All Sorts Of Critters

(Art source: Devil Survivors, pulled off the wiki)

(Author's note: This one's an oddity I feel like I should comment on. I only ever encountered this guy in the Devil Survivors' series, itself a branch of the Shin Megami Tensei series. While most of the devils/demons/spirits/whathaveyou in SMT are pulled from real mythologies from all over the world, this specific guy is a wholesale reference to a manga I've never read, but incarnated as a menace instead of as a prankster. I've made him close to his Devil Survivors self, since that's where I first encountered him)

(I played Devil Survivors 2: Record Breaker over 15 years ago, and it became one of my favorite games ever made. And THIS guy, for whatever reason, stuck with me harder than any other spirit in the game despite his limited usefulness, to the point that the moment I got reminded of him, I got the urge to stat him out. The name isn't inspired, but his name in-game is just "Ghost Q" so I wanted to add a little something to it; I'm taking suggestions, so long as they begin with Q)

In times of great economic prosperity, when the pantries of families burst with excess far beyond their needs, they must take care not to brag of their abundance lest they invite a visit from a Qan. Believed to be everything from the souls of those who perished from famine, to fragments of spite from lords jealous of their subjects' plenty, to bizarre incarnations of economic balance, the Qan are small but powerful spirits with an even more powerful appetite and a strange fixation and interpretation of "fair shares."

In idle times, the Qan wander roads aimlessly but are rarely actually encountered by travelers due to their ability to turn invisible, giving the illusion that the unusual undead randomly pop into existence and accost anyone they've "judged" as living beyond their means. Instinctually guided towards settlements experiencing a prosperous boom, Qan arrive with little pomp and circumstance, marching past any stunned onlookers while making no attempts to hide their garish and incongruous appearance, nor their gluttonous motivations. Anyone that gets between them and their targets is shoved aside, or battered if they're particularly stubborn, as a Qan's minuscule frame hides enough strength to send a soldier flying out of his shoes with a single punch.

Upon reaching their destination, the Qan attempts to politely enter the home via invitation. If/when denied, they try to trick their way inside, or loudly pester and needle the families until they're verbally permitted to enter... But if not invited in by dinner time, the Qan will lose patience and use its strength to terrifying effect, knocking out a window to crawl through or bashing a door off its hinges, leading many to deny it only until they can set the table for it and minimize its destructive presence. Brushing past terrified (or utterly exasperated) families, the Qan messily and noisily consume its "share" of the household's food, often making terrible puns related to anything it sees as it does, just to add further absurdity to the situation. A Qan can and will eat a whole day's worth of meals in a single sitting, and if the household has yet more after this, the spirit promises to return the next day to claim its "share" then, too, until it's finally satisfied that the house has become "properly balanced," typically meaning they've enough food to feed themselves for one to two weeks and no more.

... At which point the spirit moves on to the next house to do the same thing over and over, until the whole settlement meets some arbitrary economic threshold or, more frequently, the Qan is chased off, banished, or slain by a third party... or a common pet. For unknown reasons, Qan are mortally terrified of dogs, fleeing at top speed from as little as the sight of untrained puppies and becoming frightened by the sound of barking alone. Some scholars posit that Qan may be the spirits of ravenous goblins, which goes a long way to explaining their foul behavior, atrocious fashion sense, and terrible table manners.

All Qan stand at approximately 3 feet tall, often wearing hats as tall as they are, and weigh almost nothing despite their gluttony. Their unpleasantly humid breath smells strongly of cooked rice, a food they love above all else; meals primarily made up of rice can be used to bribe them to behave as a proper guest, though never to actually leave.

CR 8

Chaotic Neutral Small Fey

Bestiary 5, pg. 228

These bizarre creatures haunt the edges of civilization for dupes and wanderers to stock up on precisely what you'd expect, snatching away at the shadows of people whose lives are filled with regret. Shadow Collectors have numerous reasons for doing what they do, ranging from survival to fashion, using every part of the shadows they steal whenever they manage it. They "sift" memories and regret from shadows to consume, can wear someone else's far fancier shadow(s) in place of their own due to the fact they have No Shadow themselves. And if they don't like how it looks "raw," they can process a shadow (or multiple shadows) into a fabric they can weave into a wide variety of useful magical items aligned with darkness, shadows, and illusion.

