Arla Rodarch
Marshal, Journeyman Protector
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To worldbuild on Mandalore
- Image Credit: source
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Links: N/A
- Name: Chakaar Weed
- Origins: Mandalore
- Other Locations: N/A
- Classification: Weed, Flower
- Average Growth Cycle: 6 months from seed to grow roots. 6 months to grow bulbs and flower. Bulbs will burst and disperse water and seed if not harvested. Plants will drop their flowers when this process happens. Then the growth cycle resumes with new bulbs and flowers.
- Viability: Highly adaptable, able to grow deep roots in the harshest, driest climate through sand and rock.
- Description: The plant is a small weed which is a dark green in colour. Small dark green leaves with green bulbs and purple flowers. Most of the plant is below ground in its long, deep roots.
- Average Height: 0.3m
- Average Length: From 3-10m depending on depth for water
- Color: Black, Green, Purple
- Nutritional Value: The flowers are edible, and the bulbs contain a good source of water. The bulb's water also contains significant healing properties on the level of Bacta or Kolto.
- Toxicity: The green leaves are incredibly toxic. The toxin is a fast-acting neural paralytic which is effective in microscopic quantity.
- Other Effects: The leaves and flowers can be mixed into a very powerful and dangerous contact poison which paralyzes an enemy on cut when it is coated onto a blade.
- Distinctions: A small and unremarkable weed notable only for the fact it persists on ravaged Mandalore. When it flowers, it signals that its lifesaving nourishing buds are ready to be harvested. The flower also attracts those creatures unwary enough to avoid the plant, and their skeletons can often be seen languishing beside a Chakaar Weed plant.
- Hardy and rugged
- Provides food and water and a useful poison to knowledgeable desert dwellers
- Dangerous to the unwary
- Easily ripped out
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
Evolving from a basic desert weed common on Mandalore, the Chakaar weed is a product of the many cataclysms that have ravaged the Mandalorian home world. The lack of available water forced the species to adapt deep roots, focusing its biology on the retaining of water, and evolving its very toxic defense as a means of protection from desperate species struggling to survive.
Over time the aboveground plant got much smaller, growing only to a small size, but with long and deep roots upon which it can depend. Instead of proliferating to a large size on the surface, each individual weed is much smaller. A patch of such weed is made up of many individual plants rather than one large and dominant one.
In modern times, Clan Rodarch are among the Mando'ade who have learned to use the weed's healing and un-healing properties to best advantage on ravaged Mandalore.
