Avassh

Members of the Copious Garden share one steadfast and fundamental belief: all plants are sentient, and they are vastly superior to animal life. The Copious Garden teaches that to harm a plant is the worst sin imaginable. Because of this, most members of the cult suffer from a poor diet, and most display signs of malnutrition and even scurvy.

While the caretakers of the Copious Garden may appear at first glance to be similar to druids in their veneration of plantlife, they lack a fundamental understanding of the balance of nature. Copious gardeners often seed areas with invasive plant species such as ivy or kudzu, which rapidly overtake a biome they’re planted in. Cultists also often exterminate all insects within the overgrown gardens they tend—even natural pollinators like bees and butterflies. Because of this, Copious gardeners can often be seen devoting themselves to manually and painstakingly pollinating the countless flowers and buds under their care with tiny handheld brushes.

The cult of the Copious Garden is most prevalent in the Eldritch Groves, the Greenhaunt, and the Harrowcrowns forests in central Khorvaire. They claim that these forests were once the heart of a much larger swath of abundant, verdant life, and they merely seek to restore “natural order”. While the cult is usually content to toil away in its gardens, they can become violent when plants are cut away or if they are confronted by followers of true druidic beliefs. The cult views druidism as blasphemous heresy that “seeks to perpetuate animal dominance”.

Avassh is known as the Twister of Roots—for good reason. Unlike most daelkyr that wish to bring their corrupting touch upon creatures or minds, Avassh desires to redefine the natural world. To Avassh, a typical forest is a sad, boring affair in desperate need of improvement. Plants, fungi, mold, spores, all draw Avassh’s terrible fascination.

Invasive Overgrowth. Avassh is known to create horrifc, mutated plantlife. Some of these are its active minions, described below, but many others are otherwise “normal” inanimate plants with nevertheless unnatural biology. Flowers that take root in humanoid bones and sing alluring songs, translucent trees with luminous fruit that impart terrible knowledge on those who eat them, seeds that only grow when watered by freshly spilled blood. A vast garden of horrors such as these await all who venture into a forest touched by the Twister of Roots.

Avassh’s Minions. Foremost in Avassh’s regard are its “children”, the ambulatory plant creatures and aberrations that it creates. Gas spores, shambling mounds, myconids, twisted treants and more all can be found in its service. But Avassh doesn’t merely create—it corrupts. Humanoids that receive its touch are implanted with alien plantlife. While some such cultists remain more or less themselves, forming symbiotic bonds with these new additions, others are not so lucky. Avassh’s dolgaunts, for instance, are made by planting seeds in a humanoid that grow into vines and spread roots through the victim’s body, killing the humanoid and replacing its brain and eyes with the tips of these root systems. Such plantlike aberrations are common in Avassh’s cults, and cultists dedicated to the Twister of Roots may not even realize that their bodies are merely the soil in which its true children are planted—or perhaps even more tragically, they may willingly give themselves up to be fertilizer for Avassh’s bloody cornucopia.

Avassh's Lair

Avassh makes its lair in the Writhing Weald, a region of Khyber made lush and verdant by Avassh’s time imprisoned there. The seemingly endless, twitching vines, roots, and branches are festooned with a riot of dancing colors from hideously beautiful flowers, enriched by an ambient, lurid violet glow in place of the natural sun. Every kind of plant-born danger imaginable—and unimaginable—can be found in this deadly garden of Avassh’s twisted devising.

Madness of Avassh

If a creature goes mad in Avassh’s lair or while it can see the daelkyr, it gains a form of indefinite madness. Roll on the Madness of Avassh table to determine the nature of this madness, which takes the form of a character flaw that lasts until cured. 

Servants and Schemes

The creations of the do not serve their lord directly; instead, their very purpose is to propagate, converting the world into a terraformed nightmare of weeping vines and rotting fungal forests. is more akin to a gardener than a leader, creating species of bizarre unliving plant life that simply grow into the purpose of their creation without needing guidance or orders. Many are terrifyingly prolific, either converting other life into further servants in a chain reaction, or spreading airborne fungal spores on death that take root to taint the land.

Alkiliths are the main method of expanding its presence, although few even notice the existence of these pitiful beings. Appearing like encrusted green fungus in the tunnels of Khyber, each alkilith is actually a fiend that has had its immortal essence warped and altered by the power of the daelkyr; like malformed puzzle pieces, an alkiliths fundamental link to Khyber allows its roots to dig into and warp the fabric of the World Below, forcing open new demiplane doorways. With their very essence and purpose distorted, the minds of the fiends are utterly broken, exuding pure insanity.

Blights are main biological weapon, used as footsoldiers alongside dolgrims and dolgaunts. Each blight is spawned by massive tree-horrors known as khaar’niianu – the ‘Blood Mothers’. The tides of blights that bud off from these terrifying creations spread quickly, slaughtering humanoids and triggering the spread of poison vegetation and alien flora.

Corpseflowers act as infectious incubators – engines of war used to turn Dhakaani dead into fungal zombies serving the will of . The influence of these abominations forced the Dar to burn their dead, along with vast swathes of Droaam – now called the Barrens.

Gas Spores are one of the Heralds few signals to the other daelkyr – a bizarre mockery or copy of beholders that exist only to spread fear and death to sentient beings.

Myconids & Vegepygmies form networks of tribes in the dark heart of the Vena Flora, claiming vast rootcaverns as their own. Completely devoted to the wonder of , these once-humanoid beings spend their days cultivating multicolored fungal gardens and assimilating other captured humanoids into their cults. Those beasts or monstrosities captured by these beings are implanted with russet mold, becoming thornies.

