Sard

So is it a sard or the Sard?  The Bestiary 2 indicates the former.  Pathfinder #36: Sound of a Thousand Screams leans toward the latter thanks to a James Sutter article on the First World; he speaks of “the witch-tree Sard, Storm of Insanities.”  As with all such things, it’s really up to you.  A sard is one of the Tane, a living siege engine created by one of the fey Eldest.  Or it can be a demon tree.  Or an avatar of an enraged nature god.  Or…  Well, it’s a CR 19, at-will-lightning-spewing, poison-thorn-hurling evil plant so infused with the power of nature it acclimates to any plane it finds itself upon.  Surely you can think of something fun to do with that, right?

A shard of the World Tree has been carved off by Donar’s lightning hammer.  Filled with the god’s rage at his trickster half-brother’s betrayal, the Colossal splinter takes on a malevolent sentience.  Ironically, the most effect weapon against the tree belongs to the same wicked half-brother: a horn of artifact-level might guarded by jotund trolls.

The Metropalypse is more than a citadel—it is a giant juggernaut propelled by a strange mixture of clawed mechanical feet and dwarf-wrought treads, which consumes all in its path to fuel its fiery furnaces.  Two elven nations and countless arboreal preserves have fallen to the walking city thus far.  But the forest of Aspenholme strikes back, defending itself with a sard of great might.  With the sard’s help, adventurers might be able to shut down the Metropalypse…but they must then contend with the sard, whose rage at all humanoids energizes it like lightning.

Hoping to take a shortcut on the road to power, a nalfeshnee tries fill himself with the power of Nature by inserting a sliver of his essence into a magical elder tree’s heart.  The plan backfires catastrophically.  The tree awakens as a sard while simultaneously summoning qlippoths that devour the nalfeshnee alive.  Not only must adventurers defeat the qlippoth swarms…and reconnect the gobbets of half-digested demon soulflesh harvested from the creatures’ thoraxes to permanently banish the nalfeshnee…but they must also destroy the sard before it completes its destiny in calling a fiendish jabberwock to itself as its protector and spiritual mate.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 237

We’re skipping the sapphire jellyfish because it shares page space with the death’s head jellyfish, which we’ll tackle when we swing back ’round to D.

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(There may be a flaw in the proof at 1:15:50. That's what I get for trying to play Ween on a busted channel. Or any channel. Usual drill, BTW: Link good till Friday, 6/14, at midnight; if the show skips on your browser, try to Save As an mp3.)