26. Boruta - Pathfinder
There are a number of crossover monsters between plants and undead and upon first look, one might expect the Boruta to continue this tradition. Despite appearances however, the Boruta actually has pretty much nothing to do with undeath. Rather, those bones you see are simply made of wood and the entire creature is plant based, which raises questions about why it would take on this appearance. The lor half-answers this, as Boruta will occasionally use the body as a frame to disguise themselves in order to make deals with locals of the swamps they viciously defend. This does seem a fairly flimsy reasoning to me, particularly as it somewhat alters the real-world myth Boruta come from, but it does add some character to them and there are certainly ways you can explain this. The real-life myth generally has more to do with the corrupting of nobility whereas the Pathfinder model is just in interest of defending the swamp. Not that these things can't be merged, but the changed purpose leaves the changed design a little bit of a confused middle ground. I'll take it though, as we need more intelligent plant villains, and that would've been hard if the real visual had been used. The Boruta is an excellent edition to add to swamp territories, which are themselves fairly limited but also one of my favorite biomes to use. They have some interesting combat mechanics of rooting people in place which would easily be doubles up with swampy terrains to really upset a party's ability to remain mobile. Put some sort of sucking earth beneath them and then root them and its a great recipe for some natural trap laying. Their close relations to shambling mounds and love for magic plants gives them plenty of minions to pull from deep in the marsh. This connection also further ties electricity to swamp lands and you may be able to pull in some natural elemental lightning creatures to pull for them as well, from shocker lizards, lightning elementals, and perhaps even Will-O'-Wisps which arguably have some real-life ties to the concept of ball lightning. All in all, this is a unique and intelligent swamp foe that isn't inherently evil like the more classic hags, black dragon, or rakshasa and could be seen as being a defender of the swamp, something we usually see more of for the forest.
