Needlefolk
Image by Tony DiTerlizzi, © Wizards of the Coast. Accessed at the Great Library of Greyhawk here
[The needleman is one of those monsters that's never the same twice. The original was a White Dwarf creation, the result of a botched raise dead spell incorporating the pine needles a corpse was laid on and fusing them into the resultant creature. Which makes you wonder why this happens so often that you could get encounter groups of up to 50 of them. It lost this origin in the 1e Fiend Folio, but retained its zombie-like appearance. 2e gave them an attempt at a realistic ecology, although it made them explicitly deciduous; they change color and go dormant in the winter, because the author I think didn't make the connection between needles and pine trees. 3e kept that flavor, but Tony DiTerlizzi provided the best illustration yet; its stick insect-like appearance foreshadows the look of the sprites in the Spiderwick books. And in 5e, they got updated as the "needle blight", becoming evil for the first time but losing their enmity with elves.
This version is picking and choosing bits I like best from all of the previous versions, but putting a new spin on why they don't really have a society, just hanging out in the forest despite being intelligent. Making them workers for a single tree also turns them into something of a spin on the orcwort, a monster that appears a couple pages later in the 3.0 Monster Manual 2. That's a giant carnivorous tree that grows vegetable orcs, "wortlings", to gather food for it. The orcwort doesn't really work well, because the orcwort is a CR 20 and its wortlings are CR 3, and D&D 3.x is the worst edition to do a "powerful boss with lots of weak minions" battle in. I avoid that problem by keeping the needlefolk's tree out of combat. It's just a tree.
If you don't mind me needling you a bit, check out the Creature Codex Patreon.]
Needlefolk CR 2 N Plant This bipedal creature resembles a humanoid insect made of plant material. Its head is small, featuring mandibles and eyestalks, and its long neck and shoulders are covered in sharp pine needles. Its limbs are spindly, ending in thorny claws.
Needlefolk are sapient carnivorous plants native to coniferous forests. They can perform photosynthesis, but cannot root in soil, and so occasionally feed on small animals to gain nitrogen and other minerals. They hunt birds, squirrels and other game by firing clusters of needles from their shoulders, which also serve to protect them from large herbivores that don’t mind their meals moving around. Needlefolk quite literally grow on trees; some magical confiers can grow needlefolk instead of the usual cones under periods of stress. The needlefolk protect the tree from loggers, beavers and other existential threats, tend to it to remove diseased wood or parasitic fungi, and carry its reproductive cones and plant them in environments where they’re likely to grow well. They do not especially care if other trees in the area are disturbed. If two needlefolk trees grow close to each other, their needlefolk will go to war, the winners eventually killing the losing tree to remove the competition.
Needlefolk are typically peaceful towards humanoids who leave their trees alone, but become violently agitated in the presence of elves. Needlefolk can sense the presence of elves at a remarkable distance, and when they do, recruit their fellows into armies to wage war. The incensed needlefolk will not hesitate to attack the companions of elves, but once all elves in the party are slain, retreat. The specificity of this ire raises questions as to its cause. The leading hypothesis is that some fey power granted trees the ability to grow needlefolk as a way to create a weapon against elves, but who holds this grudge and why is still a mystery.