Shambling Mounds & Assassin Vines vary in form but share an origin; each is borne from creeping plants interweaving with the remains of creatures that gave themselves to , infected with the madness. Vines formed from simple animals often roost in the Bloomcrown, but the mounds originate from sentient humanoids, and may retain memories and intelligence. They typically lie in wait at entrances to the demiplane, capturing intruders and carrying them within to witness the beauty of the daelkyr’s vision – and join the blessed Cycle.

Shriekers are one of the more whimsical creations of the Cornucopia; the large fungi seemingly serve no purpose but to create bizarrely loud noises through methods that make no biological sense; some explorers have reported the fungi occasionally singing in disturbing harmony in the absence of intruders, something thought to be the voice of itself echoing through living mouthpieces.

Treants & Wood Woads are sentient monstrosities of twisted bark created to smash through Dhakaani defences. Compared to their more natural counterparts, the treants of Avassh are utterly alien, with branches more akin to flailing slimy tentacles than anything else.

Valuable Resources

Avassh's creations are some of the most widespread of the daelkyr, prized across Khorvaire for their anomalous and eldritch properties. The variety of magical plants have many uses in alchemy and potion-making, as the aim of the is the alien transformation of plant life rather than dominion or destruction. Some, like the glowing plant known as Brightwort, can be used to make Potions of Healing or Vitality that knit together flesh like writhing roots; others include Trees of Knowledge – large alien plants formed from impossible materials such as quartz, petals or goblin teeth. Each tree bears fruit that bestow a random form of knowledge upon those that consume them, ranging from languages, to specific historical events, to the secrets of casting a certain spell -or, maddening revelations that show the world from viewpoint. The symbionts are formed from roots, bark and vine that integrate with ones body, converting one to a superior form of life. A Nature’s MantleTCoE might be formed from leaves that extrude from beneath the flesh, while Heartseeds* convert ardent followers into the everblooming plants that they see as life perfected. Gauntlets of Ogre Power made of wood might bind to ones forearms, while a Ring of Animal Influence might be a band of fungal mycelia that implants airborne spores into the minds of beasts.

Avassh is the Twister of Roots, also known to its cultists as the Thorned One or the Blight-Blooded. Legends of Avassh say that its veins run beneath every bog and swamp like the hyphae of a great and terrible fungus, spreading blight to each land they infiltrate. Many shambling mounds and myconids in Eberron owe their heritage to Avassh.

Hateful Blight. The only apparent purpose of Avassh and its minions is to spread rot and decay to every corner of the world, seeding an empire of roots and fungus. Those who fall under Avassh’s influence find themselves disgusted with life in all forms: the warmth of animal bodies, the bright colors and fragrances of plants, and the sounds of nature all seem pitiful at best and revolting at worst. A creature driven to the edges of their sanity by Avassh seeks out dark and wet places, and sits in its filth until it has the mercy of dying and rotting away.

Avassh’s Cults. The Twister of Roots is worshipped mostly by mad druids and rangers--those equally disgusted by the vibrancy of nature and possessed by a need to see it all decay. These worshippers wear filthy, unkempt robes, usually hand-hewn from rotting pelts or plant matter, and are marked by reams of spores and fungus growing from their skin like winding ridges. The most dedicated worshippers of Avassh blind themselves, replacing their eyes with round stones or knots of wood in order to see the world as their master does.

Avassh’s Lair

Avassh makes its lair in the Plagueheart, a twisted structure of roots and chitinous hyphae. It is from this den that all of Avassh’s veins spread, burrowing through the ground and filling the lands of Eberron with blight and disease. Where these veins leave Khyber and surface in Eberron, they form tunnels and swell into myconid colonies. Spore-plagued servants defend these veins while they sap the lands of life.

Avassh is a largely stationary creature, meaning it is rarely encountered outside of the Plagueheart.

Lair Actions

While within the Plagueheart, Avassh can invoke the ambient magic to take lair actions. On initiative count 20 (losing initiative ties), Avassh can take a lair action to cause one of the following effects. It can’t use the same effect two rounds in a row.

• Avassh releases a wave of blighted spores. Each creature it can see within its lair make a DC 22 Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, the creature takes 26 (4d12) poison damage and is poisoned until the end of its next turn. On a successful save, the creature takes half as much damage and isn’t poisoned.
• A 30-foot radius area of ground within 120 feet of Avassh unfurls into a field of snaring roots until initiative count 20 on the next round. Any creature that starts or ends its turn there must succeed on a DC 22 Strength saving throw or be restrained. A creature can escape the roots with a successful DC 22 Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check as an action.
• Each creature of Avassh’s choice that it can see within 120 feet of it must succeed on a DC 22 Wisdom saving throw or be charmed until the end of its next turn. A creature charmed in this way feels a sudden, violent revulsion for living things, and uses its turn to move to and attack the nearest creature.

Regional Effects

A region containing a passage to Avassh’s lair is warped in one or more of these ways:

• Plants that grow within 5 miles of the passage animate and become sentient creatures. The DM chooses the most appropriate stat block for each plant creature.
• Creatures within 1 mile of the passage are dusted with greenish spores, which sink into exposed skin. A creature covered in these spores has disadvantage on saving throws to resist poison and disease. A creature can wash the spores off by submerging itself in water.
• If a humanoid spends at least 1 hour within 1 mile of the passage, that creature must succeed on a DC 23 Wisdom saving throw or be affected by a type of madness (see the “Madness of Avassh’’ table below). A creature that succeeds on this saving throw can’t be affected by this regional effect again for 24 hours.

If Avassh dies, these effects fade away after 1d10 days.

Madness of Avassh

If a creature goes mad in Avassh’s lair or while it can see the daelkyr, it gains a form of indefinite madness. Roll on the Madness of Avassh table to determine the nature of this madness, which takes the form of a character trait that lasts until reversed.