Splinterwaif

Splinterwaifs were nasty, child-eating fey that lived in cities.

Description
Splinterwaifs were roughly humanoid in form, if thin, standing some tall and weighing about. Their skin had a bark-like texture, with patches of thorns, and changed color to match their surroundings. The fingers were long and pointed, and sharp wooden spines took the place of hair. The tongue was overly long and covered in short, wooden spines as well.

Personality
Splinterwaifs were cruel, selfish, and generally awful creatures.

Abilities
Splinterwaifs, like other fey, possessed low-light vision and a minor resistance to spells, but they were vulnerable to silver rather than cold iron. They were skilled at hiding and climbing. They could move through areas choked by natural briars and other overgrowth without being impeded, even when such areas had been manipulated to hinder movement.

Among the magical abilities inherent to splinterwaifs was that they could spit a splinter of wood as a ranged attack against foes up to away. Their other combat ability was that they could call a thorny branch out of the ground and control it to damage, grapple, or constrict enemies; luckily for their foes, they could only call one such branch at a time.

Perhaps the most sickening ability of splinterwaifs was that, over a period of concentration lasting a full minute, one could turn a fey or humanoid corpse into thorny bush. The resulting bush was a normal plant and did not radiate any magic. Any creature so transformed could not be revived via resurrection or raise dead, though miracle, wish, or true resurrection still worked.

Combat
These nasty fey attacked with their claws and innate magical abilities. They prefer to lie in wait in piles of discarded lumber, falling-down buildings, or old ships, spitting splinters from hiding instead of risking their own hides. If forced into melee on even or disadvantageous terms, they proved themselves cowards as they tried to flee so they could stalk their prey later.

Ecology
Splinterwaifs were native to urban environments, and were known to spread between cities by hiding on ships. They typically laired in vacant lots or lumberyards; one sign of where a splinterwaif was lairing was a number of thorny bushes growing in the area. These shrubs were inevitably transformed bodies of the splinterwaif's victims, and even though the shrubs might give away their lair, splinterwaifs were curiously reluctant to destroy them, even to the point of finding a new lair when the number of shrubs became too dense.

However, only the shrubs of adult victims were left untouched, for splinterwaifs found the shrubs created by the bodies of children to be delicious (adults, apparently, were sour). Splinterwaifs gathered child victims from random locations across their home city, focusing on orphans or others that wouldn't be missed.

Splinterwaifs had been encountered living in the sewers of Waterdeep and on the Dungeon Level of Undermountain.

Origin
The origin of splinterwaifs was unknown. Some sages theorized that they were nothing more than insane, twisted dryads who survived the death of their trees; it was said that cutting down one's tree forced her into a state of incorporeal hibernation. Once the dead wood from her tree was used to build buildings or ships, then she awakened as a splinterwaif to haunt the area.

However, this theory proved false, since splinterwaifs were not particularly attached to a given area, nor did they exhibit any symbiosis with their environment, and their were both male and female splinterwaifs.