Episode 5: The Roots of a Good Friendship

(Designed for Star Trek Adventures)
The PCs go to Savenar 5 to do some good old-fashioned Starfleet exploration and research. Add in an NPC, probably Emony Idiron. She and the PCs are assigned (research project) and are beamed down (or fly down so the pilot gets something to do). They encounter Plant Monster #4892-D which snatches 1-2 of them because it wants friends, and dealing with this is the plot of the episode.

Why be here in the first place?

Science Officer Rekha Sirasikar is in charge of assignments, and she thinks the PCs are getting a bit smug, since Captain Evelyn Suthmeer seems to like them, and also they just saved an entire research team. Uses that as a pretext (oh, you're so good at this stuff, clearly) to send them to gather the boring samples on this one particular continent while most other away teams are focused on other areas with clear points of interest. (Security gets mountain training, engineering gets to work on the ship, interesting science things to see elsewhere).

Nabbed

Using the stats on the Plant Monster #4892-D page, understand that this plant really wants company. It needs someone to talk to and it has minimal understanding of how people operate and what needs they might have. GM's choice as to how fast it decided to wait before it nabs someone.
Reasons why the PCs are paying attention to this plant? It should look interesting, and it does move. Also it's not carnivorous so maybe demonstrate that and its friendliness by having it help out a space bunny rabbit or something. Telepaths or empaths should be able to feel something from it.
After a certain point, it tries to nab someone. Not sure if roll for who it goes for, decide based on proximity, or just go for the NPC. Once they're nabbed, they're thoroughly subdued and taken back to the hub. Which should not be hard for the others to find. Super easy, barely an inconvenience. The plant wants to make friends so it doesn't want to make it hard to find.
But also it's a crappy communicator because it's a plant with no socialization. So there should be some problems.

Fight or flight

Fighting this thing should overall be a frustrating and difficult experience, albeit not impossible to beat it off. If taking a shuttle, the vines should be holding it down. If transported, there's some kind of interference (can't distinguish their life signs). Point of contact on the ship is probably Commander Vath, if we need information. If they think to check the ship, discover that there's now signs of one singular massive life sign in the area.
There will absolutely be someone dragged off because I will keep trying until someone is.
The plant monster is not interested in death, it wants friends. But there are plenty of skeletons around because this literally used to be a graveyard and because of the imprint thing, the Vrixid weren't terribly careful about what happened to people's bodies out there.
The plant will latch onto whoever is nicest to the local flora, so set up an opportunity to interact and see who stands out as the kindest. They're the one who gets grabbed.

Find them/Talking lessons

Fairly difficult rolls in using the tricorder to trace the location because there's a lot of life around. Less so if they use survival and tracking skills.
Whoever is kidnapped should try to communicate. If it was just an NPC, they know it's trying to communicate but haven't made any headway.
Complications for an engineer/conn: the vines are clogging up all the equipment out of curiosity or to keep them there so keeping them out could take a bit.
For a doctor: the vines clearly have calming/anesthetic properties to them. Researching these could be useful. Also finding a medical solution for stopping these vines.
Security: keeping all of them safe without defying Starfleet and going for the kill. If they're all being reasonable and not doing any kind of shooting, I can have the plant monster get a lil too excited and lash out accidentally. (Hey, it doesn't understand how people work and might not understand how fragile they can be.)
Science/command: communicating with this creature and convincing it to give back the people.
Plant monster just wants friends. Only barely understands how to communicate, but really wants to. It should be very tough, fairly clear to see that it wants to say something, and the players just have to figure out how to make it works.
A few ideas: create a translator for visual language, figure out the symbols it carves (Vrixid written language), a telepathic attempt, teaching rudimentary sign language, etc.

Further complications

Can use the stats in the book for the Xerxes panther to create a predator for a little more fighting. Can add some kind of monolith, albeit a small one, to have something to make it worth exploring here further. Could have someone else on the planet continually phoning in asking for engineering/medical advice to get by on their own mission.
Can also make use of Vrixid Imprinting and if some of the wildlife perishes in close proximity we have a bit of that to deal with, but I don't want this to be too much of a thing just yet so we'd revisit something similar to this later. If it happened here it would be a hallucination and a headache before it would be too weak to exist.
Only pick a few of these because otherwise it's a lot and it's mostly meant to be an impetus as to why they have to stay, or a distraction from the main plot.

PC Relationships

How well they document the mission and how much they discover about the plant monster would affect how well Cmdr Sirasikar thinks of them at the end. She's not going to like them regardless, having already decided that they're ineffective officers who only get in her way, but she can at least begrudgingly offer approval, and even draw the captain's notice.
Reference Crew of the USS October for a list of NPCs who could be involved in some way.
Depending on how the PCs are grouped, there should be chances to role play and develop friendships and camaraderie along the way. Including the "threat" of Sirasikar's displeasure could provide a reason to band together, to find the best solution to the problem.
(Note to GM/self: leave space for this! Give breathing room, offer chances to chat in-character while searching about for a rule set, hint that it's taking a bit of time to come up with a solution. If not wanting to directly dialogue, ask them how the time was passed and the flavor of the conversations or activities.)
Also the menacing plant monster is a good way to test the PCs' commitment to general Starfleet policy of not shooting to kill. Could be a good chance to improve reputations and start nudging toward a promotion.
Plant monster relationship should start with it being friendly but clueless. Should remain friendly until threat of severe physical violence, because it's tough enough that it would brush off smaller stuff. It does understand that they don't understand it, but not to the degree that it's an alien entity. It's not interested in keeping them there forever, because in its experience people leave and that's fine, but it wants friends who will check in on it.
Note: of the PCs it might grab, it should go for the one that seems nicest to the plants. Perhaps have a bunch of underbrush and vines in the way, ask for solutions to get through, and the gentlest one gets deemed "best chance for best friend."

Potential endings

The plant is going to survive anything short of orbital bombardment. And it would take a lot for it to understand that they were really trying to hurt it, otherwise it would assume they just didn't get it.
But I am really hoping that it's a friend by the end and we've set up communications and named it and all that fun stuff.

A little underlying mystery

The Vrixid are main plot stuff. They exist, they were an ancient society. Not so long ago, they vanished and the plant monster doesn't know why and just misses them. Seeding in a few little details about their culture, their value on exploration, their near-telepathy, could be interesting.
The central monolith is a vague clue. There's going to be some interesting details about where they'd been (which should be too far apart to be realistic even for a warp-capable culture) and some strange bits about the stars always changing (can attribute to being on a ship all the time or again just more ignorant about how the sky works). It's nothing groundbreaking, just a marker for a graveyard.