I said they "steal" shadows, but Shadow Collectors can run the full gamut from con-artists tricking mortals into selling them off, to sneaky thieves, to blatant muggers, and all of them are dangerous to a party that doesn't know what they're dealing with and doesn't realize just how badly they need their shadow. If a Shadow Collector manages to snatch your shadow, not only do you obviously not have a shadow anymore, but this supernatural robbery also somehow steals your reflection, potentially tricking onlookers into believing that you're some manner of undead or fiend... if the negative levels didn't kill you first. Yes, when a Collector yanks it away, a chunk of your memories go with it, inflicting 2 negative levels onto you that cannot be removed, period, until you get your shadow back. Now, getting it back is a simple affair! A Shadow Collector can release any or all of its stolen shadows as a simple standard action, so bargaining/tricking/negotiating/threatening can work... and if it can't, a creature can also regain their shadow by getting blessed with Break Enchantment or, more likely, touching the Collector while it's either helpless or dead.

So that's how to get it back once it's gone, but how does it snatch them in the first place? Well, their Steal Shadow automatically collects the shadows of any creature they destroy, incapacitate, or kill with their two claw attacks, though the 1d6+2 damage isn't likely to kill much of anything. The +3d6 Sneak Attack on both of them is a different story, able to burst down most common citizens they need to pad their pockets and severely injure folk with much fancier shadows outright. They also have the unique Tear Shadow ability, giving their claws Ghost Touch while dealing an automatic 1d6 Charisma damage to incorporeal creatures. Tear Shadow destroys any incorporeal creature that hits 0 Charisma, letting them effortlessly hunt down actual Shadows and shove them in their packs... and, amusingly, means a Collector can set up a shadow-harvesting operation near the sites of respawning Undead like Poltergeists and Ghosts.

They can also just use the Steal Combat Maneuver to snatch the shadow of an unsuspecting rube, yanking it out from under them like a carpet they were standing on. They've got a +14 to steal checks, giving them a decent chance against similarly-leveled creatures, though a DM could also rule they could use their more unfair +22 to Sleight of Hand to yank it away too. It's not exactly a subtle theft in either way, what with the sudden 2 negative levels, but a victim suddenly reeling from the theft might not notice the perpetrator slinking away with a +26 to Stealth.

Stealing a shadow has one final, powerful benefit for the cruel Collector: it grants them Shadow Points (SP). Each stolen shadow grants them 2 SP, which never expire until they do, and each point allows them to use one of their powerful spell-likes. They have unlimited access to powerful utility spells like Disguise Self, Major Image, Shadow Step, and the Shadow Evocation version of the obnoxious Leashed Shackles, but each use of their power requires the expenditure of a single SP, limiting just how often they can throw out powerful illusions, disappear into crowds, or flat out disappear.

They also have the wide-open toolbox that is Shadow Conjuration at 3/day, able to call in phantasmal assistance or--as the book suggests--plunge foes too powerful for them to deal with into illusory pits they need to waste enormous amounts of time clambering out of. As you can imagine, phantom assists are especially powerful for a creature with Sneak Attack, as they can provide flanking even against creatures who know they're just illusions. In times when an even bigger burst of damage is needed, they can use a full powered Shadow Evocation 1/day to throw out illusory Walls of Ice, blow up the battlefield with a phantom Fireball, or give everyone at the table a rules headache when considering how Resilient Sphere functions when channeled through Shadow Evo. Importantly, however, is that they can also use it to cast Darkness, a spell they can see through because they know it's an illusion, but everyone else has to save against or they're vulnerable to being hit with Sneak Attack... and of course, creating a sudden area of darkness means the Collector can suddenly disappear from the battle entirely, either using its at-will Shadow Step or its 1/day Shadow Walk to just get out of town.

Like many shifty and irritating Fey, Shadow Collectors are more likely to flee than fight against multiple creatures, leaving trails of victims in their wake if the party can't stop them from vanishing into the darkness. Their DR 10/Cold iron can protect them from most forms of retribution, with their SR 19 making up for their lack of any form of resistance or immunity, so their resilience lets them get away with some pretty audacious crimes, such as running up and ripping away someone's shadow in broad daylight. With DR to tank the retributive strikes and Shadow Step fueled up and ready to get them out of sight, the simple Daylight spell--or even just Dancing Lights--has a new chance to shine, keeping these lethal pests from vanishing until the party can gang up and beat the shade out of them.

