The crop woke up. The Waking Garden is a bestiary of sixty-seven creatures for a world where the things people grow have started growing back, and it is published here in full, free to read, whether or not you ever open the console.
It is written for the 2024 rules and works with 2014. The stat blocks are tuned to 5.5e, so a few will hit harder than their challenge rating suggests at a 5e table.
Three stages, and what each is for
The plants are sorted by how far they have got, which turns out to be the same thing as sorting them by tier of play.
| Stage | Levels | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Stage 1: rooted | 1–3 | Awake, aware, and unable to leave the furrow they grew in |
| Stage 2: uprooted | 4–8 | Torn free of the soil, and hunting |
| Stage 3: crowned | 9+ | Sovereign, legendary, and the thing a campaign ends on |
The first stage is the interesting one to run, because none of it can chase you. A Speartip Row has a 15-foot reach and a Speed of 0. A Grinning Gourd sits in the furrow looking like the rest of the crop until the light comes on behind its eyes. The fight exists because of where it happens, not because something crossed the field to start it. so the terrain is doing the work that a monster’s movement usually does.
By stage 3 that has inverted. Thirteen creatures in the library have legendary actions, and the last of them is a CR 22 plant that every waking garden turns out to be a cutting from.
The rest of the field
Two chapters sit outside the three stages, and both exist to stop the garden reading as one note.
The rest of the garden is eleven weeds, pests and scavengers that live alongside the crop. Several of them would rather eat a vegetable than a person, which makes them something other than a second wave of enemies.
The Gardener and its retinue is who has been doing this on purpose: a fey with an under-gardener, a rookery of crows, and six garden tools it wakes when it wants hands.
Nineteen encounters, already built
The last appendix is encounter seeds: nineteen encounters from level 1 to level 20, each with the idea it is built around, its terrain, and its roster with placements. They are there because in this library the terrain usually is the encounter, and a roster on its own does not carry that.
There are also two indexes, by challenge rating and by creature type, so you can find something at the right size without reading a chapter to get to it.
Using it at the table
Open Settings in the console, the gear at the top right, and tick The Waking Garden. Its creatures then appear in Add creature alongside everything else, with full stat blocks, rollable actions, and their own source line.
Every stat block on this site renders from the same file the console loads, so the page you read and the creature you add can’t disagree with each other.
What you may do with it
The stat blocks and game mechanics are yours: they are licensed under CC BY 4.0, so you may share and adapt them, commercially included, with credit to Nicola Mustone and a note of what you changed.
The lore is not. Each creature’s description and the chapter text around it are © 2026 Nicola Mustone, all rights reserved. It is published to be read, not licensed for reuse. The full terms are on the library’s own page.
Start with the overview, or go straight to the rooted if you want something to put in front of a level 2 party tonight.