Whispers of the Flesh Trees

Written by orphidor

The flesh trees of the Foul Grove have many mouths in nonsensical places. These mouths release a constant stream of moans, shrieks, gibbers, whimpers, and whispers. Most would see the trees as affronts to nature, but there are those who view them as fonts of wisdom. The Grovedwellers eagerly linger near the trees for hours each day, roughly-crafted notebooks and quills in hand, waiting for the mouths to mumble out syllables that they can scribble down and experiment with later. At the end of the day, the listeners rush to the Spelltesting Hall, prepare themselves for what may come next, and recite the utterances in the hopes that they will end up being spells.
Much of the time, what spills from the flesh trees' mouths ends up being gibberish. Sometimes, however, it ends up being an incantation. Spells with effects that can be used to the benefit of the Grovedwellers are desired, and casters can be quite creative when using spells to their advantage, but realistically, many discovered spells end up being useless at best, or even actively harmful.

Effect

What these spells do varies wildly in effect and usefulness. One might cause blood to appear on every surface within five feet of the casting point while another may give the caster venomous fangs for an hour. The results are never entirely predictable, but they typically involve things that non-Grovedwellers would consider to be bizarre or frightening.

Side/Secondary Effects

If the primary effects of the spells don't cause harm to the caster or those around them, their secondary effects may be what does it instead. When cast incorrectly, spells learned from the flesh trees have a tendency to create noxious environmental effects like clouds of choking smoke or small explosions of burning ooze.

Manifestation

Like all other orders of magic, castings of the whispers of the flesh trees come with distinctive environmental shifts, usually drops in temperature and the signature magical right-before-a-storm smell in the air.

Source

The energy of the Foul Grove has been warped in some way, but why and when this happened is not currently known for certain. It's theorized that the Grove is in the eye of something resembling a metaphysical tornado, where currents of magic swirl in a circle on the outside and stagnate in the center, so its energy has festered into something strange.

Related Discipline

Caretakers of the Foul Grove

Related Element

Death/Rot

Effect Casting Time

Typically quick or instantaneous

Range

Usually close-range

Applied Restriction

Use of spells learned from the flesh trees is highly stigmatized. As a whole, nurturing the trees, holding them in high regard, and listening to anything they mumble out is considered disgusting and met with outrage by most "outsiders" who know of the practices.