CR 14

Neutral Gargantuan Magical Beast

Bestiary 6, pg. 32

These wonderfully weird creatures have the honor of following directly in the footsteps of the Archdevils in Bestiary 6 thanks to the alphabetic placement, so as you're scrolling past the most imposing series of demigods you've ever seen BAM! GIANT WORM! Or, rather, giant cucumber. Yes, the beast before you is a Gargantuan sea cucumber, literal bottom-feeding scavengers whose primary concerns in their day-to-day life are eating waste and learning to love the little fish that live in their orifices. Unlike the cucumbers we have on Earth, the Atuikakura--wait, what do you mean "we have that on Earth?" What do you mean "that's not its name?" I'm going to stick with the Paizo name for now, if for no other reason than convenience.

Anyway, like the specific mythological sea cucumbers we have on Earth, the Atuikakura spend most of their lives at the bottom of the ocean, slurping up detritus, corpses, and anything too slow to escape from their maws. However, they're noted to enjoy swimming up and twining themselves around sturdy pieces of driftwood to bask just below the waterline, feeding on creatures closer to the surface, but this is where a lot of problems occur. While the Atuikakura (I'm going to shorten it from now on to Auti) are only occasionally roused into violent action when food becomes scarce and they need to make their own detritus, their unusual habits can be easily perceived as violence by people who don't live around them. After all, wooden ships look an awful lot like an attractive piece of driftwood to these colossal cucumbers, leading to poor sailors believing they're under attack by a horrible monster when it wraps entirely around their boat, which leads to further tragedy if they attack.

Despite their size and their enormous power when compared to the average Humanoid, they're also easily startled by... just about anything, leading to them performing the same destructive, ship-smashing panic attacks that their Earth counterparts are known for. They have the Capsize ability to twist entire small vessels completely over, dumping its contents into the sea and leaving the crews helpless to its retribution. If they're lucky, it will simply leave them stranded in the water as it flees below, but most aren't, especially if they managed to actually strike it and make it angry. While commoners aren't going to hit its 29 AC, a player character might, at which point they find themselves switching the beast from flight to fight.

Atui ARE opportunistic carnivores, and free-floating fools in the water are a perfect opportunity to have something more substantial than fish corpses. They have an enormous threat radius befitting of their size category, a 20ft space and a 20ft reach with all their attacks, and take advantage of it with three attacks: slamming them with their enormous body (2d8+13), biting down (3d6+13), and lashing out with all their oral tentacles at once (2d6+6), and all three attacks carry the cucumber's psychotropic, organ-destroying poison. This poison prompts a DC 25 Fortitude save once a round for up to 6 rounds (2 consecutive saves ends), with each failure inflicting 1d6 Con damage and... Huh. Apparently victims of the poison are "assaulted by visions of the past" that are so distracting that it leaves them blinded for a round, which is a sentence I don't think I've ever seen on a poison before. By the way, if you're wondering how precisely its slam injects the poison, their Spiny Slam puts those bristles in its art to good use, letting its slam deal bludgeoning and piercing damage at the same time.

Con damaging poison is always bad news due to the feedback loop it can cause, each failure lowering the victim's chance to succeed the next one, and it's especially bad when all of the Atui's attacks inflict it, lengthening the duration AND raising the save. If the only thing it could do was this it would be bad enough, but the Atui has plenty of incredibly nasty tricks it can pull on an unprepared party, especially if they weren't ready for underwater combat. The most annoying ability it has is Self-Evisceration, an ability famous to all sea cucumbers but exaggerated to an almost comical degree for the Atui. ANY time one takes damage, it sprays a glob of sticky extraneous organs in a 10ft cone (20ft if underwater), potentially entangling anyone who fails a DC 25 Reflex save and exposing them to its poison even if they succeed the save! There's no limit to the number of times an Atui can jettison its ballasts, though it can only do so once each round, giving the illusion that they're all just jam-packed with useless organs they're waiting for an excuse to fire. Maybe they ARE, given that they've got a generous Fast Healing 20 restoring their HP every single round.

It's probably predictable at this point given that they're tubes with a mouth, but anyone who ends up grappled by the enormous echinoderms risks getting swallowed whole, taking a monstrous 6d6+19 bludgeoning damage every round from their crushing innards, and given that they're Gargantuan, they can happily gulp down entire ship crews or adventuring parties at a time. There IS some mercy in that the Grab isn't on its mouth, but its tentacles, so it must waste some time transferring victims from one to the other to give them time to escape or be rescued, but that's a small mercy due to their tenacious Tentacle Grip.

