#frujai
Image © Paizo Publishing
[In Alien Archive, the frujai colony is a CR 19, but has statistics that overall fit more closely to the CR 20 mark in Pathfinder 1e. So I took this opportunity to have my first CR 20 plant!]
Frujai Colony
CR 20 N Plant
This massive creature resembles a walking, three legged beehive made of filaments and spongy greenish material. At one end, it has a huge scissoring maw. Several chunks of rock slowly orbit in the air around it.
The frujai colony is the stage of the frujai life cycle that is reproductive and intelligent. Without them, new frujai would not grow and hunt, and the workers would not have a place to shelter in the deadly winters of Orikolai. The workers can sneak up on and pursue prey that could otherwise escape the slow and massive colony, and new workers add genetic diversity to the colony’s broods each year. Frujai colonies have a philosophical mindset, viewing themselves as ecological stewards that ensure that the fit survive, the weak are culled, and that nutrients are recycled throughout the planet. This philosophy is sometimes thought of as evil by outsiders, but it is more a matter of profound pragmatism and lack of sentimentality.
A frujai colony can manipulate gravity as easily as moving its own body, and usually keeps a shield of gravitic force around itself to protect itself from hazards. This gravity field also holds a frujai colony’s sole concession to vanity—they decorate the space around them with rocks, bones and other debris that have interesting shapes, colors or patterns. These clatter to the ground if the colony uses its gravity manipulation for other tasks, such as offense or flight. Frujai colonies rarely fight alone. Even in the rare occurrence where all of their workers are dead or foraging, they can create temporary workers out of their own biomass. These disposable soldiers live for only an hour before collapsing into a loose pile of tissue, which the frujai consumes if it is still alive and present.
Although most of the time, a frujai colony is content being accompanied solely by its workers, sometimes they long for more intellectual pursuits. Several frujai colonies may converge during astronomical events such as solstices, equinoxes or comet appearances in order to discuss their findings through their long lives and expound on their personal philosophies. The colonies often trade some of their workers at this time, in the interests of increasing genetic diversity and providing stimulating new experiences for their favored workers (or trying to get rid of less favored ones). Other sapient creatures, if visiting the planet at the time, may participate in these conferences as well, but may find themselves hunted if the frujai colonies decide that they are more useful as a source of calories than as a source of information.
Frujai CR 20
XP 307,200
N Colossal plant
Init+4;Senseslow-light vision, Perception +25
Defense
AC33, touch 2, flat-footed 33 (-8 size, +31 natural)
hp405 (30d8+270)
Fort+26,Ref+12,Will+16
Immuneplant traits
Defensive Abilities absolute gravity
Offense
Speed30 ft., climb 20 ft.
Meleebite +27 (6d10+12), 2 slams +26 (4d12+12)
Rangedgravity anchor +14 touch (15d12+9 force plus maneuver)
Space30 ft.; Reach30 ft.
Special Attacks control gravity, slough minion
Statistics
Str34,Dex11,Con28,Int15,Wis18,Cha29
Base Atk +22;CMB+42 (+46 bull rush, reposition, trip); CMD52 (56 vs. bull rush, reposition, 58 vs. trip)
FeatsBlind-fight,Dazzling Display, Greater Vital Strike, Hover,Improved Initiative, Improved Vital Strike, Intimidating Prowess, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes, Point Blank Shot, Power Attack, Precise Shot, Shatter Defenses, Vital Strike, Weapon Focus (bite)
SkillsClimb +41, Fly +9, Intimidate +42, Knowledge (dungeoneering, geography) +20, Knowledge (nature) +23, Perception +25, Survival +25, Swim +33
LanguagesAklo, Frujai, telepathy 300 ft.
SQaberrant mind
Ecology
Environmentany forests
Organizationsolitary, hive (1 plus 4-40 frujai workers) or communion (2-5 plus 8-200 frujai workers)
Treasurestandard
Special Abilities
Aberrant Mind (Ex) A frujai gains class skills and skill ranks as if it were an aberration.
Absolute Gravity (Su) A frujai worker’s control of gravity gives it a +4 bonus to its CMB and CMD involving bull rush, reposition and trip attempts. It can ignore the effects of supernatural gravity control, like reverse gravity and can treat its personal gravity as if it were in light gravity or heavy gravity, if it so chooses.
Control Gravity (Su) As a free action at the start of each of its turns, a frujai colony chooses which two of these five effects it can use each round. If it ceases to use an ongoing effect, such as flight or gravity shield, the effect ends immediately.
Flight:The frujai colony gains a fly speed of 40 feet (poor maneuverability). If it ceases to use this ability while still in the air, it descends at a rate of 60 feet per round and takes no damage when it lands.
Gravity Anchor:As a standard action, the frujai colony can fire a bolt of pure gravity. Treat this as a ranged touch attack with a range of 300 feet and no range increment. A creature struck takes 15d12 points of force damage, plus the frujai’s Constitution modifier, and is subject to a bull rush or trip attempt, as the frujai chooses. The frujai does not move with a creature bull rushed in this manner.
Gravity Field: The frujai colony alters gravity in a 60 foot radius within 200 feet of itself. In this area, it can create an area of high gravity or low gravity, or reverse gravity as the spell.
Gravity Shield: The frujai colony gains a +4 deflection bonus to its AC and CMD.
