Summary
A popular perennial plant that has frustrated botanists since the dawn of time, the brightbulb natively lives in high, mountainous environments. Principally growing out of cliffsides, its vine-like roots wedge themselves into every nook and cranny for stability. From these roots grow the broad, thin leaves of the brightbulb, typically adopting a sort of stone-like texture that often matches the cliffside they're next to. Amidst these leaves grow the many, many small flowers of the brightbulb, attracting all sorts of insects into its envelopment.
Given the winds often plaguing its environs, the brightbulb's main method of pollinator attraction comes from a large, bulbous orb that glows brightly. Combining nutrient storage and attractor together, the brightbulb's bulb contains a richly dense liquid, full of
water mana. At the center of this liquid, contained in a circular ring of special growth, is a charged current of pure
lightning. This paradoxical arrangement is what gives the brightbulb its renowned brightness at night, and attracts insects to the plant.
On its own, the brightbulb is a relatively middle-of-the-road sort of plant. It's okay for fiber purposes, and the bulb itself has varying states of edibility to it. The main attraction for people has always been to, somehow, grow the thing in their homes and villages as a source of natural light at night. Thus, many braved the often dangerous cliffs the brightbulb grew upon, dreaming of its wondrous potential.
So began the nightmare most civilizations ran into with the cursed thing.
For one, the brightbulb is temperamental, and doesn't like being in environments too hot or too cold. It hates not having enough sunlight, but too much sunlight causes problem. It requires frequent pollinators to visit and do business, and a lack of them makes it want to die. Watering has to be done a certain way, generally by trickling it onto the plant in a way similar to rain, and being too harsh can bruise its leaves or rot its roots. Frankly, the only place it seemed to want to live was its inhospitable cliffs.
Despite the challenges, determined souls went about breeding stronger, more adaptive strains of the brightbulb. It would be in doing so, however, they uncovered an even worse problem with it. Every brightbulb plant only has one mature bulb that lights up, with varying immature ones waiting for their turn. When the bulb runs its course, or is unduly made upset or damaged, it explodes in a bizarre manner. All the gel-like fluid inside the bulb flash-fries outward, taking on a new, solid shape not unlike popcorn exploding.
The sweet-smelling popped bulb is actually rather edible, and serves to draw even more insects in. Birds and the like, however, utterly hate it. The problem becomes when one bulb pops,
any other bulb nearby will
also pop. As best anyone has figured out, its a kind of distress scent emitted by the popped bulb to alert others. So, if one grew a garden of them, or tried lighting a street in a series of them, any one bulb going would take them all out in rapid order.
On the one hand, it did serve as a crop of sorts to farm; if nothing else, an unusual ingredient to bring to the table. When it was discovered that brightbulbs could, with some work, be processed down into a type of sugar, their fate as a cash crop was sealed. Or would've been, anyway, if it wasn't so space-demanding and intolerant of neighbors.
That any attempt to turn it into a street lamp kept hilariously failing is what drove most people mad. After a certain point, sunk cost fallacy took over and many refused to give up. They would make a street lamp out of a brightbulb or die trying. Really, if any one attempt at domestication did well, it would've slotted into agriculture quite nicely.
How well people fared in their attempts is not really a settled question.
Rural farming villages and other remote locations, principally in brightbulb environments anyway, worked out the best. Although the errant animal or mischievous child might cause a number of brightbulbs to pop, tending to the aftermath became a cultural staple. Most treated it like the weather or phases of the
moons, enjoying the light when they could.
Cities and the such never fully integrated the brightbulb into their architecture. Instead, it became a sort of hobbyist plant that various homes grew, either for the light or as a status symbol. Given its notoriously fussy nature, botanists and the like enjoy tending it as a measure of their own skill. There are even social and ceremonial events with the brightbulb is a centerpiece, typically its explosive pop as the main show. Nobility in Lophern, in particular, have made it a habit of hosting events to show off their carefully maintained brightbulb lineages.
Ironically, its fussy nature is what ended up endearing it to many civilizations. People came around, regarding it as a stalwart sort of plant that refused to bend the knee. Even in so-called captivity, it would righteously explode in rejection of tyranny. At least, that is how most try to hype it up. Children, especially, are enamored with it.
Although, one
lauraume scholar offered a different theory: the brightbulb just wanted to sit around and glow all day.
It didn't become a popular idea.
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