Monster: Spring Wight

Spring Wight

Mosses, fungi, and lichens form an anthropomorphic figure with human-like face, distorted with grimace of pain and fear. Pieces of bone shine through the thick growth here and there.

CR 9; XP 6,400
CE Medium Plant
Init +8; Senses low-light vision, tremorsense 15 ft.; Perception +28

Defense
AC 23, touch 15, flat-footed 18 (+4 Dex, +1 dodge, +8 natural)
hp 112 (15d8+45)
Fort +12, Ref +9, Will +9
Defensive Abilities negative energy affinity, plant traits

Offense
Speed 30 ft., burrow 30 ft.
Melee 2 slams +17 (1d4+6) and 4 tendrils +16 (1d4+3)
Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft. (15 ft. with tendrils)
Special Attacks burrowing tendrils, entomb
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 15th; concentration +16)
3/day—commune with nature, plant growth

Statistics
Str 22, Dex 18, Con 16, Int 11, Wis 19, Cha 13
Base Atk +11; CMB +17; CMD 31
Feats Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Improved Initiative, Mobility, Multiattack, Skill Focus (Perception), Stand Still, Weapon Focus (tendril)
Skills Perception +28, Stealth +22 (+30 in dense vegetation); Racial Modifier +8 Stealth in dense vegetation
Languages Understands Common and Sylvan

Ecology
Environment temperate
Organization solitary, pair
Treasure standard

Special Abilities

Burrowing Tendrils (Ex) A spring wight's tendrils can quickly burrow through earth, dirt, mud, and sand. They can strike from different angles ignoring cover and total cover of targets standing on the same patch of ground as the spring wight. When a spring wight makes a full-round attack, the ground within reach of its tendrils become difficult terrain until the beginning of its following turn.

Entomb (Ex) When a spring wight kills a living creature with a tendril attack, it can pull its corpse a foot or two underground in mud, sand, or soil, effectively burying it in a shallow improvised grave. It can also take a standard action to entomb any corpse within its tendrils reach. Corpses of Large or bigger creatures are only partially entombed.

Spring wights sprout from corpses of people murdered in late autumn or early winter, left to rot in the wilds. When the early springs warms the land and thaws the snow and ice that preserved the corpse through the winter, the quickly sprouting vegetation might grow all over the bones and become infused with the restless spirit, developing vengeful sentience and mobility.

Easily mistaken for undeads, with their hatred of living and negative energy coursing through them, spring wights often haunt places where they died, though some come closer to settlements where they lived, sometimes seeking their murderers, sometimes merely lashing at those who were more lucky than them. Occasionally, a spring wight can be placated, especially by sacrifice of his murderer (or convincing the spring wight that the sacrifice was the murderer, they have no special rapport to their killer, and rarely remember much of their mortal existence), leaving for deeper wilds where it grows more and more languid until it takes root and spends the rest of its existence as a death-tainted plant.

A few spring wights took the role of a woodland settlement's guardians and bogeymen, accepting seasonal offerings, bestowing their blessings whimsically, and haunting or even hunting the intruders and occasionally the natives.