This ability is at the very end of their statblock and is only a few sentences long compared to their utility-based Collapse (we'll get to it), their obnoxious Self-Evisceration, and their scary poison, but it's arguably one of their most potent powers. Tentacle Grip prevents them from gaining the grappled condition when snaring a Large or smaller creature with their tentacles and allows them to make grapple checks with their tentacles as a free action (though importantly they can't then follow it up with a second check to pin the victim! They have to wait to next round), freeing up the rest of their turn to Full-Attack someone else in their threat radius, move the grappled creature to their mouth... or just move. Tentacle Grip also removes the penalty for moving, allowing the Atui to grab someone and then move its full speed to pull them away from help. It's not an impressive ability, mind, given that the Atui has a glacial land speed of 10ft.

And a swim speed of 120ft. Yes, despite being sedentary silt-wigglers for most of their lives, Atui are terrifyingly fast when motivated to move, and their Tentacle Grip goes from an annoyance to a morbid timer on the battle. Can you burst down the cucumber before it decides to flee with your ally in tow, dragging them 120ft straight down? You might be able to! They have no DR, only 29 AC, NO resistances or immunities, and no SR, with only their +17/+18/+12 saves to protect them from anything more complicated than weapon attacks. But it needs only a single round of grappling someone to pull them into the briny depths, isolating them from the rest of the party and leaving them to be swallowed whole... at which point the Atui can use Collapse to turn itself into a gelatinous mass with both Amorphous and Compression, cramming itself in a tiny fissure with its miserable meal and using its +27 to Stealth (normally +15, but Collapse removes its -12 size penalty) to hide from anyone hoping to rescue them.

Much like the Titanoboa I linked earlier, a sudden Atui attack can turn from a fight into a tense rescue mission as the giant scavenger wrecks the boat entirely by accident out of panicked reflex, then grabs an important NPC or party member and drags them screaming into the depths to feed. At the very least, Atui can be reasoned with. Yes, they're just barely intelligent enough to be considered sapient, but they speak and understand Aquan, so a party not wanting to comb the ocean floor for their ally might be able to talk the beast out of its attack before it destroys their vessel or steals away anyone irreplaceable.

Oh yeah, they also have Combat Reflexes, so they can grapple people entirely off turn and then use their full-round action to flee/eat them if you're not careful!

------

The critter in question

It makes me happy to know they're getting used! Looking over their sheet again, though, has made me nerf them: their Lashing Limbs now only allows them an extra tentacle attack if they didn't full attack that round.

As for the actual question here, I recommend actually watching the animated Parasyte: The Maxim anime or reading through the manga to get an idea of exactly what a Legion is capable of. They're way above a normal member of their kind--imagine if the T-1000 was also as fast as a speeding car.

CR 24

Chaotic Evil Gargantuan Aberration

Adventure Path: Strange Aeons: Black Stars Beckon, pg. 71-72

It's been a little bit since our last Milestone Monster, so I wanted to break out something special for this one: a monster few people will have seen if they don't actually own the book it comes from! The Watcher in the Bay is one of many "post-game boss fights" that occasionally show up at the end of Adventure Paths in the "Continuing the Campaign" section, often with lore blurbs and outlines for adventures that could lead up to them. While most post-game bosses are powered up monsters with class levels or humanoids with unique abilities in addition to their class levels, you do rarely get fully unique entities, and the Watcher is one of them!

However, because she's not in the bestiary section and isn't an NPC, she was never recorded in the Archives of Nethys or the d20PFSRD. Near as I can tell, her stats simply do not exist online aside from her CR listed in her wiki article! If this is your first time ever hearing that she actually HAS stats and exists outside of a spooky setpiece in Carrion Crown and any other AP or module that takes place in Avalon Bay, then congratulations! Now you have something to sic on your players if they neglect to throw a sacrificial goat overboard when traveling Lake Encarthan. And it had better be a goat, because this lovely lady here? She's no ordinary lake monster. No, this CR 24 beast is a tentacle of Shub-Nishurath, the Black Goat herself!