Gravity Wave: As a standard action, the frujai colony creates a wave of gravity in an 80 foot cone. All creatures in the area take 7d12+9 points of force damage and are pushed back 10 feet. A successful DC 34 Reflex save halves the damage and negates the pushing effect. The save DC is Constitution based.
Slough Minion (Ex) As a standard action up to 3 times per day, a frujai colony can take 30 points of damage and create a frujai worker in an adjacent square. This worker exists for 1 hour before dying, if not slain in combat.
Image © Paizo Publishing
[The first of a two-parter. The frujai is one of the more conceptually interesting monsters in Alien Archive, and one of the most frustrating in practice. A living hive of fungal matter that acts as an ecological shepherd is super cool, but the flavor text refers almost entirely to the reproductive cycle of the drones, which are different from the soldiers that get a stat block, but only barely. And it doesn’t tell us anything about how the soldiers work or where they come from! It also implies that all drones that survive become their own colonies, which seems like it goes against the whole “ecological shepherd” thing. So I’ve collapsed the drone and soldier into a single entity, the worker and made their life cycle somewhat more sensible, incorporating the colony into it and borrowing some more from fungal reproduction (remember, these are supposed to be fungi)]
Frujai Worker
CR 12 N Plant
This creature looks like an odd flightless bird, or perhaps a dinosaur, composed out of spongy greenish material. Its head sits on a long neck, it has no forelimbs, and its hind limbs end in short claws. A whip like tail lashes behind it.
Orikolai is a strange, toroidal world, and its unusual shape and orbit create drastic varieties in its climates and seasons as it orbits its star. The dominant predators on this world include the frujai, a colonial fungal organism. The most common frujai are the workers. A frujai worker is born in the spring, grown from a spore sewn on a frozen corpse by a frujai colony. The workers grow to a free-living stage on this corpse, then leave and wander in small groups, hunting either independently or in small flocks. In this first summer, they grow to maturity, and then find a frujai colony in the early autumn to join forces with. In some cases, this colony can be its parent, but often they are not. During the winter, the colony takes the strongest of its workers into its own body, allowing them to fuse their cells and fertilize it, creating a new batch of spores to be sown later. A frujai worker that cannot find a colony, or is rejected by its colony and left to fend for itself over winter, becomes cannibalistic. In so doing, if it eats enough of its fellows, it can combine their cells to create a massive body for itself and become a colony of its own. Most workers without a colony die over the winter of starvation or cold, but a few survive to try to join a colony the next spring, and even fewer manage to grow to become a new colony.
A frujai worker can manipulate the forces of gravity, dealing with the fluctuations that come from living on a non-spherical planet. It can increase its personal gravity to deal with low gravity areas, decrease its gravity in high gravity zones, or shoot gravitic bolts at prey in order to damage and push them around. Its primary melee attack is to slam foes with its pointed head—it typically reduces foes to a pulp before engulfing them for easy digestion or to regurgitate into their colony. Despite their strange and animalistic appearances, frujai are sapient. The workers are not very smart, and once they have been adopted by a colony, they typically let the larger, more intelligent frujai do their thinking for them.
Frujai Worker CR 12
XP 19,200
N Large plant
Init+2;Senseslow-light vision, Perception +13
Defense
AC26, touch 11, flat-footed 24 (-1 size, +2 Dex, +15 natural)
hp171 (18d8+90)
Fort+16,Ref+10,Will+10
Immuneplant traits
Defensive Abilities absolute gravity
Offense
Speed30 ft., climb 20 ft.
Meleeslam +20 (2d6+12)
Rangedgravity anchor +14 touch (5d12+5 force plus maneuver)
Space10 ft.;Reach10 ft.
Special Attacks colony guard
Statistics
Str26,Dex15,Con20,Int7,Wis14,Cha15
Base Atk +13;CMB+22 (+26 bull rush, reposition, trip); CMD34 (38 vs. bull rush, reposition, trip)
FeatsCombat Reflexes,Improved Vital Strike, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes, Nimble Moves, Point Blank Shot, Power Attack, Precise Shot, Skill Focus (Stealth) Vital Strike
SkillsClimb +15, Intimidate +13, Perception +13, Stealth +12, Survival +13
LanguagesFrujai, telepathy 100 ft.
SQaberrant mind
Ecology
Environmentany forests
Organizationsolitary, squad (2-8) or hive (4-40 plus 1 frujai colony)
Treasureincidental
Special Abilities
Aberrant Mind (Ex) A frujai gains class skills and skill ranks as if it were an aberration.
Absolute Gravity (Su) A frujai worker’s control of gravity gives it a +4 bonus to its CMB and CMD involving bull rush, reposition and trip attempts. It can ignore the effects of supernatural gravity control, like reverse gravity and can treat its personal gravity as if it were in light gravity or heavy gravity, if it so chooses.
Colony Guard (Ex) Whenever a frujai colony takes damage, all frujai workers in the range of its telepathy gain a +4 competence bonus on attack rolls and a +10 foot bonus to their move speed for 1 round.
Gravity Anchor (Su) As a standard action, a frujai worker can fire a bolt of pure gravity. Treat this as a ranged touch attack with a range of 150 feet and no range increment. A creature struck takes 5d12 points of force damage, plus the frujai’s Constitution modifier, and is subject to a bull rush or trip attempt, as the frujai chooses. The frujai does not move with a creature bull rushed in this manner.
