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Phlagellos
🕑 Added 2021-01-21 00:52:35 +0000 UTCPhlagellos
Weapon (whip), legendary (requires attunement)
A long, thorny vine with a wicked-looking seed pod at one end and a handle fashioned around the roots. The vine slithers subtly when you grasp it.
You have a +3 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon, which deals 1d8 piercing damage instead of 1d4 slashing damage. While holding Phlagellos, you gain blindsight out to 20 feet.
Phlagellos has 5 seeds. When you hit with it, you can embed 1 seed into the flesh of the target creature if it has an organic or earthen body. A seed implanted into a creature is undetectable unless discovered with a successful DC 20 Wisdom (Medicine) check (no action required), and can be removed with an action. If a seed is removed it withers and turns to dust immediately. You know the location of each implanted seed at all times, even on another plane of existence. As a bonus action, you can cause an implanted seed to grow suddenly, dealing 2d6 necrotic damage to the host and a suckling mandrake bursts forth, landing in an unoccupied adjacent space. A seed will automatically undergo this process if left implanted for 1 hour. Phlagellos regrows 1d4+1 expended seeds daily at dawn.
Suckling mandrakes are parasitic baby-like plants that follow the creature they were implanted into, known as the host. A suckling mandrake is connected to the wound it erupted from by a thin umbilical cord that drains the host’s vitality and from the second it is birthed it emits a tortured scream that sickens all who hear it. Suckling mandrakes act of their own volition, with the sole desire to remain tethered to their host. They only attack out of self-defense if cornered, lashing out with their tiny teeth. If a suckling mandrake’s umbilical cord is severed, it will continue to follow its host until it withers away. Suckling mandrakes implanted by Phlagellos take their turns immediately after the host’s turn. You and any creatures of your choice are immune to the suckling mandrake's sickening wail.
Phlagellos, the Mandrake Maker was shaped and grown by the mad archdruid Mingorius Plesk to spread his adopted offspring. Obsessed with their propagation, Mingorius’ body is host to a swarm of mandrakes. Their many tethers cluster his withered body like piglets suckling a sow and their tortured wails fill the air. To many, the cacophony is unbearable, but he hears their cries as a chorus of sweet voices.
Barely kept alive by druidic magic, he toils in his garden of abominations with feverish ecstasy, devising new branches of plantoid morphology. When a novel breed reveals itself to him, he heads out into the dark forest in search of fresh hosts for his parasitic children to leach from.
Links to Suckling Mandrake Art & Page
Errata 4/6/23- reduced blindsight from 30 ft. to 20 ft., increased damage from 1d6 to 1d8, clarified wording.
Errata- reduced blindsight from 60 ft. to 30 ft., reduced seed damage from 2d8 to 2d6, added "(no action required)" to the medicine check to discover an implanted seed, changed "paralyzing bite" to "tiny teeth" in the mandrake description.
