Bloodgrass

Overview

Bloodgrass covers the plains of the Scourge: a tall red grass whose blades are edged like knives. On a plane where everything is sharp it is the ground itself that wounds, and every beast that lives on the plains is born to it.

Appearance

The grass stands waist- to chest-high on a grown man, in dense tussocks that run together into a single crimson sea. Each blade is narrow, stiff, and ribbed, dark red along its spine and paler at its edges, which are finely toothed and as hard as horn. Old blades fade to rust and stand on among the new. The seed-heads are dark, nodding spikes. When the wind moves through it the whole plain hisses, a dry, metallic sound like blades drawn slowly from many sheaths, and it smells of cut stems and, after anything has passed through, of iron.

Habitat and Range

It holds the open plains and valley floors wherever soil lies deep enough, giving way only to the thorn thickets at their edges, the bare rock of the knife-ridges, and the trampled ground of battlefields.

Behaviour and Temperament

Bloodgrass grows fastest where blood is spilled, and a stretch that has seen a fight stands thicker and redder the next season. A blade bent by a passing body springs back with force, so that walking through it is to be cut again and again, at shin and thigh, and a running beast is cut worst.

Abilities

Its edges open skin and cloth at a brush and leather after a few steps. Its colour hides the red and rust hunters of the plains, among them the Scythe Mantises, which can stand in it unseen.

Life Cycle

It seeds in the dry end of each season and grows back from the root after fire or trampling within weeks. Dead blades keep their edges for years, and a burnt stretch is nearly as dangerous as a living one.

Uses and Dangers

The plains grazers live on it. The Scourge Tuskers crop it with mouths its edges cannot cut, and a herd's passing leaves a trampled path that is the safest ground on the plain. The Scourge-Born wrap their legs in hide against it and use the dried blades as fire-starters and as crude saws. To a traveller it is a slow wound that never stops: few cuts are deep, but they are many, and the smell of blood draws the plane's hunters.

Lore and Belief

The Scourge-Born say the grass drinks for the plane and that a warrior who falls in it is taken in, not lost. Travellers believe the grass itself turns its edges towards the living, which is not so; it only springs back. They are right that a fight on bloodgrass ground breeds a thicker stand, and the oldest battle plains of the Scourge are the reddest.

Sellswords who came back from the Scourge tell of companies cut to ribbons crossing a bloodgrass plain at a run with an enemy behind them, and of the trick of the old hands: walk slowly, wrap the legs, and never fall.

Where It Appears

• The Scourge
• Scourge Tuskers
• Scythe Mantises