Encephallos Titanum
- Armor Class
- 4 [15]
- Hit Dice
- 9
- Attacks
- Attack (special)
- Special
- spore cloud, hallucination/coma, infected spawn, telepathic link
- Move
- 0
- HDE/XP
- 9/1,100
Description
The Encephallos Titanum, also called the Infectious Mind, is a cadaver plant that blooms once every hundred years. In the early stages of its cycle, it is a large yearly plant that grows on a stalk measuring six to nine feet with an umbrella of dark leaves at the top. Each year the plant grows and accumulates energy which is stored in its massive corm, which typically weighs between 2-300 pounds.
Whenever is has stored enough energy, instead of a stalk, it produces a five-foot tall blood-red flower which smells like a rotting corpse. A trumpet-like appendage grows in the middle of the flower. The fragrance of the infectious mind attracts carrion eaters such as ants, beetles, and other animals. Whenever a large prey comes in contact with the flower, the appendage shoots a cloud of spores at it, point blank. A saving throw must be made to avoid the spores, otherwise the victim suffers hallucinations for 1d4 turns, falls comatose thereafter, and rises as an infected under the control of the infectious mind after 1d6+8 hours.
The infectious mind has no intellect or ego of its own, but it is able to form a collective identity though its infected spawns. The telepathic link between the infected and the encephallos titanum can span up to twenty miles.
The hit points given are for the plants and flower, but their destruction will not kill the corm, which must be unearthed and burned.
Once it has bloomed, the infectious mind also produces 1d4 new tubers which it will want its infected spawns to bury under piles of corpses at the extremities of its telepathic range. These will become active in the next century.
Source note: This creature is converted from The Basic Fantasy Field Guide of Creatures Malevolent and Benign – Omnibus Edition, 1st Edition Release 4, © 2010–2025 Chris Gonnerman, R. Kevin Smoot, James Lemon, Matt Sluis, and Contributors. The Basic Fantasy Field Guide textual material is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International; this page adapts that creature to White Box.