire forest. They become more densely populated deeper into the forest, but as the PCs learn to detect and avoid them, most confrontations can be completely evaded. Around certain areas, different flowers are dominant due to the mutating magic that is present, and it's chaotic nature. The villains that created them have intentionally planted them in specific patterns around their stronghold, to make it almost impossible to avoid them on entry. They also fortified other key areas with the plants.

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