Labeled as an "aspect of the Black Goat," the Watcher in the Bay is a Great Old One fully original to Pathfinder, though she's the weakest of the currently statted roster by a huge margin, being 2 full CR under the other two GOO's tied for last place (both of them Paizo originals too... hm...), and she's also got the weakest Unspeakable Presence of any of them, causing a simple 1 round stagger in anyone who fails the DC 33 Will save... and granting 24 hours of immunity in anyone who succeeds the save twice in a row, something no other GOO does! The poor thing doesn't even get a unique affliction for using her Nightmare spell-like ability OR any kind of Immortality! I suppose that's what happens when you're basically a god's pinky that got stuck in in a hole in the bottom of a lake. It's not even the Black Goat's normal territory, which has severely cut down on the shenanigans she can do in a normal campaign, which is probably why she's more or less a setpiece in every story she crops up in.

That being said, she's still a terrific powerhouse, more than a match for creatures she encounters in Avalon Bay even as the Whispering Tyrant awakens. She plays the villain role well thanks to her ability to repurpose creatures she devours into obedient minions, directly corrupting anyone sacrificed to her by her servants to swiftly build up a proper cult to the Mother of a Thousand Young, one that has the direct goal to free the Watcher from her watery environs and turn her into a horror more suited for the primeval forests the Elder God prefers. One could even view the Watcher as a larval stage of a greater entity, though the threat of her turning into a full manifestation of the Black Goat is motivation enough for a party to stop her.

And what happens if they try? Let's find out...

-------

I thought this sounded familiar for a reason I couldn't put my finger on, and scoured my blog because I could have sworn I answered this before! Then I found this,

Sitting in my inbox from... a year and a half ago. I had a response for it and just plain completely forgot to post it, then went on with my day thinking I did. I'm so sorry!

CR 2

Chaotic Good Medium Ooze

Planar Adventures, pg. 244

These mounds of gorgeous glittering goo are natives of Elysium, where they presumably congeal from sheer heroic resolve or from the blood spilled by powerful azata. Far from your usual mindless eating machines typically found with the Ooze typing, Sapphire Oozes are intensely curious, unrelentingly brave, innocently cheerful, and possess an unquenchable thirst for adventure that endears them to most of the plane's residents. While there's no shortage of exciting adventures to be had in the untamed wilds of Elysium, there IS a shortage of genuine, helpful good to do, and these Oozes will sometimes venture into the Material Plane to pursue actual villains to fight and lives to save.

Granted, they're not going to be doing much fighting on their own. They dream big, but struggle to put their money where their amorphous mouth is with their sole means of offense being a pair of weak slams for 1d4+2 damage each, which is enough to wallop only the lowliest of lowlifes. They DO have a decent number of defenses, mostly from their Ooze typing which renders them impervious to sneak attacks, flanking, sleep, stunning, poison, paralysis, and being polymorphed, and their blindness renders them immune to most visual tricks--sorry, wait, they have All-Around Vision? AND blindsight? Why do they have AAV if they're already an Ooze? Does this mean they can see? Hm. Something to adjust as needed, probably.

Besides this, they've got DR 5/Bludgeoning to deflect incoming slashes and stabs and are immune to Acid... and infinitely more importantly, they're immune to all mind-affecting effects despite being an intelligent Ooze. Yes, when I said "money where their mouth is" I wasn't kidding; they not only talk a big game, they talk in general, being quite chatty and friendly AND fluent in both Common and Celestial! Something they use to approach adventurers from fresh-faced to experienced and offer their services, services you may have guessed by the image above.

Indeed, while they're not so good at attacking, a Sapphire Ooze is phenomenal at defending. They can become an Amorphous Aegis at will, glomming onto any Medium or Small creature to become the equivalent of a mithral breastplate, which means the wearer gets armor with the following stats: +6 AC, +5 max Dex, 15% arcane spell failure, Armor Check Penalty -1, no speed penalty. That's some pretty beefy protection from a little ball of goo! But the utility goes beyond this, because remember the Ooze has 30ft of blindsight. Imagine if your armor could tap you on the shoulder whenever an invisible foe was nearby, tell you about illusions, or whisper guidance through mist and/or darkness! The book does say the Ooze can't take any actions while shifted into armor, so I suppose it really just comes down to whether or not the DM qualifies "talking" as an action, or whether or not free actions in general count towards that restriction. I do want to point out that blindsight requires no action to use and is just passively on all the time, and the rules state "the creature usually does not need to succeed at Perception checks to notice creatures within range of its blindsight ability," so a DM might want to keep this in mind if they want to use the Ooze for its intended purpose!

