Technological Terror
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To create a highly noxious and invasive plant species
- Image Credit: Link
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Links: N/A
- Name: Marrow Flower
- Origins: Helix Privateer Laboratories
- Other Locations: Sporadic, but generally anywhere the Privateers have done battle. Spores can be carried to numerous other locations, and as such, scattered populations may exist almost anywhere.
- Classification: Flower/Vine
- Average Growth Cycle: Marrow Flowers begin life as airborne spores, move into an endoparasitic stage once inhaled/ingested by animal life, then to a stationary, predatory stage.
- Viability: Marrow flowers gain most of the sustenance they need from live prey. Provided that they receive such prey regularly, they can thrive in arid or cold conditions, swamps, jungles, or almost any other environment imaginable. They only require sunlight or soil nutrients should prey dry up, and under these conditions can survive, albeit somewhat unhealthily.
- Description: A dangerous, quasi-ambulatory plant, with a complex multi-stage life cycle that shares some qualities with fungal and animal life.
- Average Height: An adult, well-fed Marrow Flower typically measures some 3-5 meters in height, but as the species will continue to grow indefinitely if it has adequate resources, some exceptional specimens can reach many, many times this size.
- Average Length: Marrow Flower vines can extend to distances of 20-30 meters, and will frequently do so when questing for prey.
- Color: Usually an ugly, dark green vine capped with a barbed pink flower. Blisters of pinkish fluid appear here and there on the surface of adult specimens.
- Nutritional Value: None whatsoever.
- Toxicity: As Marrow Flowers primarily feed/attack via their paralytic venom, close contact with these plants should be avoided. This venom is powerfully effective against most humanoid species. Its effects on non-humanoid physiologies remain unstudied. Likewise, their spores are infectious, and pose a significant biohazard to any living thing that breathes or ingests them.
- Other Effects: None
- Distinctions: Marrow Flowers enjoy long lifespans, exceptional tolerance to unhealthy/toxic/radioactive environments, and a reproductive method that has seen them spread throughout the galaxy. They are highly successful (if irritating and dangerous) life forms.
- Crabgrass: Even a single spore is sufficient to jump-start a Marrow Flower infestation. These life forms should be treated as a priority biohazard.
- Deathbloom: Marrow Flowers can grow throughout their practically-indefinite lifespans, with some reaching as tall as any modern building or fortress. None are defenseless, and all will react with aggression towards most life forms entering their territory.
- Carpentry Aid: Marrow Flower wood responds well to shaping and treatment, being both attractive to the eye and solidly wear-resistant. Provided, of course, than one can slay a flower to obtain it.
- Rooted: Marrow Flowers, being plants, typically cannot move from their spot in their adult stage, save to reach out with their vines.
- Uncontrollable: Marrow Flowers are not especially useful as targeted war beasts (or really for any other purpose). They will not distinguish between friend or foe, and will usually attack any edible life form equally.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
A Helix-crafted invasive plant, the Marrow Flower is as ugly and repulsive as most life forms bearing that origin.
Marrow Flowers are carnivorous, but in a manner that promises a slow and grisly death to anything unfortunate enough to fall into their clutches.
Marrow flowers reproduce asexually via spores, which mature specimens release in the millions at periodic intervals. These microscopic bodies float easily on air currents, but are hardy enough to survive hard vacuum or incredible extremes of temperature. Most such spores never mature beyond this stage, though they may remain viable for millennia before coming into contact with a host. In areas where many Marrow Flowers grow, the air may be visibly thick with such spores, rendering it almost uninhabitable.
Such spores pose a significant biohazard, as they are small enough to slip past even the smallest breach in hazmat protection equipment. Most often, the next stage of the flower begins if a spore is inhaled, ingested, contacts an open wound, contacts a mucus membrane, or otherwise gains egress into an organic life form's body.
The spore quickly emits significant amounts of immuno-suppressant chemicals, causing the body to ignore its presence in most cases. Some individuals, unfortunately, react badly to even this early stage. Those who are already immuno-compromised can suffer a fatal allergic reaction, which suits the spore just fine.
Otherwise, the spore slowly matures into a small marrow flower, which travels to the heart (or equivalent structure) and takes root there. It will slowly spread its tendrils throughout the victim's circulatory system, receiving oxygen and nutrients from its blood and gradually weakening it. By this stage, removal of the flower is exceedingly difficult. It will react to attempts at surgical removal by squeezing or even lacerating the host's heart.
