Down on the Farm

The Pumpkin Patch

Some of Abner Doolans first experiments and developments were in developing crops that could protect themselves from those pesky adventurers and by extension; theives, animals, dragons and the like. The most visible of these if you visit the farm are his pumpkins. In which he takes great pride. 

Attack pumpkin:

HD 1-5. Hp 5-25. 

Medium plant

Speed as dog

Int: just below a dog

Armor: ac 14  as warrior in leather armor. Pumpkins are fast and agile but have a thick rind and are round and orange and as such are somewhat easy to hit

Attack: bite +hd to hit. 1d4+hd damage.

If a dog were a pumpkin 

These little guys start out looking much like a normal pumpkin plant. The seeds are a bit bigger and oddly are sharp along the edges so if you somehow manage to get your hands on some use gloves, before sowing the seeds lightly file the edges to dullness, this lets the leaves emerge from the shell without damage. Sow the seeds in spring when the danger of frost is gone and preferably in direct sunlight but they can thrive in partial shade. They require plenty of water and space to grow, 

With a  bit of luck or some skill in no time you'll have 4-5 little pumpkins sprouting on each vine.  This is where their care and feeding differ from the more, traditional pumpkin. When attack pumpkins are 3-4 inches across they begin to develop teeth, eyes and given they they respond to verbal commands ears, though farmer Doolan says it's just a fancy form of feeling vibrations through the ground, as well as 4 tiny legs. Right from the get go these little guys are aggressive. The pups that share a vine will attack and likely kill and consume the smallest or weakest of the litter while still on the vine. This is how they grow in size. Herbivorous in nature attack pumpkin pups are merciless and vicious and if you want a large litter of small pumps they need to be seperated and fed on other root vegetables such as potatoes or carrots, tho they will preferentially eat fresh pumpkin flush over anything else. The more pumpkin they eat the bigger they get. Training should start right away as attack pumpkins will not normally attack animals and can easily devastate your other crops if let loose, luckily or possibly by design young pups are impressionable like ducks and early in the season you can see Farmer Doolan with a string of em after hims while the tills the soil. after a week or two the vine dries and they break free of the mother plant and can roam about independently. They stop getting nutrition from the soil and their nutritional needs soar, its recommended at this point to either let this fight until you have thinned the pups to a few of the strongest or to limit feeding as they can each eat up to 20 lb of fresh pumpkin a day while young and much more when fully grown. 

A fully grown attack pumpkin can be 2-3 feet across, and though round and comical looking can run at least as fast as a dog, has a mouth extending across half its body filled with nai like teeth and can swallow whole anything much smaller than it. 

Casper pumpkin:

Hd: 1-2 HP 5-10

Small plant

Speed: as a dog +10

Int as a bird

Armor: 16 as a halfling in leather: small pale and fast much faster and more agile than thier progenitors they are pale and hide easily in undergrowth

Attack : bite 1d4 +hd

Special: 2 in 6 chance to hid in undergrowth while not in direct sunlight. Encountered in packs of 3-12 1-10 chance any attack will miss at the pumpkin is insubstantial at that time. 

Tiny little pack hunting partially ghost pumpkins

Several breeds have been produced by Farmer Doolan through cross breeding and a healthy dose of fertilizer and magic. The casper attack pumpkin only measures a max of 12 inches across but unlike traditional attack pumpkins are gregarious and live and hunt in packs of 3-10. This variety has also developed a strange ability to become incorporeal, they either can't control this or are not smart enough to control it as they seem to become incorporeal somewhat at random, giving them a ghostly visage and their name. This variety are mostly detritivores and live on dead plants and animal matter, as such they are both more aggressive and harder to see in undergrowth, able to bring down creatures and shrubberies much bigger than themselves they wait until the item has begun to decay before feasting. 

Colossus pumpkin

Hd 5-10 hp 25-50

Large to colossal plant

Speed as human

Int as well trained dog

Armor 18 as human in plate with shield: bright orange and round slow and covered in a thich resinous hide and thick. Bludgeoning weapons have a hard time causing damage. 

Attack bite to hit +hd  bite 1d8+hd damage. Plus attempt to swallow whole if targets size is medium or less. Charge 1d6 +10 to hit. Overrun 1d10 

Think a big ass bull with teeth that wants to eat you.

This breed has been selected for one reason only, size. This is the biggest of pumpkins. Big slow and vicious. A pumpkin only gets this big through viscous out competition and selective breeding. These are the pride and joy of Abner Doolans pumpkin breeding program. And have won every Pumpkin contest he's entered in. 

Farmer Doolan's Pumpkins.