Also, at the very least, this is medium armor that requires only a full-round action to get into or out of, which is more of a boon than you'd think if you're deep in enemy territory and can be ambushed at any moment. There is one weakness to this symbiosis, though: If the wearer takes more than 6 damage from any one attack, the Sapphire Ooze automatically takes 1d6 damage which ignores its DR. This might not sound like a lot, but the goo's only got 22 HP, and enemies start hitting for 6+ damage pretty damn early in Pathfinder, so you'd best hope the AC you're getting from it keeps that damage to a minimum, because once the protective putty hits 0 HP it falls off immediately and leaves you naked! If you thought having to stop and mend your armor was bad before, now it's taking some precious healing resources instead of a cantrip!

Sapphire Oozes make for fun potential encounters for a normal party, granting someone some higher protection than they may be used to at early levels, or as a stopgap measure if the main tank's armor is being repaired but you really can't wait to march out against Vilejerk the Foul, the same guy this ooze just happens to be opposing! It's even got a second ability, Heroic Infusion, for boss fights with especially frightening foes, granting its wearer +4 to saves against fear effects for 1 round as a swift action, either letting them shake off an ongoing effect or dodge it entirely if the Ooze saw it coming. Unfortunately, for all its power at lower levels and the charm of being able to wear a friendly monster, without some serious HP buffs or the ability to increase the AC it conveys, Sapphire Oozes simply don't have the staying power to keep up with a party advancing past level 6 or 7, when they can start affording actual mithral armor WITH their own enchantments.

It does make for a cute and funny story, though. The party Fighter passing their prized armor to a new recruit, and the recruit being overjoyed at the prospect right up to the point the armor liquefies itself and leaps over onto them like a symbiote. If a DM wanted to keep the Oozes useful at high levels, the Symbiotes may just be the right kind of inspiration...

The actual Void has crystals of immense entropic power that the Sceaduinar and their ilk make their homes on, as well as bits of matter ranging from the size of cities to the size of planets that have broken away from the outer shell and drifted inwards to be slowly consumed over the years unless something stops the decay.

CR 7

Neutral Large Plant

Kingmaker Bestiary, pg. 24 (image from 2e Monster Core 2, pg. 139)

These massive, bloodthirsty bushes are one of a handful of significant monsters backported from 2e to 1e via the updated Kingmaker Bestiary like the Gogiteth I've previously talked about, and unfortunately that means its stats do not exist on the Archives of Nethys or the d20PFSRD despite being around since 2022. And it's a shame, too, because much like @thecreaturecodex says in her own take on the 1e of the Drainberry Bush, these profiteering Plants are one of the most delightful concepts Paizo has created. Side note: the Codex's entry for this critter is almost identical to the official one except for a few very important differences, so it's really up to you which one you prefer to use!

Getting into it, though, Drainberry Bushes are a unique type of encounter with a potentially helpful monster. These patches of bargainer brush are frequently laden with all manner of treasure and valuable art objects that they willingly trade away for anything that catches their fancy, though they have little grasp of actual market value (due to possessing a -1 in Appraise). They'll gladly trade a powerful magic item for an especially impressive song being performed in front of them, or a priceless heirloom in exchange for a statue of one of the Eldest Fey, all depending on their own personal tastes. They have little actual use for any of their gathered treasure except as bargaining pieces to get more, so a DM could very well have one act as a pseudo-merchant with an eclectic collection of market items to sell and trade in areas no sane merchant would travel to for prices no being would ever accept... or a valuable piñata for the party to whack apart, but we'll get to why that's a bad idea in a moment.

Adorably, the Bushes are capable of communicating via telepathy, but do so in short, terse phrases like "deal good," "deal no good," "want that," and even "thank you, customer," letting them set up trades without people needing resort to elaborate pantomime or blowing a spell slot on Speak With Plants. The main trade deal Drainberry Bushes offer in order to amass their wealth in the first place lays in their namesake berries; the Bushes can use their Blood Drain ability on any creature they grapple, hollow thorns burrowing into the body and siphoning 1d2 Con a round, and every single time the Bush uses Blood Drain, it magically grows a cluster of Blood Berries somewhere on its body. These berries glow with a soft light that signals that they contain pure life essence, and any creature that consumes a cluster of the berries regains 2d8+10 HP instantly, making them as potent as a Cure Moderate Wounds potion. These potent and delicious restoratives are unfortunately unstable, turning to rotting mush after only a single day, so Drainberry Bushes have to constantly be on the move in their search for customers to sell them to... and for unwitting prey to create more.

