Plant [Savage Coast]

This water plant grows thickly along an enchanted river that marks the eastern border of a frontier kingdom of dog-folk. Its broad, round leaves resemble lily pads. The wind can carry its pollen for miles, and it sticks to grass, trees, animals and anything else it lands on. Whoever touches the pollen must save vs. poison at -2 or sleep for at least 1d4+1 days, and if the wind does not change, the sleeper never wakes. Most such victims are eaten by other creatures as they sleep, and their decaying remains then feed the lotus.

The plant has so far stopped both imperial and dog-folk settlers from pushing north. Frog-folk are immune and often hide beneath or perch on the pads. A bed holds 3d100+100 plants, and anyone who comes closer than 1 yard per plant falls under the spores' effect. Surviving an encounter is worth 35 experience points, and destroying a whole bed earns another 1,400.

Eyeweed is a vile plant of the coast's beaches and rivers that passes for seaweed or a mass of algae, often lurking near harbors that would otherwise be safe. Hunting, it sends feelers up to 100 feet along the shore. Each looks like a long stalk tipped with a bulging, staring eye, but the plant actually finds prey by touch and smell, and the 'eyes' are shut mouths that bite and then suck flesh, blood and even bone back into the main body.

It strikes with 2d4 feelers for 1d3 damage each. A feeler is cut off after 6 points of damage, and the plant grows it back within a week. Wounding feelers does not hurt the eyeweed; only damage to the central mass kills it. Eyeweeds will happily feed on weakened or exhausted giant sea worms.

A relative of the gas spore, this big crimson mushroom puffs out a dense red cloud, much like the region's red mineral dust, when disturbed or attacked. Within 30 feet, the cloud affects curse-warding red metal just as detonating blasting powder does, harming every susceptible creature in the area. The fungus feeds on steel seed deposits or on the rotting remains of creatures that used curse-born gifts, and it often grows alongside redrot.

This graceful orchid grows on deposits of the curse-warding red metal and on the graves of dead creatures who wielded curse-born gifts, often among redrot. Eating it fresh strengthens the eater's gifts by 10% in duration, range, damage and the like for one turn. Dried, it is three times stronger (three turns, 30%) but brings delirium: the eater saves vs. poison at -3 or hallucinates for 1d6 turns, blind to the real world even when it turns deadly.

Mixed in among the pimpernels is often the crimson delight, a plant that looks identical. Eaten fresh, it kills unless the eater saves vs. poison; dried, it blocks all curse-born gifts for 24 hours. Bilge vermin are also common near pimpernel beds.

Each bed has a curse-born gift of its own, offensive or defensive and suited to its region, which the plants direct with their faint intelligence. Once that gift has been used three times in a day, the bed gains a new one at random, again usable three times, and so on, for as long as one plant survives. A bed consumes the red metal at the usual rate of one ounce per week; without it the plants wither fast and release spores that drift off on the wind to find fresh deposits.

A white rose that briefly halts the crimson curse. Picked from the bush, a bloom works as one ounce of the curse-warding red metal and slowly wilts as it is used up, dropping its final petal and losing its power when the seventh day ends. While protected by one, a person cannot use curse-born gifts.

The bush itself is sentient, sensing the world through smell and empathy. A compassionate goddess first created the species out of pity for the poor and for those in the curse's deforming final stage. It permits one rose to be taken per week. Pluck more, or try to dig it up, and it defends itself with the gifts entangle, weaken, poison and acid touch, plus a song that charms monsters within one mile, which it then turns against its attackers.

These bushes grow in scalewarden woods, in the forests of a wizard-governed nation and the sacred groves of a forested coastal realm, and in a cursed realm wherever the curse's victims have died. The people of that realm call them holy gifts of the gods, and harming one, whether by uprooting it or taking extra roses, is punishable by death. Meeting a bush or using one of its roses earns a single award of 35 experience points; destroying one earns nothing.