The Beast of the Woods

An unnamed, intelligent, poison-breathing horror stalking the woods 5–8 miles from Ponterford — the target of the orc hunting lodge's standing hunt, given to the party by the senior orc Varg Ralagrak Gro-Algrag in Session 37. Its venom is the key to curing the lodge's dying patient: a glancing blow alone forces a Constitution save or the victim festers into bursting pustules until they die, incurable without the beast's venom sac (beneath its neck). Not native to the Veilwood (an encouraging sign — nothing there is below level 8), but plenty deadly: it killed four unarmed commoners in six seconds.

Tactics (from the victim's memory, via Silithane's Detect Thoughts): it hides with real intelligence, then thumps up a dirt cloud (a fog-cloud of dust) to ambush from concealment. It is 10–12 ft tall and wide, with a fat rounded head and four spiked, tendril-like appendages from its shoulders that it uses to grab and crush (wrapping a victim and squeezing) or swat. One survivor escaped only by tumbling down a hillside after a glancing tendril blow.

(Unnamed and unseen-in-the-flesh as of Session 37; described only through a poisoned victim's recovered memory. See Canon Questions.)

Session 37 (set up)

• Established as the orc lodge's hunt and the source of the medicine woman's patient's incurable poison.
• The party preps to march into the woods to slay it (alongside the senior orc, and possibly Algrimmar at range) and harvest its venom sac — the session's cliffhanger.

Session 38 (revealed — the Guardian of the Woods)

• It is a mutated treant/dryad — the "Guardian of the Woods." Renforth, scrying Silithane's memory, matches it to a thick-shouldered treant/dryad with thorned bark whip-arms — a creature that should have no venom at all. His theory: it has laced itself with mushroom poisons from the unusual fungal life of the Rivalonian woods, its violence provoked by the war's one-sided lumbering (loggers who once replanted now "just take").
• Its cause: the local forest mushroom people (Billy's Mom and her kin, fae-animated) call it their protector — the one thing stopping the "checkered men" (lumberjacks) from cutting their trees and burning them out. It attacks anyone carrying wood, "the dead bodies of its kin," and so cannot tell a lumberjack from an innocent traveller (both "ricket carriages of dead tree" through its woods).
• In the flesh (combat, in progress): opens with a blinding dirt cloud (a Fog-Cloud-of-dust) for a surprise round; casts Speak with Flesh to monologue its grievance ("Bark, players… you drape yourselves in the stripped skin of my kin… Taste my poison"); then leaps into the middle of the party and sprays a nova of venomous wooden needles — dual poison + venom saves, 28 necrotic on a fail (12 on a success) plus a 3-day fatal venom that festers the skin to ulcers. It disguises its own footsteps (untrackable by sight).
• Terminally poisoned Silithane (failed his venom save) and Warmaiden Yngraf now both need its venom sac to live, alongside the orc medicine woman's patient. Fenric the Spellbreaker severed two of its spell slots and broke its concentration, dropping the dirt cloud — the fight pauses here, unfinished.

Session 39 (slain — and replanted)

• Killed in a few rounds (Magra's 42-damage volley, Jex's 37, Fenric's knockout-then-dissection).
• No venom sac at all. Butchering it (Survival/Nature 26) revealed the creature is pure plant with no flesh organ — its lashes, headbutts and kicks carry no poison. It had been stealing venom, dipping shed bark-splinters into an external source: the dripping fangs of an ancient wyrm skull atop its tower-lair (the venom the party harvested). An intelligent plant weaponizing another creature's poison.
• Not truly dead. Thalia took a seed-pod cutting and Druidcraft-replanted it (5 healthy pods plus a runt); it will regrow in ~3 years — hopefully a calmer protector once the war that maddened it is over.