Deep within the woods you find a clearing, a circular grotto of soft grass and waist high shrubs. The sun shines down in this clearing, warm and inviting. Underfoot, the green shoots feel as smooth and cushioned as shag carpeting, pleasant as a foot massage. All around you is the scent of honey and rose blooms, which seems normal as everything is covered in blossoms. Roses, roses everywhere, creeping along on vines as thick as a finger and covered in sharp thorns- all in a display of bright colors, scarlet red, deep violet, gentle taupe and a striking cerulean blue.

Placed at random intervals are topiary figures in a variety of poses. The leafy sentries stand silent, overgrown in the same brambles, leaves and blooms.

The clearing is easily twenty meters across, centered around a small cluster of three trees grown together, overgrown in the vine blooms. Hanging from the branches above, a white mask, dangles- designed after a cat's head in a dramatic theatre grin. A mass of auburn curls frame the mask of bleached-bone white.

You hear a voice in your head, a woman's voice, smooth and somewhat deep, mature. She speaks, curious about the visitor in her home. A few of the vines at your feet begin to move on their own, gliding across your legs. The voice describes your shape, the general imprint you make on her understanding of light and dark imagery, the vibrations of your motions, the scent of your pheromones... She is curious about you. Where do you come from? What do you believe in? Intrigued, She decides to make this a little simpler for you...

A mass of the thorned vines begins to move towards the central tree, coiling and folding together. From the bushes and brambles, it drags together the bones of a skeleton and a waist-coat with tails, boots and a top-hat. White opera gloves and a red-jeweled pinkie ring complete the body of a tall, womanly shape, topped off by the white-masked head.

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The Great Masquerave
hgt- 6'1"(variable) wgt- 165lbs(variable)

The Great Masquerave is a sentient, carnivorous plant, consisting of several miles of flowering creeping vines with dagger-like thorns, several centimeters in length which she may retract at will. The thorns are venomous, carrying a paralytic enzyme. Like any plant she feeds off of the nutrients in the soil, rainfall and sunshine, however, should she choose to, she may also devour any sentient organism which enters the grove.

Being a creature of magic, rather than nature, her vines may move with an incredible strength and flow through soil, stone or flesh as easily as water. It is in this manner which she feeds on her victims. It's a gruesome process, penetrating their flesh and growing into a framework throughout their body to take full control of their living form, leaving them alive and aware- a agonized, helpless, mute passenger for as long as she chooses to allow their continued existence. It is also in this way which she may gather herself into a focus for easier communication or, having a portable, reliable food source, leave her grove. She "wears" the body of her most recent victim and whatever clothes she chooses to keep, like a climbing stake, using them to more easily hold a recognizable shape. It is through this process that she also gains the additional senses which come with a physical meat-body, eyes a nose, tongue, etc. She may keep a victim alive in this manner for upwards of a month, providing she keeps them "watered", feeding off the nutrients in their body before finally killing them mercifully by sprouting her shoots through their heart or brain. After death, bodies decay as normal. Generally, she chooses to manage these with care if they have hair she likes, keeping the scalps and skulls as a sort of fashion accessory while grinding the remaining bones into meal for the soil of her grotto.

Though the process of her feeding in this manner seems cruel, she is not innately malicious or evil, choosing her victims with extreme care. This is part of the reason for her initial battery of questions upon anyone's entry to her grotto, "feeling them out" for their potential as friend or food. Being a relatively stationary creature, she favors those "meat creatures" who would deprive others of their freedom, victimizers, abusers, kidnappers, slavers and such, and will prioritize them over any other creatures. Though she won't necessarily attack them automatically, she also has a aggressive dislike of dragons. It is suspected that this is because of the fire-breathing ability of some of their number. Though she herself is immune to the flames, she holds an affinity for other plants and finds their wanton destruction highly distasteful. It is these which generally make up the topiary figures of her grove.

She enjoys having eyes, fascinated with books, mythology, history, philosophy and religion. Satanism in particular intrigues her as one of the last things she read while wearing her last victim was a pamphlet for The Satanic Temple.