Akestos
Surge Lord
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: Insidious Hive Infection via secondary plants spores. - Infected with Terminus D15 and other agents.
Image Credit: 1 | Dan McPharlin | Hud
Canon: Arrgrar Vines | Mekebve Spores
Links: The Hive Mind | The Infection | The Seeding | The Hive | Wildgrowth | SwarmSurge | [member="Raien Keth"] | [member="Hana Kae"] | [member="Teyla Ee'everwest"]
GENERAL INFORMATION
Name: Kae Flower | Kae Vine, aka Echanar or the Long Conflict.
Origins: Unclassified Hivespawn D16 Possible Netherworld Links [member="Syn"]
Other Locations: People's back gardens. Any good soil or pot. It is a pretty flower. Something to take home for the family. Like all the best wild plants growing out of control that people should never have moved. They looked good, they seemed harmless, so why not? The Vine grows everywhere and anywhere, usually a long distance from the initial flower.
Classification: Female Kae Flower | Genderless Kae Vine
Average Growth Cycle: Female 3 Weeks. Genderless 1 Week to flower, 2 weeks to finish the vine growth but they can surge regrow over a very short time for small areas like a doorway or window, 20-30 minutes. While larger regrowth takes much longer, anything up to two weeks again.
Viability: The Kae Flower and Vine both require moisture, basic minerals help encourage faster growth. As long as it is getting moisture from something or somewhere it is fine. It will stay fresh without moisture for 2-3 weeks, then wither and harden into a more solid surface. The female flower lasts about 1 standard year, the vine plants last anything up to 60 years, flowering when warmth or weather permits through the year.
Description: A beautiful orange, red and yellow flower. Right? Simple plant, doesn't require a lot of water, just a bit of tender looking after. People might mount them on their window ledge, tend to them in their gardens. Like so many gardeners bringing something from off-world just because it looked good. The orange, red, black or green vine mass is a bit different, but that only grows from the initial flower's spores, carried a good distance away on the wind or via birds which they attach to. Even so, the thin vines look harmless along the ground, or below it, allowing for the plant to pass and share nutrients, perhaps other things. The vines can grow larger but that usually takes encouragement and extra nutrients from the hive mind, starting the size of a small twig naturally, they might end up the thickness of a large creature's arm if encouraged over time but this wouldn't happen on its own.
PHYSICAL INFORMATION
Average Height: 17 cm | 6.6 Inches
Average Length: Vine: 10x10 Meters | Flower N/A
Color: The Flower is orange and red. The initially thin vines are Orange, Red, Black or Green depending on the environment. Orange and Red colors are by far the most common regardless, for the entire plant.
Nutritional Value: Good, especially for insect creatures, and bugs that enjoy the honey produced. The petals are okay food, nothing special but some herbivores will certainly enjoy them. The vines are much chewier than the flowers, and a very poor source of food, as they get larger this is even truer. Most animals avoid eating the Vines, perhaps even getting indigestion or a bad stomach from eating too much.
Toxicity: No. Vine indigestion and Cramps, Yes.
Other Effects: The vine is Infectious with Terminus D15 and other hive agents. Every part of the vine plant is dangerous to eat, or dangerous to breathe near because of the small spores. Touch is fine unless you are touching the spores inside the vine-flower. The female flower, not the vine flower, is 100% harmless
Distinctions: The Kae female flower is completely harmless on its own. A taunting symbolic joke by a dead Sith Lord's Kethenites. It is also a very clever way to deliver various hive infections from a harmless source. Because the initial flower is completely harmless. Pretty, a plant people might want in their gardens. The Genderless Kae Vine is seeded via the flowers spores, these spores are light and will often travel a great distance before finding suitable soil or surface. Although the vine is much the same as the flower, it just grows small green, orange, black or red vines, and flowers of its own over a larger area. The color of the vines depends on the environment and strain of the flower.
The Kae vine's area of growth can be controlled by the hive mind or enlarged, but otherwise is about 10 by 10 meters when it's finished for the vine, the flower remaining just a flower. While the flower benefits a lot from good soil, it is a hardy plant, this hardiness is even more true for the vine, which can grow on many surfaces, rocks, stone, trees, creatures, and asteroids etc. When the vine is established it doesn't need the female flower anymore, having its own flowers, releasing very small spores of its own every few weeks. Small spores, not big, not easy to spot. Preferring them to be light to drift for a long way before finding a location to settle, they also attach to many insects quite easily, being slightly sticky. Some of these spores, of course, grow into singular female flowers, but not many, maybe 1 in 30.
Strengths
+The Vine can grow anywhere. In space without the heat of a creature or hive structure, it's going to die and harden very fast. With heat, it can grow quite a long way before dying off at the extremes to form a cushioning and connecting shell of vines, pipes or a tunnel for fluids and nutrients.
+Initally pretty. Unassuming and insidiously infective.
+Can act as a natural doorway, taking 20 minutes to burst regrow, surging over a small area. Not a large surface, but a small window, door, or way in or out of a hive structure. Being used to quickly close and trap or slow down invaders in hives if they are not careful.
+Part of the Hive when connected. The vines can be used to give nutrients to other things.
Weaknesses
-Cold Weather. The plant doesn't die in cold but it doesn't like any extreme cold either. This can half the rate of growth or new flowers forming.
-It's a plant. It's not going to be shooting at you, biting you, or running away.
-Not particularly tough while living, though the vine does offer impact cushioning. It can grow thick and be a pain to get through in smaller spaces. When it is dead, it can also harden making it tougher, but still having that give in it, to assist with impacts to other surfaces.
-Things will eat this plant, often eating the flowers too, so the hive has less control over it at first. Then that is also the point.
-It requires insects to give it pollen from other flowers or nutrients sent to it through the vine to send spores.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
[member="Raien Keth"] planned for many horrible things to be visited on the Kae's lineage before his death. One of the chief among them, was the Kae Flower, any stab he could make as his ex-wife and their House. Originally it had another intent to be used on Eshan and Thrysus, till his apprentice [member="Darth Centax"] took it over and implemented it for his own ends. Now very far out of One Sith control, the Hive flower has been completely dominated by the Hive Mind. A cycle of cycles.
Slow to spread initially, taking its time through subtle spores. Some environments it takes to well, others not. It helps that the initial plant is completely harmless. A nice decoration for someone's garden. In fact, it is possible and has often been the case that someone got a flower, grew it and the spores didn't take at all anywhere. In other cases they took quite well, and now a nearby field has a weed problem. Just a weed problem at this stage? Probably.
That is the thing with the Hive. It is very hit and miss. Sometimes nothing at all happens. Sometimes a few creatures die from failed attempts to integrate them, then nothing occurs. Occasionally there are strange goings-on underground with insects or smaller creatures. Then rarely a full hive is formed somewhere in the vicinity of the infection.
What the Hive found when it encountered this research was that the spores could be used to infect organism that were naturally hardy or armored, without the need to puncture their surface armor. This was discovered by accident when the first tyrant joined the Swarm's will. The Fall of the Tyrant and the Rise of a New One
Tracking Growth