No b’y not a lot gos on round here these day. Been down to the old Doolan farm ave’ ye? Queer old place aint itwha? Now dont get me wrong! old Abner Doolan is the best farmer round i ‘lous! And Gertie down there runs the place better than Abner ever could, and a kinder soul you'd never find! Sure you seen the pumpkin patch wa? No wonderin’ they wins the pumpkin growing competition erery year! ‘Is pumpkins is big enough to eat other pumpkins, for breakfast! And sure i suppose they does too! Thats why there's  that big fence round the patch, so they don't get out. Gertie made ‘im put that up once one bit a hoarse come by. You see, come end of the season them pumpkings gets all teritorial like and before the competition, well you knows there's only the biggest one left, so when he's done puttin the knife to the beast he keeps the seeds and next year they is even bigger 10 years in a row he won now i ‘lous.
Wha? ‘Owd he get pumpkjns like that?  Well the story goes old Ma and Pa Doolan, god rest their souls, got sick of the goblins down by the woods tearing through their vegetables and worst than that the damn fools what would go down and terrorize the goblins whenever they got a bit out of hand. Old ma Doolan said to me once, god bless her soul, said she was trying to plow the turnips and up come a whole suit of rusty old plate with some poor soul still in. Said she had to go have a lie down and never did get turnips down that spring. Turned out the armor and i suppose the ferrer in it was a dukes or summit.
So they they were, with fools and goblins all about trapsin through the vegitable and hardly could they keep anything in the ground let alone feed themselves or make copper, not that they has use for coppers, nuttin round here to by. So,  sick of it, they had enough of that foolishness and sent of Abner their youngest youngster to the school to read and right and what not. So off goes Abner to the city and he's gone for near on ten years never come home between at all.  Now he was just a little one when he left hardly on 12 years on i suppose. . All the time ma and pa dolan are just as busy plowing up dead fools and trying to keep the goblins out, as they are trying to get thier vegitables in the ground and out fore someone dead lands on em.  Either way Abner comes back ten years or so late,r all educated like but jeezus if they didn't teach him magick while he were there to boot! One of them fancy fellers with a book of spells and all wazzit called… wizards or somethin.  Big old book he had and a staff well the staff was his grandpas pitchfork and pointy hat and all, Proper wizard like.  Now was still a straw hat but it had a point sure enough and b’y that counts. Kept the coveralls tho. Sure he told me they wanted him to teach at the school. And even go overseas what with the war going on at the time said he'd make fortune. Now he said to them sure, what do i want that for? Can't eat coin a pile of coppers And what ‘av i got to worry about traipsing through someone else's backyard god knows where doing god knows what to god knows for, when i got goblins in me back yard and fools aplenty at home i can't get rid of. No b’y.
So Abner comes on home with all this fancy magic and no sooner does he get his boots back than he trapses down to the goblins and we all figures well  here we go! Hes off to throw fire or something foolish like that at em, just like those damn fancy folk the city hires to go poke em with a staff and get em all riled up again. But sure enough next day half a dozen of em is up at the farm trying to put the plow on the horse! He went and figured out what they talks and give em jobs at the farm, they works the fields and gets a fair share of what grows, and hell keep the damn adventurers away and help em out where he can. See now Ma and Pa Doolan, god rest their souls, were gettin on in years and couldn't work how they used to, and most the youngsters had moved to the city which only left  Jane, Tom, Paul, Penny, Alex, Terry, uhh Jacob who was only 10. He since gone off, perished overseas i heard, Gertrude, Fanny, Suzi and Abner, On the farm. and like i said the war was on so half of what they grew was taken off any way and half of what was left was trapsed over by the damned adventurers. Now mind you, next time those tax fellers come round with the soldiers Abner told em fair and square he was only gonna give em one quarter what they was growing now instead, and they had better just put up with it, and they went to complain till they saw the size of the potatoes he was growing and that they had to get 5-6 more carts to carry em all they were happy enough. Tho,  when the potatoes hauled themselves out of the ground and loaded themselves up the poor feller from the city damn near fainted.
So sure enough there they was every dusk till dawn the goblins farmin the biggest potatoes i ever seen, and turnip and beans tall enough to climb and Abner out there every day plowing or making it rain or making the soil till its self, even seen him have the cows milk themselves one day. It was pretty quit for a bit.
But sure enough not long after Abner got settled home and Ma and Pa Passed, God rest their souls,  4 or 5 of them adventurers show up and the farm goblins ends up all in a panic. Then Abner come out of the barn with his pitchfork, hat, big ol book and overalls and about a half dozen of those pumpkins. Now they was smaller then by a long shot, like them yappy little dogs town folk av’ whats you calls em? Che wa wa’s. But jeeze you talk about move, and teeth! Jeezus like nails.  So after Abner made a few bangs and let the pumpkins losse, laughing like a mad man the whole time and off runs the adventurers.
I suppose Abner had a talk with the town after.No i i suppose weren't Abner he never did go back to town after he come back, couldn't stand it. Must have been Gertie, best farm manager i ever seen, cours she had to learn goblin first, she says Abner gone a bit strange in the head these days, spends too much time out in the feilds and in the barn. but his cabbages is good, and he grows more food on that farm in a week than most does in a season, and all year round too. Corn comes right up through the snow like its not even there. Either way she told them towns folk not to send no more damn fools down to the farm or  they'll likely get eat by pumpkins, told em too to leave the goblins alone, they were decent folk once you took time to talk with em.  Jeeze that must have been goin on 15 years now. Been pretty quiet here since then. Nothing much goes on round here.
The goblins been busy tho they almost got their own town down by the woods now i hears. Half of em works at the farm and buys a good deal of the Food from the Doolan farm and my own truth be told, good customers too, pays in gold coins. I suppose all them adventurers left a lot of gold down there. Mind you unless you speaks goblin don't mind to go down there or you might cause a ruckus, and get Abner all up in a tiff.
Now every once in a while you get a few foolish adventure folk poking ‘round talking about, this sword what were my mothers or fathers legacy  what was lost to the goblins or some fool ranting about a ring or map or something leading to a dragons den or three wishes or my family's honor or something…. your not looking for nothing foolish like that are ya? No? Good good. Cause them goblins is good folk, you just leave em be.
Now if i were to look for anything like that i ‘louse its in that pumpkin patch. Id wait till after the pumpkin growing competition tho if i were you. And probably stay away from the scare crows too. Tho you might just wanna ask Gertrude about it, wouldn't bother asking Abner, hes gone a bit queer in the head. No B’y not a lot goes on round here these days.