Deadly Delight

This plant is a death sentence, but it will also boost your Mana pool and mana regeneration.

— A scholar

This plant will burst out of your skin and grow over parts of your body, taking mana from the air and feeding it to you.

History

Most scholars believe that this parasitic plant originated from the area in the Haunted Woods now called The Krozs ruins. The nomadic Bugfolk who traveled this area have documented several infestations since the first time they came across the plant around 1425 years ago.
When an area close to The Krozs ruins became a settlement, now called Korda, even more people became infected by the plant. These people were ostracised from the community and banished before the flowers could spread.
The Krozs ruins have always been dangerous to visit but they became hazardous to visit during this time.
The plant is very uncommon nowadays but people with Mana addiction might search for it to infect themselves and those who accidentally travel through the Krozs ruins during the fall might encounter the seeds which will later become the plants.

Anatomy

The plant has a stem that is around 1-3cm long and is around 1cm in diameter. This stem can grow out of any part of the body. The upper part of the body is more common among bipedal species.
The leaves are commonly between 7-10 cm long, and they are usually linear or lobate. The flowers are between 2-6cm long, and their shapes can differ greatly. The colors of the flowers may also wary.

Growth Rate & Stages

A living creature will breathe in the tiny seeds of this plant. The seeds will reach the lungs of their new host creature and through the paper thin walls in the air sacks they will follow the oxygen into the blood stream. The seeds will then move through the blood vessels of the living host that it has inhabited, finding nutrients in the blood and growing. It will later stick to a vessel wall until it punctures the vessel and grows up and out through its host's skin, fur, or armor. A small percentage of the hosts will die from bacterial infections during this stage.
It takes around 8 weeks from when the seed entered the host until the young plant punctures its host and reaches the surface. The plant can have several stems and will grow leaves that lie flush to the host's skin, fur, or armor. These stems each have one bud that will bloom after 3 weeks. The flowers can bloom all year round, and the flower head opens and closes depending on if it's day or night.
Each unique flower head seeds during different time periods. This depends mostly on when each head has been pollinated. The plant usually cross-pollinates with the help of insects, but when in a bind, it can self-pollinate.
The flowerhead will close one night and not open for the next couple of days. The flowerhead will then become dry, and when the host moves, the plant spreads seeds. These seeds are tiny and hard to see for the sapient bipedal creatures.
After the plant has started growing outside of the host, it is also growing inside the host. Its roots are spreading, and they will eventually reach the brain or the heart of the host.
This is when the host dies. This won't kill the plant, it will continue growing, and the roots will puncture the skin to reach the ground below their hosts dead body and set roots there.
How long it takes for the roots to reach the heart or the host's brain depends on how many seeds the host ingested during the first infestation period.

Nutrients

The plant gets its nutrients from the light of the sun, the blood of it's host and it also gathers nutrients from feeding its host mana from the air.
Both the flower and the leaves are very rich in both mana and other vitamins, which lead to some people eating their flowers or sharing them with others. Some people turn down the consumption of these plants on the grounds that it is second-hand cannibalism.

Lifespan

Unknown

Average Height

The stems: 2cm
The leaves: 8cm
The petals: 4cm

Geographic Distribution

• The Krozs ruins

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