Esperweed

Despite its name, esperweed looks nothing like a weed. It is a flowering plant up to three feet tall, its stem brownish green at the soil and brightening toward the top, with oval leaves three to four inches long. The real giveaway is the bloom: six petals, each nearly six inches long, crimson at the base and fading to red-orange at the tips, ringed around a small bright red stamen.

Esperweed has no defenses of any kind. With a mere 1 or 2 hit points, a single plant is cut down or pulled up with trivial effort.

It grows in only two kinds of places on the desert world. Most often it turns up in clusters of one to four plants in the tropical jungles along a forested ridge of a nearby mountain range. It also grows on the mudflats bordering the silt sea, where heat and damp soil suit it but where the ground holds only enough water for a single plant. There specimens stand alone, far apart, because sandstorms scatter the seeds across great distances.

Locals learned long ago that eating the root boosts psionic power for 1 turn. A psionicist, single-, multi- or dual-classed, functions as though 5 experience levels higher for that turn: work out the extra psionic strength points and roll the new sciences and devotions on the wild talent tables, though no new disciplines are gained. All power scores also rise by +3 for the same turn. A wild talent instead gains +2 to its power score and 20 extra psionic strength points.

The boost has a price. A creature can safely use esperweed a number of times equal to its Hit Dice or current level. Every use past that permanently strips psionic ability equal to two experience levels, though restoration can undo each loss. Once psionic level hits 0, the creature loses psionics forever.

Potency is short-lived: a picked root works for one week, then quickly becomes worthless. Erdlands, the giant cousins of the scale-runner, also crave the plant and gain temporary psionics from it.