Rotseed Specter

LEGENDARY ACTIONS

The rotseed specter can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The specter regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

• Detect. The rotseed specter makes a Wisdom (Perception) check.
• Greatbow Attack. The rotseed specter makes an attack with its Rotwood Greatbow.
• Tortured Fortunes. The rotseed specter selects a creature within 30 feet of it and forces the creature to make their next attack roll, saving throw, or ability check with disadvantage.
• Cast Spell (Costs 2 Actions). The rotseed specter casts a spell.
• Toxic Hail (Costs 2 Actions). The rotseed specter shoots a barrage of arrows in a 60-foot cone. Each creature in the area must succeed on a DC 21 Dexterity saving throw or take 21 (2d10 + 10) piercing damage plus 14 (4d6) necrotic damage.

LAIR

When fighting inside its lair, a rotseed specter can invoke the ambient magic to take lair actions. On initiative count 20, the rotseed specter can take one lair action to cause one of the following effects:

• A 50-foot-square area of ground within 120 feet of the rotseed specter becomes slimy; that area is difficult terrain until initiative count 20 on the next round.
• Vines sprout from the ground into a 20-footwide square column, reaching up 30 feet into the air. Any creature in the area must attempt a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw or be restrained by the vines. A creature can escape the vines by making a successful DC 15 Strength saving throw.
• Laughter echoes from the corpses of each creature within the lair. Any living creature within the lair must succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or have disadvantage on all attack rolls and saving throws until initiative count 20 on the next round.

The rotseed specter can’t repeat an effect until they have all been used, and it can’t use the same effect two rounds in a row.

REGIONAL EFFECTS

A region containing a rotseed specter’s lair is warped by the specter’s unnatural presence, which creates one or more of the following effects:

• Creatures within 1 mile of the rotseed specter’s lair feel feverish, sickly, and generally unwell.
• Every few hours the region moves and changes in a horrifying way. Walls of corpses block recently walked paths, trees uproot and shi?? position to make moving forward difficult, and deep bogs appear to exhaust travelers.

If the rotseed specter dies, these effects fade over the course of 2d10 days.

ABOUT

When a powerful Fey creature dies in a state of heartbreak or misery, its spirit can transform into a rotseed specter. This is an Undead with the power to spread rot and pestilence everywhere it goes, creating wretched towers of Undead fused together as monuments to its unnatural power. Rotseeds are a blight on the Fey Realm that turn entire forests into terrifying mazes of crooked trees, poisonous swamps, and diseased wildlife.

This Undead can transform from its ethereal body into a physical form composed of the rot that it spreads from its lair. It uses this tactic to attack and retreat from danger in a constant flux of death and unnatural rebirth.

If the rotseed specter has a physical body, it unleashes a volley of its poisoned thorns before abandoning its body and becoming ethereal. When it takes form, it blinds those nearby with a cloud of spores and attacks again.

The key to killing this creature is waiting for it to take physical form or using fire to bind it to its physical body for a short time. Those who fail to notice the pattern of death and rebirth are doomed to die in its miasma of poison and madness.

When not using its mutable form to disorientate and strike from afar, the rotseed specter has a plethora of dark magic it uses to create Undead thralls, summon insects to bite and sting their prey, and even summon forth the very essence of death to wither their enemies to husks. Their most terrifying magic is their scream, capable of extinguishing the life of entire crowds of heroes in an instant.

The rotseed specter leaves its mark not only on those that encounter it, but also on the world around it.

Vegetation rots in the presence of the specter, turning into a mix of caustic slime and twisted roots.

As time passes, this decay can spread for miles around the specter’s lair.” Also, this text seems to have goften cut off from the end of the second bullet point in Regional effects: “in a horrifying way. Walls of corpses block recently walked paths, trees uproot and shi?? position to make moving forward difficult, and deep bogs appear to exhaust travelers.