Chamomile1 Urchin
A plant that has grown into the rough size and shape of a human child, capable of scuttling around on its root-like feet. From its back sprout dozens of daisy-like flowers on long stems, giving the visual impression of a hedgehog.
CR 4; XP 1200
Chaotic Blue2 Small Fey
Init +1; Senses low-light vision, Perception +4
Init +1; Senses low-light vision, Perception +4
⸻Defense⸻
AC 17, touch 12, flat-footed 16 (+1 Dex, +5 natural, +1 size)
hp 27 (6d6+6)
Fort +4, Ref +8, Will +6
DR 5/cold iron
⸻Offense⸻
Speed 20 ft.
Melee 2 claws +0 (1d4-3)
Ranged seed +4 (1 damage + special)
Special Attacks chamomile seed
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 6th)
Constant -- speak with plants
At will -- stabilize
3/day -- charm person (DC 19), deep slumber (DC 21)
At will -- stabilize
3/day -- charm person (DC 19), deep slumber (DC 21)
⸻Statistics⸻
Str 4, Dex 12, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 8, Cha 15
Base Atk +3; CMB -1; CMD 10
Feats Ability Focus (chamomile seed), Voice of the Sibyl
Skills Acrobatics +3, Bluff +15, Climb +2, Diplomacy +3, Perception +4, Perform (oratory) +3, Sense Motive +4, Stealth +10
Languages Common, Sylvan; speak with plants
⸻Special Abilities⸻
Chamomile Seed (Ex): A humanoid creature hit by a Chamomile Urchin's seed attack must make a DC 16 Fortitude save or contract the Chamomile Malady. (Creatures may voluntarily fail these saving throws -- see text below.) This counts as a disease for all relevant effects, and progresses along the standard Physical Disease Track3. Bed rest is ineffective, however. The incubation period is one day, and the afflicted humanoid must make a new Fortitude save daily. Two consecutive successes allows the victim to shake off the disease; each failed saving throw moves the character one step further along the track. A victim of the Malady begins sprouting small leaves and flowers from their skin as it progresses, though this causes no apparent pain. Upon reaching the “comatose" stage, the victim will instead sneak off to find a location with rich soil and regular sunshine. They will then “plant" themselves in the ground up to their knees, and the flowers and leaves that sprout from their skin will grow at a rapid pace until they form a chrysalis-like covering. (Damaging the chrysalis damages the victim, and it will continue to grow back until it has entirely depleted the victim's body, killing them.) If the victim fails another Fortitude save, they begin metamorphosis, and are irrecoverable. After 1d4 weeks, the chrysalis opens to reveal a new Chamomile Urchin.
⸻Ecology⸻
Environment temperate forests, hills, and plains
Organization frith (2-24 plus 1 Greater Chamomile Urchin[see below]) or thicket (10-120 plus 2-8 Greater Chamomile Urchins)5.
Treasure no coins, double magic items
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| Chamomile, from the 6th-century Vienna Dioscurides manuscript. |
Description
Chamomile Urchins are small plant-like faeries who tend to hang around small rural communities and lightly-traveled roads. The locals generally consider them to be cute, harmless, and benevolent, something like outdoor brownies. It is common for a thicket of Chamomile Urchins to be known for intervening subtly, yet helpfully, in everyday life -- bringing home lost livestock, setting traps for bandits, tending the natural plants and animals in the area, and maybe even bringing a few helpful herbs to the village healer. Generally, a place that has long been the home of Chamomile Urchins will consider them good luck, or even venerate them as minor nature spirits. This is, of course, exactly what the Chamomile Urchins want.
The actual purpose of all this is to facilitate Chamomile Urchin reproduction. Chamomile Urchins are a lot like more-mundane creatures in that their primary motivation is always to make more Chamomile Urchins -- and this can only be done through infecting people with the Chamomile Malady. A thicket of Chamomile Urchins sufficiently ensconced in a community will sometimes, leveraging their positive reputation in the region and their ability to charm person, suggest to misfits, outcasts, and dreamers that they might want to come live among the Chamomile Urchins, and offer to “bless" them with the immortality and harmony with nature afforded to the faerie folk -- i.e., infect them with the Chamomile Malady. They are careful to always choose people that few will miss, or at least to charm anyone who might otherwise object; another common strategy is to make their offer to the ill, the very old, or the dying, who might see it as the only chance to prolong their lives. This behavior, however, is just to maintain positive population growth until the real targets come along.
