Rose-maidens.
As a dryad is to a tree, these creatures are to beds of roses.
The appear roughly humanoid, with a thick thorny stem in place of their torso and legs. Their arms are formed by intertwined leafy branches, and each one has a single large rose in place of a head; whatever sensory organs they have are nestled between the stamen.
The rose maidens can walk about on their roots. They talk in high, soft voices; where the human voice is a cello, a rose-maiden’s voice is a flute.
They are as intelligent as humans. They maintain the sites of particular beauty in the garden, brushing away dirt and litter and polishing stone and metal. Like the Myconid Composters, they have their own culture.
Their mannerisms are elegant. Despite their manual labour, they behave more like refined artistic types; poets or musicians perhaps. Everything beautiful must be preserved, everything ugly must be destroyed.
They sing as they work, producing melodies too subtle for the human ear to properly register. They sing when they fight, too. Eerie droning choirs.
Their songs hit strange resonant frequencies in the plants around them. By combining frequencies, their harmonies can produce supernatural-seeming effects.
These songs are also how they train plants to grow in particular patterns. Their homes - elegant bowers of living wood and leaves = are made in this way, as are those few tools they use.
HD 4, HP 9, Armour as leather, two claws (+6, d6), saves as MU 4..
Their eerie droning songs are disconcerting. 1-in-10 chance per rose-maiden present for any character casting a spell to instead do nothing that round. The same applies to other actions requiring concentration, such as first aid or aiming.
Twice per day, they can cast each of the following: Animate Plants, Speak With Plants, Pass Through Plants, Hold Plant. Spellcasting is only possible if more than one rose-maiden casts that round; a single rose maiden’s spells fail if somebody isn’t casting alongside her.
Myconid Composters
Lumpen fungoid proletariat of the gardens. Four foot high vaguely humanoid masses of mycelium with raisin-like sensory organs studded into their puffball-heads.
Their purpose is to gather dead, broken and dirty things, and pile them up in their great steaming compost-mounds to rot down. More composters sprout from the mass periodically, which is also used to fertilize the garden.
Myconids have huge nests in the depths of the gardens. Great rotting heaps of compost, with propped-up cavities within where they live. They don’t sleep, or eat, but instead replenish themselves by thrusting the mycelium roots from their hands and feet into the decaying mass that makes up their home.
Their consciousness is not as separated as other beings. Myconids can fuse together, letting the mycelium threads that make up their neural networks intertwine. Their consciousnesses merge, their personalities blurr together, they share memories The longer they’re fused, the more completely thei sentiences meld together. They can split apart again, and when they do they retain all the memories they once shared. Myconids greet one another by shaking hands, blurring conciousnesses enough to exchange information. Knowledge ripples through their culture rapidly, their personalities exist in a fluid pool.
They are extraordinarily vulnerable to memetic corruption.
They wear dungarees and battered straw hats, and speak with regional British accents; Cockney or Cornish or Welsh. Stolid and practical, and single-mindedly dedicated to creating the best compost they can. PCs look compostable, too, they’ve got all those nutrients...
HD 3, HP 12 Armour as leather, gardening tools (+0, d8), Save as cleric 3..
Can fuse with another Myconid. The two combine into a single being with all the knowledge both possessed.. Combine the HP totals of both, up to the maximum 12.
Instead of attacking, the Composter can squirt spores from the top of its head, that do one of the following:
à Heal all fungi d4 hp.
à All non-fungi save vs poison or take d4 damage.
à Form a new Myconid with d4 HP, at the cost of that many HP from the donor.
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