Singing Pyupo (Sing-ing Pi-yuu-poh)
Summary
A reasonably moderate-sized plant that only grows in cold and freezing climates. It's only awake during freezing conditions, and hibernates when warmer weather arrives. The body of the singing pyupo is a blackish flesh as tough as leather. A single stalk stretches up from the veltron, its spindly spider-web roots stretching around it. At the top of the stalk sits a large bulb, one heavy enough the stalk has to bend. When the bulb is open, six large, crystal-like blue petals unfurl. Spindly tendrils extend outward, richly saturated in ice mana enough they softly glow. The spindly tendrils secrete sugary fluids that then crystallize on their surface because of the cold. Over time, these secretions create 'sugar icicles' that hang from the tendrils. These are the nutritious offerings of the singing pyupo for insects and other small creatures who survive in its climate. Its namesake of 'singing' comes from the ringing, chime-like noises it makes while secreting. Such piercing and haunting sounds carry well across the snow, drawing attention over great distances. Clusters of singing pyupos become microcosms as a result: the ones trying to get to their sugary offerings, and the predators camping around them. They, all the while, sing in a disjointed chorus some people regard as 'beautiful'. Sugar is a hard product to come by in cold climates, making the singing pyupo a very desirable plant. While others could be processed into sugar, such as tree sap, they require more time and effort to do so. The singing pyupo is so edible from the get-go it can practically be eaten off the flower itself. No effort was spared to cultivate them, but they're fussy plants and hard to tend for. The singing pyupo carries an insidious secret: it's a carnivorous plant. The flowery bulb and its offerings is the bait it lays out. When enough prey land on its tendrils, it sucks them down into its stalk, shutting the bulb tight. An icy mist fills it as its prey are flash-frozen, and then slowly dissolved into a syrupy slush. Somehow it gains enough from the process to grow more, as well as lay out its sugary and mana bait once again. So the problem becomes taking the sugar from the singing pyupo seriously harms its health. It doesn't actually want to lose its precious secretions, as it'd starve trying to make more. Cultivating them involves snapping the tendrils, but also feeding it enough tiny critters it can 'heal' and grow them back. It's a delicate process, and wild singing pyupo struggle to survive. Generations of careful care and tending have helped to make stronger, resilient plants that can handle routine harvesting. In the wild, they're diminishing as people often do not care to be kind to them. Their adaptation of making sound has, ironically, made them susceptible to dangerous predation. It's putting selective pressures on them, and quieter singing pyupos are becoming more and more common. Especially as mages and other people seeking its mana have hunted them even more. As a plant, the singing pyupo is associated with beauty, dazzling attractiveness, and being forlorn. It's endearingly charming as well as dangerous, for to be 'too attractive' is to invite danger. Some associate it with two-faced, exhibiting attractive beauty to hide a killer nature underneath. It is a generally controversial figure to invoke, but those in high class social circles are ever drawn toward doing so.
Geographic Distribution
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