ʜᴄ sᴠɴᴛ ᴅʀᴀᴄᴏɴᴇs
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To provide an obscure haven for alchemists, sorcerers, and practitioners of the occult within the Sith Empire; to codify the
- Image Credit: Forest; New Phyrexia
- Canon: Genesis Pool
- Links: Seed of Rage; The Darkstaff - Revelation's Trumpet, Sithisis, Ascension
- Nexus Name: The Dreadroot
- Nexus Alignment: Dark
- Location: Syngia
- Affiliation: [member="The Slave"], [member="Darth Vesper"], The Sith Empire
Size: Small - The Dreadroot is comparable to a medium-sized apartment building.
- Accessibility: The greatest advantage of the Dreadroot is that it is a forest in a sea of trees on a planet with slight Dark Side background radiation. As such, one who is seeking the Root and is not familiar with it must track someone back to the area or sift through a continent's worth of beast-infested wilderness to locate it. Once found, the structure itself is lightly guarded by Sithspawn and the resident Sith who are available to protect it.
- Description: The Dark Side's power oozes from this gigantic, warped tree, which pulses with a faint, inner light. This 'Dreadroot' is porous, bare branches stretching into claw-like shapes, tunnels winding through it and opening into fibrous cavities in which its residents dwell. From its roots, pools of dark, ruddy fluid bubble up through the soil to the surface, and seedpods rustle with internal movement.
The Dreadroot itself, the cruel tree, is a self-sustaining engine of Dark Side power, constantly growing by drawing from the bubbling fluids of the Genesis Pool, given animus by the Seed of Rage. Though it radiates Dark Side energy, rendering it recognizable as a Nexus, its true nature is its incredible ability to respond to biologic shifting. Not only do its wood, sap, and the pools beneath it serve as media by which alchemy can be performed and new being spawned, it likewise does so autonomously: it actively corrupts the area around it, and influences wildlife, resulting in new monsters occurring naturally as well.
Alchemy performed within the Dreadroot does not require long stretches of time to breed and incubate the creatures, instead allowing viable beings to be sculpted with the Dark Side and existing biomaterial, while beings born in its aura show the marks of Dark Side corruption in physicality and mentality - protruding, spiked ridges, glowing eyes, pointed teeth, and a propensity for violence. The tree itself can be changed in non-extreme fashions: walls, rooms, and hallways can be, within reason, created with the Force, as well as branches.
Note: The rate at which the Dreadroot grows is slow such that, though over the course of decades, centuries, and millennia, it may eventually grow up into the atmosphere, or as large at the base as a city, the tree itself will not change significantly during the timeframe of SWRP: Chaos.
POINTS OF INTEREST
- The Canopy: The branches of the Dreadroot have no leaves, and continually reach outwards, brittle and sharp. Due to manipulations of the Force, occasionally a seedpod will develop, or other such protrusion, to allow for the long-term incubation of a creature from a fetal state, or to enclose a being in stasis for later retrieval. It is a favored nesting spot for aerial Sithspawn.
- The Hollows: The nexus is constantly shifting in structure like a thing alive. As such, the center is filled with tunnels and chambers of varying size that move slowly, reconfiguring to the needs of its residents. These chambers are primarily used for equipment storage and long-term dwelling, yet several have forges for the manipulation of stone, crystal, and metal, brought in so that all forms of alchemy may be practiced within them. Other chambers contain groups of test subjects imprisoned within the tree.
- The Roots: Beneath the tree, the Seed of Rage pulses, and the Genesis Pool throbs with corrupting essence, intertwined with reaching tendrils that draw power and nutrients. Here, the Sith wield their power to spawn manifold creations of vile form and function.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
Once, there was the Genesis Pool of the alchemist of the most ancient Dark Lords, the baron Remulus Dreypa. Left behind, it was briefly rediscovered by the Empire of Vitiate, then lost to antiquity. Once, under its masters' ministrations, it summoned up everything from bloodworms to behemoths. Now, rediscovered and ruined by one who remembers antiquity, there is the Dreadroot.
In spite of its taking the appearance of a plant, the Dreadroot is anything but natural. Instead, it represents the deliberate end of a search for undeserved power by two of the most dangerous alchemists of the modern era, and the intersection of two powerful Dark-Sided artifacts. The first is the Darkstaff, the result of the blasphemous craftsmanship of a shameless hedonist and thrill-seeker who wears no name. The second is the Seed of Rage, a relic of the Dread Masters wielded by Darth Vesper, himself a relic of the past preserved and awakened by the disturbances of the Force, a man of boundless greed and ambition. Together, they only sought a stay of death to continue their exploitative alliance - yet received much more than what they bargained for.
The reaction of the concentric circles of Dark Side power that were channeled dealt permanent damage to the delicate web of life, and the Dreadroot poured out and nearly devoured them. When the smoke cleared, it was fully-formed, and quickly adopted as a place of residence.
Now, it is taken to be a positive sign of the rise of, not only the Dark Side, but utter chaos and the ruin of the natural order. It is used as the home base of up-and-coming dread cults, and if anything represents a sad and fundamental truth of the Galaxy: where the potential for evil exists, evil will grow.
