Predatory Plants

Several dangerous plants exist across Aropria. Ones that bear toxic spores and fruit, others that cause allergic reactions, more that bear spines and spikes. Only the least wary or most unlucky fall victim to these plants, however, they bear these traits for defensive purposes. Certain types of plants have evolved to require predation, and are certainly more dangerous than their defensive counterparts. The most common four are listed below.

Pitcher Plants:

Pitcher Plants have large sacs filled with a cloying syrup that restricts the movements of its prey and serves as a digestive substance. Smaller variants resemble normal flowers and attract creatures inside with tantalizingly tasty and bright fruit near its core, and most catch animals that range in size up to a small dog. Variants act as trapdoor pods, and exist underneath the earth and can grow to be quite large, able to ingest even a couple of large humanoids at once. These are much harder to spot as the native foliage covers its “mouth” well, and produces a film across the top that allows small amounts of weight on it before it snaps and sends the prey inside. The syrup inside each pot of the pitcher plant is incredibly sticky, and may sometimes be used as a replacement for cements if carefully gathered. Pitcher plants of all varieties grow best in warm climates. Clusters of these dangerous plants appear often, resulting from the seeds of the less tasty fruit outside of their pitchers being spread nearby.

Snap Catchers:

Snap Catchers are strange plants that trap prey with a powerful “jaw” consisting of 2 leaves that are about as hard as wood. Snap catchers are fairly large, and there is no limit to the size they may grow, though most only become large enough to eat a single human. Once a creature steps on its roots exerting enough pressure, a series of internal passageways open and simulate muscular action with what effectively amounts to hydraulics and causes the jaw of the plant to snap down onto the disturbance. So long as the roots remain undisturbed, the plant takes no actions. If the blunt force trauma isn’t enough to kill its target, the mouth of the plant quickly fills with water and a slightly corrosive syrup after righting itself, resulting in any prey that survives the blow to drown. The Snap Catcher then releases its jaw, allowing the prey to fall to the roots as mulch, often attracting scavengers to be turned into more food for the plant. Snap Catchers are solitary and found in marshy conditions, either partially submerged beneath the mire, or disguised as part of a tree. Their aggressive root spread makes them very parasitic to other flora in the area.

Alium’s Ear:

Named for the gray pallid tones of the mushroom, Alium’s ear is a strange fungal parasite that takes roots in the spinal fluid of host bodies from non-plant based creatures. Normally they only pose dangers to tiny creatures and insects, but in rare instances pose a danger to humanoids who eat infected animals that haven’t exhibited clear symptoms of infection yet, though even then the chance to become infected is low. For those cases, imagine scenarios with slow moving zombies with the aesthetic of the last of us clickers. Alium’s Ear appears in cold regions that exhibit high humidity.

Strangler Roots:

These vines and roots can adapt to all but the most inhospitable climates. They parasitize themselves onto trees, bushes, and swathes of fields where they fight with the other flora for nutrients. However, their added diet allows them to hunt for meat too, and are able to track living creatures that enter into their range before surging onto them where they constrict the creature to death. Strangler Roots are otherwise barely mobile, and will stay in a single location for a long time. Their area if not subsuming a tree usually ranges from a 5 foot patch to a massive 25 foot wide area.

Transition from Plant to Monster:

If any one of these predatory plants manages to eat a humanoid, or other creature with sapience, it begins to immediately develop a congruence core of its own, and rapidly grow with strange mutations. The mutations are almost entirely unique, since they are based more on the poor soul who was lost to the plant than the plant itself. The dangers of a predator plant are less from the mundane variety, and almost entirely from these isolated strains.