Spawn Flora

[Akestos]

Muse​

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 | [member="Raien Keth"] | Hana Kae | Teyla Ee'everwest | The Infection | The Seeding | The Hive | Wildgrowth | SwarmSurge

GENERAL INFORMATION

Name: Kae Flower | Kae Vine, aka Echanar or the Long Conflict.
Origins: Unclassified Hivespawn D16 Possible Netherworld Links
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 flower lasts about 1 standard year, the vine plants last anything up to 60 years.
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 take 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 naturally.

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: Infectious with Terminus D15 and other hive agents. Every part of this 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, but with a creature giving it heat. It can grow quite a long way before dying off at the extremes to form a cushioning shell of vines.
+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 in case of impacts.
-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.

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​

 

[Akestos]

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Muse Music​

OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION

Intent: Hive Flora from resulting chemical reactions such as the Centax Purifier. Carriers for TerminusFlux among other pathogens.
Image Credit: Pond5 | Fresh Wallpapers | Music: Dawn of War OST | Hud
Canon: Burn Fungus | Mekebve Spores
Links: The Hive Mind | The Infection | The Seeding | The Hive | Wildgrowth | SwarmSurge

GENERAL INFORMATION

Name: Tython-Forge
Origins: Unclassified Hivespawn D16 Possible Netherworld Links
Other Locations: Wildgrowth locations. Anywhere unstable hive reactions are occurring such as the Centax Purifier liquid, for example, this plant is commonly found where a hive has been or has seeded. It's a secondary stage infection usually.
Classification: Fungus
Average Growth Cycle: 4 Days
Viability: This fungus benefits from lower light, nitrogen in the soil or in the atmosphere helps but isn't essential. They prefer breaking down dead plants but can function on a small amount of light instead. If underground, they need something, other dead hive plants or vines are common in that case.
Description: Red mushrooms, glowing in the dark and causing a purple-red light at night. In the daytime, they tend to assist in turning the landscape around them orange or red. They actually look pretty when flying by or visiting deep underground, where they might have developed their own miniature ecosystems, sustained from their glow. If only the viewer knew the battle going on. Bacteria vs Bacteria struggling for dominance below.

Kae Flower and Tython-Forge​

PHYSICAL INFORMATION

Average Height: 12.7 cm | 5 Inches
Average Length: N/A
Color: Red, glowing at night or in the dark to attract creatures to eat it. In the day it is a paler shade.
Nutritional Value: Average. Creatures eat it and especially many birds love how it looks, attracted in for a closer look or a bite.
Toxicity: No.
Other Effects: Infectious with TerminusFlux and other hive agents. The spores of this plant are not infectious. The area around it is, it spreads the bacteria around itself, which then go into the environment. Birds often pick up the bacteria, or insects which are then eaten by birds.

Distinctions: Making a nice cherry scent when burned, which it should be at every opportunity. Wildgrowth is by its nature outside of the Hive's intent, still often part of the greater Swarm's will, in this case, the mushroom is tolerated by the Hive Mind because it seeds the Terminus Flux agent in places other Hive Flora finds difficult to reach. The DNA from most wildgrowth is more malleable, Flux DNA as one unfortunate scientist named it before realizing he'd been exposed to a pathogen and dying shortly after. This is a simple mushroom, which likes growing in dark environments where other plants might not do so well. Breaking down and eating other dead plant matter when it can, otherwise surviving off lower light. If there is no light, the glow can help other things grow, and so eventually it can gain more plant matter growing around it by the light it gives off.

Strengths

+Creates its own light for other plants to use to grow. Helping build ecosystems deep underground, and ending up growing in locations other plants wouldn't be able to.
+Carries the TerminusFlux agent
+Wildgrowth is a separate byproduct of Hiving a biosphere. It doesn't require the hive mind in any shape or form. It however also doesn't benefit from it.
+It is appealing to birds.


Weaknesses

-It's a mushroom. Not exactly the most threatening organism in the world.
-Bright Sunlight. This Fungi like many don't grow well in overly bright light. It can, it just slows the growth down a lot. Preferring its own light.
-This mushroom has no defenses, or camouflage, nothing special to keep predators away. As a result, it can get eaten before it gets established anywhere.
-The glowing light it produces at night also attracts things over to eat it. Which doesn't help sustain large clusters of fungi

HISTORICAL INFORMATION

Mushrooms. One might wonder what sinister galactic force is behind the creation of mushrooms, or which fiendishly inane outside entity had too much time on their hands. Nevertheless. Mushrooms. Not mushrooms you want in your backyard, or any yard. Even the hive often removes this blight upon what should be a more harmonious hive structure or biosphere. At least as harmonious as a hive of devouring insectoids and other monsters can be.

Indeed. These mushrooms, this wildgrowth is outside even the Swarm's will, let alone the Hive's focused mind. Two degrees of separation, which is uncomfortable, to say the least. It is only tolerated at all because it seeds further hive species in wider biospheres, the mutational capacity of the TerminusFlux bacteria is very high. Whereas the mushroom itself is mostly stable. It has long been a struggle as to whether this stability and external separation will be tolerated. Like an irritation on your back, or the itch you want to scratch.

The Tython-Forge, how it got that name, should be best left to the history books. Another sick joke by a beaten darth about a once reshaped world. Though had no direct hand in this, even his bioengineers had not predicted secondary reactions. Troublesome as they are. He did take the time to name the creation appropriately.

All that said it does light areas under the ground for the swarm, so other plant and animal life that requires light can grow deeper than usual. Which is another benefit for the greater consciousness, perhaps? Time will tell what lays in store for wildgrowth, even the Hive is watching carefully.

Tracking Growth​