Chamomile Urchins really want to “recruit" outsiders, travelers, or people with interesting knowledge or experience; they see this as the best way to increase the knowledge base of their thicket. (If they are deciding between multiple potential “recruits", they will unerringly choose the one with the highest combined mental stats.) If travelers pass through their territory, the Chamomile Urchins will observe them from a distance; if they decide that one or more of them would make good additions to their thicket, they will act. In these cases, they rarely bother with trying to convince their targets to voluntarily join them, but wait until their guard is down, then use their Stealth skills and deep slumber ability to spirit their targets away in the night. A common scenario in this case is for them to creep into the local inn after any travelers have gone to sleep, use deep slumber to ensure they stay asleep, then carry their target(s) away -- this usually requires a group of Chamomile Urchins working in concert, since they are individually far too weak to carry a full-grown humanoid. In the morning, the travelers will find one of their number missing, and a strangely-unhelpful (charmed) innkeeper. Generally, the only sign of the Chamomile Urchins' presence is a lingering herbal scent in the room of the abducted traveler.
Once the abductee has woken up, the Chamomile Urchins might attempt to convince them as usual, with liberal use of charm person, to join their number voluntarily. This may sound tempting, but the secret of the Chamomile Urchins is that the offer for a humanoid to become a Chamomile Urchin themselves is, fundamentally, a lie. Inside the chrysalis formed around a victim of the Chamomile Malady, the victim does not turn into a Chamomile Urchin, but dies, dissolves, and serves as food for the new Chamomile Urchin growing within them. The Chamomile Urchin who comes out of the chrysalis has access to the victim's memories, so that they can pass themselves off as the deceased in a new form, but they have no emotional connection to their victim's life, and are fundamentally not them any more than someone who reads I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is now Maya Angelou. Their personality, beliefs, and motivations are entirely faerie, and they have no interest in the affairs of the person that everyone thinks they used to be. They will convince the victim's friends and family that they are, indeed, the victim, and that they now want very much to stay here and live among the other Chamomile Urchins. (They will also insist on keeping the magic items that the victim had in their possession; a long-lasting thicket of Chamomile Urchins will build up quite a hoard of these, and they are not shy about using them if needed.)
If forced to engage in actual combat, Chamomile Urchins will make full and enthusiastic use of their spell-like abilities and any magic items they have collected over the course of their time in this region. They will also fight to incapacitate rather than kill, and if victorious, will keep their attackers alive, restrained, and imprisoned to the best of their ability (probably under deep slumber most of the time) and infect them with the Chamomile Malady until it takes. They avoid fighting to the death if possible, and will flee if they think the battle is turning against them.
The actual purpose of all this is to facilitate Chamomile Urchin reproduction. Chamomile Urchins are a lot like more-mundane creatures in that their primary motivation is always to make more Chamomile Urchins -- and this can only be done through infecting people with the Chamomile Malady. A thicket of Chamomile Urchins sufficiently ensconced in a community will sometimes, leveraging their positive reputation in the region and their ability to charm person, suggest to misfits, outcasts, and dreamers that they might want to come live among the Chamomile Urchins, and offer to “bless" them with the immortality and harmony with nature afforded to the faerie folk -- i.e., infect them with the Chamomile Malady. They are careful to always choose people that few will miss, or at least to charm anyone who might otherwise object; another common strategy is to make their offer to the ill, the very old, or the dying, who might see it as the only chance to prolong their lives. This behavior, however, is just to maintain positive population growth until the real targets come along.
Chamomile Urchins really want to “recruit" outsiders, travelers, or people with interesting knowledge or experience; they see this as the best way to increase the knowledge base of their thicket. (If they are deciding between multiple potential “recruits", they will unerringly choose the one with the highest combined mental stats.) If travelers pass through their territory, the Chamomile Urchins will observe them from a distance; if they decide that one or more of them would make good additions to their thicket, they will act. In these cases, they rarely bother with trying to convince their targets to voluntarily join them, but wait until their guard is down, then use their Stealth skills and deep slumber ability to spirit their targets away in the night. A common scenario in this case is for them to creep into the local inn after any travelers have gone to sleep, use deep slumber to ensure they stay asleep, then carry their target(s) away -- this usually requires a group of Chamomile Urchins working in concert, since they are individually far too weak to carry a full-grown humanoid. In the morning, the travelers will find one of their number missing, and a strangely-unhelpful (charmed) innkeeper. Generally, the only sign of the Chamomile Urchins' presence is a lingering herbal scent in the room of the abducted traveler.
