Carnivorous plants are always nasty surprises (when they are surprises, that is—in most campaigns, especially dungeon-centric ones, you should run the moment your GM even mentions a plant, because it’s always bad news). Moonflowers have the added bonus of being shockingly fast for a plant (the first time one outruns your party’s halfling paladin should be pretty amusing) and being alien (or primordial or other-dimensional) crops to boot. Of course, the worst part of all is that they might do more than gobble up your friends—they might also turn your friends into spawn that then gobble up you…
The dwarves of the Sequoia Range are avid gardeners, using terraces and the mountains’ many natural microclimates to breed plants from a variety of biomes. Of course, being dwarves they tend to favor plants of a more combative nature than most gardeners. Tending mobile plant monsters like moonflowers is a test of honor for the more accomplished experts and druids.
The young mage-marquis of Davenport returned home from university to find his mother had vanished mysteriously in the forest. After much searching he found her…sort of. Now he raises a moonflower that bears the shape and face of his mother, and soon he will need to begin to feed it more than sunlight and water…
Greenearth and Vesper are separated by miles of space, but the planets share one particular valley due to a quirk in time and space. In this vale strange tentacled monsters leap from tree to tree to avoid the carnivorous plants that dominate the underbrush. Among the worst of these are the moonflowers, whose light pulses light up the night, luring terrestrial animals and unwary travelers toward their hungry maws.
—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 192
Woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. Discovered I’d missed the Pathfinder Online Kickstarter deadline. (I wish I was kidding that that is what woke me up. But it was. Confession is good for the soul.) I’m super bummed because, though I’m not much of a computer gamer, I really wanted the super-dungeon hardcover and was going to pledge at that level. Totally in a funk about this—got distracted with Christmas, work, and travel, missed it by a day. Really, really hoping they make it available in some way to non-Kickstarters. Sigh…
At least frozenbanks absolved me for my lack of Dream Quest knowledge. Got a nice note from uwtartarus, too. Had no idea you all dug Lovecraft so much!
The blockade of Munab was started on account moonflowers. Their carrier meteorite crashed into the Sredis mountains many years ago, and villages in the lowlands promptly came under attack. The Jet-Spear giants investigated, finding that the plants could only reproduce in prey the size of a human or smaller; faced with the prospect of an increasing number of vegetable predators, they expelled the humans and elves for their own protection. The moonflowers bloom only rarely now, emerging above ground and promptly setting off for the nearest city-state. The Jet-Spears organize great hunting parties to stop them, but cannot cut the threat off at its source.
Shores of Swords 