Flower-Stalkers
Predatory plants of the Verdant Expanse that mimic flowers to lure their prey, then digest it.
Overview
Flower-Stalkers are the hunting plants of the Verdant Expanse, among its Overgrown. They mimic blossoms to lure prey close, and then they eat it.
Appearance
A Flower-Stalker looks like the most beautiful flower in a clearing: a bloom as wide as a cartwheel, or a cluster of smaller ones, in vivid pink, purple, or gold, on a thick green stem. The petals are soft and velvety and sweet-smelling, heavy with nectar. Below them, hidden in the undergrowth, lies the rest of it: a bulbous, ribbed body like a pitcher, with a mouth lined with downward-pointing hairs, and a mat of long, mobile tendrils that lie flat among the leaves. It can creep slowly on its roots from one clearing to the next. When it closes on prey the petals fold with a soft, wet sound. The scent of its nectar is strongest just before it feeds.
Habitat and Range
They grow on the forest floors and in the clearings of the Verdant Expanse, often among real flowers, and along paths where visitors walk.
Behaviour and Temperament
A Flower-Stalker lures. Its scent and colour draw insects, birds, beasts, and travellers, and when something comes close enough to touch the bloom, the tendrils wrap it and draw it into the mouth, where it is held and slowly digested. It is patient and moves only to feed or to find a better place to wait.
Abilities
Its scent dulls caution as well as drawing the eye, and its tendrils hold with great strength. Its digestion is fast, even for the Expanse.
Life Cycle
They seed like any plant, in a puff of sweet pollen, and a young Flower-Stalker is a small, bright bloom that eats insects. In the Expanse they grow to full size within days.
Uses and Dangers
Its nectar is a powerful sleeping draught and is gathered, carefully, by herbalists. Its danger is that it is hard to tell from a flower, and the Expanse is full of flowers.
Lore and Belief
The traveller's rule in the Expanse is to touch nothing, and the Flower-Stalker is the reason most often given. Tales of man-eating flowers on Caeldon may come from it.
Where It Appears
- The Verdant Expanse
- Writers' Guide: The Planes
In the Writers’ Guide
- The Planes FoundationsThe Planes of Too Much
- Carnivorous Plants A Bestiary of CaeldonLore and Belief
- Flower-Stalkers A Bestiary of Caeldon
- The Overgrown A Bestiary of Caeldon