Given that they can turn any creature with blood into a whole bushel of berries, most Drainberry Bushes survive/stock up off regular wildlife, snaring hapless woodland animals with their prodigious reach... if they don't use their Wild Empathy (+11) to simply ask for donations. Yes, they'll even barter with wildlife if they feel it will get them a better deal with less fuss, but most critters have nothing of worth for the brush, so they end up beaten and drained. Each Bush can make two vine attacks a round for 2d6+6 damage each, attempting to automatically Grab (+13 CMB) any victim struck, and they've got a 10ft space and 20ft reach to make their Combat Reflexes feat an absolute terror. While their vines are their only means of offense, it's all they need, because they're tenacious enough to outlast just about anything but an entire group of foes.

They've got a decent 20 AC and all the immunities that come with being a Plant, plus a unique immunity to negative energy effects due to the overwhelming life within their leaves. However, their 85 HP is more of a suggestion than an absolute value, because they can use Consume Berries to nibble on their own supply every single round as a swift action! As long as they continue to grapple and drain people for even 1 Con, they essentially regenerate 2d8+10 HP every single round until people stop hitting it, one way or another. The most surefire way to end a Drainberry Bush's hostilities is with sure fire, as they have a Vulnerability to Fire that means even the lowly Scorching Hands is a serious threat to them.

If one wants to get the better of a Bush, they can also just reach over and steal a berry cluster for their own use. Any creature adjacent to the Bush's 10ft space can reach over to pluck one, which draws an AoO, but they may also attempt a DC 20 Sleight of Hand check which, if successful, swipes the berries and avoids the retaliatory AoO altogether. The problem then becomes swiping them without ending up contributing to them, since being slapped and grabbed just means it'll grow another one next round, and the DM is encouraged to have the Bushes already laden with berries (1d6+3 clusters!) as both products to sell and life insurance for itself.

Given their wide threat range, grapple shenanigans, and Blood Drain leading directly into their own healing, Drainberry Bushes can make surprisingly deadly early-game encounters despite being so goofy. Of course, if they appear too late in a campaign, there's little to stop players from just killing it and taking all its stuff plus the temporary healing items; unlike the Mercane, Drainberry Bushes aren't known to surround themselves with powerful bodyguards, though this isn't to say they don't get bodyguards by accident. Being able to turn even a common deer into 10~12 Potions of Cure Moderate Wounds is a valuable enough talent that the Bush itself may not be the main threat a party needs to worry about!

CR 3

Neutral Medium Plant

Bestiary 3, pg. 52

These disturbingly intelligent fungi hail from another planet entirely, but an endless curiosity about other creatures sees them traveling from world to world to perform experiments ranging from ridiculous, to nonsensical, to cruel as they attempt to understand the minds of other beings. Their telepathic deluge of questions is unsettling enough when one finally sees their source (or if one sees the source; +7 to Stealth!), but a Fungus that's especially inquisitive or running more invasive experiments can be an eerie threat to the party's sanity, if not their bodies.

An outright fight to the death with a Cerebric Fungus is rare, given that most of them are hunting knowledge rather than flesh (though they are carnivores with no qualms about eating sapients), but they have the tools they need to make themselves an actual threat against parties who haven't been valuing their Will saves. For one, just seeing the Fungus imposes a -2 penalty to attack rolls if you fail a DC 14 Will save, as they project an Unsettling Appearance illusion as a self-defense measure whenever they're in combat. If you're within 60ft of a Fungus and can see it, it's passively reading your mind for bits and bobs it can use for its own theories and projecting tiny illusions of its process, and seeing your own memories dancing around the tentacles of a mouthy mold is enough to make anyone hesitate, even just subconsciously. Notably, there is no 24-hour immunity clause here, so the save must be made EVERY round to avoid the penalty.

Speaking of its tentacles, the Fungi possess some shocking reach for a Medium creature, their two tendril attacks capable of reaching 15ft outwards to deliver a hard slap (1d4+1) to anyone in this zone. Not only do they have prodigious reach, and unlike most plants with lengthy vines, they have a full 30ft movespeed as well! This makes them deceptively dangerous enemies for any party member whose shenanigans can be interrupted by an Attack of Opportunity, but it also means their Touch of Madness ability and 3/day Touch of Idiocy spell-like are more useful than they appear to be at first glance due to the distance it can deliver them from. Touch of Idiocy is dangerous for every member of the party at this level, lowering the victim's ability to resist the rest of the Fungi's mind-bending abilities, and any caster just skirting by with a 14 in their relevant ability score (like a 3/4ths caster or a half-caster) may lose access to their spells entirely, leaving them open to being slapped by the tentacles and pulled towards that threatening mouth.

