Parasitic Plants
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Parasitic plants typically draw their sustenance from other creatures, but without devouring them, unlike Carnivorous plants. They range from being annoying to being highly dangerous. Some of them will take a huge toll on their host, leaving them weakened and more vulnerable to other dangers.
Carnegia
Carnegias are a strange species of spherical cactuses found within the Akaptor desert. They are highly adapted to desert life and sentient, to a certain extent. They can be seen rolling about the sand dune, even without any wind. They do it by shifting their weight in the direction they want to go. It's an agressive plant that will attack any creature passing nearby. Larger Carnegias are capable of capturing a human-sized creature, making it easy for a Predator to catch it. Moreover, immediately upon capturing a living creature the Carnegia will begin to draw moisture and the nutrients it needs to survive from the victim, eventually killing it. Sometimes, Carnegias will form herds that can become very dangerous for lone travelers. Rolling around also helps them to disperse their seeds which, unlike those of their cousin the sageras, are not explosive. When Carnegias are opened, their insides are revealed to be filled with hundreds of small, juicy arils. These are edible and are quite tart in flavor.
Harpy Carneye
These floating, turnip-like roots live in the Floating field, moving with it and never taking root. They latch onto the wings of passing harpies and other avian creatures that fly too close. They then stick sharp vines into the flesh of their host, and start sucking moisture and nutrients out. They steal a rather small amount of water and nutrients, but enough of them can make a harpy collapse from fatigue, rendering her defenseless against other predators.
Kagorm
A parasitic plant mostly found in the Dridder forest and the Chidokai forest. In just a night, a kagorm spore can grow in a sort of small ivy covering part of the host's body, and piercing its skin with small but sharp tendrils. It then pump a special toxin into the host's blood, that cloud its mind and make thinking difficult. On the other hand it also increase the host's strength, greatly diminish their sensibility to pain and fear, making the plant sometimes sough after by fighters and gladiators. However, after a few days, when the plant starts to sprout small flowers, the toxin's effects will increase to a point the host becomes unable to formulate a rational thought anymore, and are so without fear, they could jump into the gullet of a succubus while laughing maniacally all the way down. The Kagorm can be removed while rubbing a lamiole lotion on it, and the effect will disappear shortly after. If you are desperate, you can attempt to remove it with your bare hands, but at the price of an excruciable pain.
Devil's Thorn
A highly dangerous plant. Appearing to be no more than a small flower on a relatively long stalk, the stem of this plant is covered with tiny barbs, each sharp enough to pierce skin with just a slight touch. Each barb is coated with a thick liquid housing hundreds of tiny seeds. When these seeds enter the bloodstream, they begin to sprout, traveling throughout the body of the infected creature and killing them within a few weeks when the plant takes root in the heart. Upon the death of the victim, the plant will send tendrils through the body, seeking soil for its final form. When it's roots do reach soil, the many tendrils and sprouts it grew fall off, eventually withering away and leaving only a long, barbed stalk with a small flower on top. Many a traveler has been disturbed to come across a human skeleton with a single flower piercing the area where the heart was.
Note: It has recently been discovered that the plant is very sensitive to changes in temperature during its early stages, so much so that changing the body temperature of it's host even a single degree is often enough to kill the entire plant.
Credits to:
- Jasconius and Nekopaladin for the Carnegias
- Haar for the Devil's Thorn
- Icalasari for the Harpy Carneye.
