Fetid Pumpkin (4e Monster)

Fetid Pumpkin
A fetid pumpkin looks exactly as its name would imply: an orange, half-rotten gourd of immense size, easily taller than a full-grown human. It pulls itself along the ground with several ambulatory vines that extend from the stem on top of its body, but has no other distinctive features save for its enormous tooth-lined maw, which dominates its body. Its breath perpetually reeks of carrion and decay, and tiny objects that look like seeds seem to be embedded in its gums.


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Fetid Pumpkin Tactics
A fetid pumpkin does not utilize any advanced tactics, although it does prefer to fight in thick underbrush where it can benefit from its forest walk ability. It uses fetid bite against the closest target and unleashes gaping maw whenever two or more enemies are in range. A fetid pumpkin uses its dark hunger ability on when it will benefit from the full amount of healing. It prefers to use the power on its own pumpkingut ooze, if it has already used feculent vomit, but it has no qualms about devouring other allies in order to save itself.

Pumpkingut Ooze
This creature looks like a human-sized pile of seeds and pumpkin flesh, and smells like a gourd that has been left out in the sun for too long. When it moves it appears to crash over itself like an orange wave, moving with surprising speed.


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Pumpkingut Ooze Tactics
A pumpkingut ooze has little regard for its own safety and instead attempts to protect the fetid pumpkin that spawned it; if possible, a pumpkingut ooze always stays within 5 squares of its fetid pumpkin so that they are in range of each other's dark aegis and dark hunger abilities. The ooze reserves its seed barrage ability for immediately after a fetid pumpkin uses gaping maw, as it knows multiple opponents will be grouped together at that time. When it has nothing else to do it will attempt to climb a vertical surface and pelt the closest enemy with dark seed.

Fetid Pumpkin Lore
A character knows the following information with a successful Religion check.


 * DC 15: Although fetid pumpkins are native to the Shadowfell, where they grow naturally in small patches that move across the dark plains, they are sometimes created when shadow energy crosses the planar boundaries into the world and imbues mundane pumpkins with life. Fetid pumpkins are not truly malevolent — they're not even self-aware, as they possess only the most rudimentary of intelligence — but they are carnivorous beasts and must procreate by infecting living creatures with necrotic seeds that slowly eat the victim from the inside, eventually killing it. They are fairly rare on their home plane, as the relative lack of food severely limits their ability to sustain a patch of more than a dozen or so individual creatures. When they find their way into the world where food is much more abundant, however, they can reproduce and spread at an alarming rate.


 * When a fetid pumpkin is near death it will vomit up its own innards, which are imbued with a portion of the pumpkin's life force and become an animated mass of seeds and gourd flesh. This sickly mass, called a pumpkingut ooze, can remain animate indefinitely and will even persist after the destruction of the fetid pumpkin that gave birth to it.


 * DC 20: Rumors persist of dark druidic cults that purposefully animate fetid pumpkins and unleash them on the world. It is said that these druids believe nature is a sapient and hostile entity that eventually claims all life and that they use the fetid pumpkins to terrorize the intelligent races of the world, who often seek to artificially extend their lives beyond what nature intended. Some even claim that these druids willingly infect themselves with the seeds of fetid pumpkins so that if they are slain in combat they can still exact vengeance by using their body as food for the next generation of plants. While these rumors may be nothing more than superstition, it is known that some natives of the Shadowfell grow and harvest fetid pumpkins for their own uses.

Encounter Groups
Fetid pumpkins are usually encountered in small groups of their own kind, but they can potentially be found in the company of any creature willing to grow flesh-eating gourds.

Level 7 Encounter (XP 1,500) — Shadar-kai Ritualists
 * 1 fetid pumpkin (level 8 elite brute)
 * 2 shadar-kai gloomblades (level 6 lurker, Monster Manual pg. 230)
 * 1 shadar-kai witch (level 7 controller, Monster Manual pg. 231)

Level 8 Encounter (XP 1,775) — Dark Field
 * 2 fetid pumpkins (level 8 elite brute)
 * 3 scarecrow shamblers (level 10 minion brute)