Cycas Grass
Cycas Grass spreads as a slow rosette of thick, serrated fronds with a waxy gleam that is a cruel herald of the danger they cradle, each blade shaped with harsh precision around a cluster of hard, seedlike nodules nestled deep beneath the foliage. It grows wild in dry, stony soils across the Bridge Mountains Place The Bridge Mountains A mountain range in the far north of Tarkdaara, one of the named western and northern sub-ranges of the Spine of the World, the continent-long range of stone and ice., Divider Valleys, and flood-shadow plains of Northland, favouring abandoned clearings and forgotten river terraces where the land is wounded and rains fall uncertain. Its caustic tissues make it profoundly toxic to nearly every sentient species, and resistant to drought, fire, and flood alike.
Key traits
- Tissues are laced with powerful alkaloids that burn the mouths of those who dare taste them, guarding the plant from all but the most desperate predators.
- Even small quantities induce violent hallucinations in Maan People Maan The most numerous people of Elshore and the baseline cultural reference of the age. and Erg bodies, followed by tremors and confusion; prolonged use erodes the mind and nerves toward paralysis and death.
- For Iru People Iru The progenitors, and the only naturally evolved people of Elshore. and Meir People Meir The only people of Elshore not born of it. even modest consumption is usually fatal, burning the nervous system within days.
- Resistant to drought, fire, and flood, Cycas Grass endures where many richer plants perish.
- Those who survive the first fever from attempted preparation in famine conditions are said to forever carry fragments of strange visions.