Once the abductee has woken up, the Chamomile Urchins might attempt to convince them as usual, with liberal use of charm person, to join their number voluntarily. This may sound tempting, but the secret of the Chamomile Urchins is that the offer for a humanoid to become a Chamomile Urchin themselves is, fundamentally, a lie. Inside the chrysalis formed around a victim of the Chamomile Malady, the victim does not turn into a Chamomile Urchin, but dies, dissolves, and serves as food for the new Chamomile Urchin growing within them. The Chamomile Urchin who comes out of the chrysalis has access to the victim's memories, so that they can pass themselves off as the deceased in a new form, but they have no emotional connection to their victim's life, and are fundamentally not them any more than someone who reads I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is now Maya Angelou. Their personality, beliefs, and motivations are entirely faerie, and they have no interest in the affairs of the person that everyone thinks they used to be. They will convince the victim's friends and family that they are, indeed, the victim, and that they now want very much to stay here and live among the other Chamomile Urchins. (They will also insist on keeping the magic items that the victim had in their possession; a long-lasting thicket of Chamomile Urchins will build up quite a hoard of these, and they are not shy about using them if needed.)
If forced to engage in actual combat, Chamomile Urchins will make full and enthusiastic use of their spell-like abilities and any magic items they have collected over the course of their time in this region. They will also fight to incapacitate rather than kill, and if victorious, will keep their attackers alive, restrained, and imprisoned to the best of their ability (probably under deep slumber most of the time) and infect them with the Chamomile Malady until it takes. They avoid fighting to the death if possible, and will flee if they think the battle is turning against them.
Greater Chamomile Urchin
If a victim of the Chamomile Malady is 2nd level or higher, the resulting Chamomile Urchin will have access not only to their memories, but to some of their skills and abilities. The process of creating a Greater Chamomile Urchin is as follows -- the stats of the person who was infected with the Chamomile Malady will be hereby referred to as the subject, the Chamomile Urchin stats at the top of this entry will be referred to as the base, and the stats of the resulting Greater Chamomile Urchin will be the product.- If the subject's Intelligence is higher than that of the base, then the product's Intelligence is the average of the subject's and the base's. (e.g. Bob the Wizard had an 18 Int, and a normal Chamomile Urchin has only a 10 Int, so the Greater Chamomile Urchin that comes out of Bob's chrysalis has a 14 Int.)
- Repeat the above with Wisdom and Charisma.
- In addition to all skill ranks possessed by the base, the product has half the skill ranks of the subject (rounded down), in the same distribution. (e.g. Jane the Thief had 11 ranks in Perception, and a normal Chamomile Urchin has 5, so the Greater Chamomile Urchin has 10.)
- The product has half of the feats that the subject had, rounded down, decided at random6.
- If the subject was an arcane spellcaster, half of their Spells Known (again, rounded down and decided at random) become the product's 1/day spell-like abilities.
- The product knows any languages the subject knew, in addition to Sylvan.
- Adjust saves, skill bonuses, and spell DCs (the Chamomile Urchin's spell-like abilities are Charisma-based) to fit the improved stats.
- Assign a higher CR at your discretion.
Once a thicket has accumulated a large number of Greater Chamomile Urchins, some will leave, along with a handful of regular Chamomile Urchins as support, to settle in a new location and thus spread their influence.
1. Or “camomile" -- both spellings are valid.
2. Some creatures possess what TV Tropes calls “Blue and Orange Morality" -- a moral structure that is based on a completely different axis than the black-and-white (or even shades-of-gray) good-vs.-evil construct around which your more typical inhabitant of a fantasy campaign build their moral codes.
In my campaign, I literally refer to this extra axis on the alignment chart as “Blue and Orange" -- inhabitants of the Realm of Faerie tend to be Blue and inhabitants of the Far Realm tend to be Orange. If you don't like “Blue" as an alignment, feel free to just consider this to be equivalent to “Chaotic Neutral".
3. The Physical Disease Track, laid out here, is Latent → Weakened → Impaired → Disabled → Comatose → Dead. Each failed saving throw moves the character one step further along the track.
5. If you want to decide it randomly, notice that those numerical distributions are exactly identical to 2d12, 10d12, and 2d4, respectively.
6. I would suggest numbering the subject's feats 1-whatever, then rolling dice until you've selected half of them.
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| This is the helpful chart TV Tropes provides. |
3. The Physical Disease Track, laid out here, is Latent → Weakened → Impaired → Disabled → Comatose → Dead. Each failed saving throw moves the character one step further along the track.
5. If you want to decide it randomly, notice that those numerical distributions are exactly identical to 2d12, 10d12, and 2d4, respectively.
6. I would suggest numbering the subject's feats 1-whatever, then rolling dice until you've selected half of them.
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