Aside from general weakness and weariness, most victims experience no side effects. The flower is usually careful not to betray its presence at this crucial stage in its development, making proper diagnosis difficult. Most victims do not realize anything is wrong until it is far too late.
When it has grown sufficiently large, the flower will attack and attempt to influence its host's nervous system. It will attempt to prompt the host to seek out a quiet, open area to die in. If successful, the flower attempts to cause fatal internal damage in the host, then sprouts from the corpse.
If other mature Marrow Flowers already exist nearby, then immature flowers will often steer their puppet host towards them. Over time, this can create a sizeable forest of these plants.
At this stage, the flower becomes directly aggressive and carnivorous. Its leafy surface hardens into a tough, impact-resistant vine, and it begins to spread.
Such mature flowers are mostly immobile, but can achieve surprising reach with their venomous stinger-tendrils. These they use as weapons against anything passing nearby. While such tendrils are quite capable of simply grabbing and constricting prey to death, more commonly they bear venom-dripping spines upon their tips.
This toxin is highly paralytic, not unlike the fang-secretions of the Helcyte. Also like that foul life-form, the flower prefers to feed on live prey.
Should it manage to subdue its victim, the flower will drag the paralyzed (but unfortunately conscious and terrified) prey back to its main body. Here the flower begins to form a series of visible, pinkish blisters across its surface, and will sequester its live prey inside one of these.
Not unlike the feeding process of the infamous Sarlacc, the Helcyte keeps its victims alive for as long as possible, slowly siphoning their life away. As the flower grows, it will develop more and more such blisters across its surface. Particularly large specimens can have dozens or even hundreds of staring, panicked prisoners visible within their bodies.
Eventually, when the flower has sapped the victim to nothing, the blister simply serves as a grim display for the unfortunate prey's bones.
In theory, freeing a victim would be as simple as slicing the blister-pod open to release them. In practice, a mature marrow flower can range in size from simply massive (read: many times the size and weight of most typical humanoids) to titanic (the size and weight of Coruscant skyscraper). Such gargantuan specimens are extremely rare, but the flower itself has no known upper growth limit. It will continue to expand indefinitely so long as it has a steady source of prey.
All such specimens will defend their meal tickets with singular viciousness, and many would-be rescuers simply end up added to the flower's tally. The flower will use its central, flesh-rasping spined bloom and numerous venomous stingers to defend itself, attacking from so many angles at once that it is a rare foe who can avoid becoming dinner.
Since, as mentioned above, the flower's growth is theoretically indefinite, large numbers of these blooms can prove extremely deleterious to local ecosystems. They will crowd out or kill many native plants, hunt animal life to extinction, and choke the air from vast swathes of land with their spore clouds.
In urban or developed areas, infestations are typically purged before getting this far, but a few sometimes get luckier. Sprouting in out-of-the-way-places, the flowers' questing roots and tendrils can damage power conduits, break down duracrete, or otherwise slowly destroy their surrounding environments.
Worse yet, should a flower survive to blooming stage, a spore cloud erupting suddenly amidst a crowd of thousands on a busy street can prove to be a profound disaster. Infected individuals can travel quite far before succumbing, spreading this pernicious life form far and wide across the galaxy.
Unlike Helix's animal-based creations, Marrow Flowers are both too vicious and too unintelligent to control through traditional means. Being plants, they possess no traditional central nervous system, and seemingly exist just to devour and make the universe a worse place. Knowing Helix, that is most likely their exact intended purpose.
Occasionally though, the flowers are deliberately set up in places where maintaining constant guard is infeasible. They make able, if unwitting sentries, viciously assailing anything foolish enough to come within their not-inconsiderable reach.
A few dedicated (or insane) botanists have managed to render the flowers acclimated to their presence, earning a degree of tolerance in exchange for regular feedings. These "tame" flowers are still quite dangerous, but have learned that their keeper's presence means a steady source of food. This is about the only known way to render a Marrow Flower non-aggressive. Otherwise, only droids, incorporeal entities, non-animal life forms, or other unviable prey may safely approach these plants.
Otherwise, this plant's only useful purpose comes in the form of its wood.
In talented hands, a Marrow Flower's vine tissue is excellent for woodcarving. It is ideal for forming weapon grips, light armor, or other such objects.
While the vine is tough and damage-resistant in life, it becomes incredibly durable and tough in death, approaching near to metal. Yet, it retains a bright, attractive smoothness, making it ideal for such decorative uses.
This surprisingly beautiful quality in a life form otherwise so vile and destructive was most likely an accident, but it can make hunting these plants occasionally worthwhile.