Yes, every tentacle attack also comes with a free 5ft Pull to reduce the effectiveness of the 5ft Step and keep people in its thrashing range. Anyone that's adjacent to the Fungus can also be bitten for 1d6+2 damage, but unless it's hungry and/or fighting to kill, it's likely not going to be looking to pull people into bite radius, just to keep them in its reach so it can deliver the aforementioned Touch of Madness. ToM is a touch attack the Fungus can deliver at will, prompting a DC 14 Will save or the victim becomes dazed for 4 rounds (+1 round per HD of the Fungus), rendering the victim harmless and allowing the Fungus to probe its mind deeper with its constant Detect Thoughts or telepathic contact. A dazed victim is also, obviously, no longer a threat to the Fungus so long as nothing snaps them out of their temporary coma, allowing the Fungus to rifle through their belongings or attack and slay other combatants at its leisure. Because Touch of Madness ALSO has no 24-hour immunity, it can also renew the daze with constant pokes and prods, keeping a victim insensate until the alien plant is satisfied with what it has learned from them.

Cerebric Fungi also have one more trick to make fighting them frustrating: their 1/day Star Shriek. This full-round action unleashes a wave of psychic disruption that causes 1d4 rounds of nausea in everyone within 30ft who fails a DC 15 Will save. There is also its niche Otherworldly Mind, which causes 1d6 rounds of confusion in anyone that attempts to mentally contact it or read its mind, but this is unlikely come into play. With so many methods to stop people from fighting against it, the Cerebric Fungus can be a frustrating beast to fight despite possessing only 15 AC and no real defenses aside from the Plant trait's immunities (and a meager 5 Cold Resistance). When everyone in the party is nauseated or dazed, the Fungus' Fast Healing 2 can restore an irritating amount of HP and draw out a battle longer than it has any right to.

These frustrating fungi have several ways to displace or disable party members, but they're unlikely to actually be dangerous on their own because they're motivated more by curiosity than malice. Depending on what KIND of experiments they're running--or if they're just hungry--they CAN potentially be lethal encounters or alien mastermind boss fights, but in my opinion they work best as disturbing roadblock encounters or (at higher levels) supplemental enemies in a larger fight where their dazing touch can go from an annoyance to a lethal danger, the whole fight potentially even orchestrated by the Fungi because they want two groups to battle it out for their own strange reasons. Funny enough they can also stop a fight if they want to (if only to give a DM a way out of a potential TPK), as they have Calm Emotions at 3/day to ease hostilities altogether.

------

Well, I've went and looked through every book I could think to look through--all the ones listed as sources on the wiki article for both Dason and Serving Your Hunger, plus all the updated lore in 2e's Gods and Magic and Divine Mysteries--and even went and grabbed No Plunder, No Pay to see if it could tell me anything... and no. Nope, not a thing. Much to my disappointment, even the Defiled Disks of Urgathoa were almost entirely undescribed in the module aside from the fact they Desecrate any area they're kept in and they have some vague power to grant one Urgathoa's favor under specific conditions.

Dason seemingly exists only to grant a name to the author of Serving Your Hunger, and there's basically no details about the man available. The only thing we can do is extrapolate that he was extremely selfish, saw life only as something he could consume, was an experienced chef and cannibal, and deeply studied every Undead being that it's possible to turn one's self into. One pictures a studious man nonetheless willing to hunt down his own food like Hannibal Lecter in full-plate, and perhaps with just as much class and penchant for psychological manipulation; Serving Your Hunger is noted to contain all manner of riddles and critical thinkpieces meant to make the reader question their own held beliefs and wear away at their internal sense of what is truly taboo and what is just a meaningless barrier between themselves and a joy they've been denying.

Dason clearly wasn't a dumb brute who dumped Intelligence like many Paladins/Antipaladins. He knows to present just enough tempting tidbits to draw curiosity, but prompts others to take the final steps themselves. Serving Your Hunger is meant to give people recipes to try and methods of immortality to seek, but leaves it up to the reader to actually do the work to find out if their happiness really does lay in a nice, slow-roasted elf heart.