The Overgrown
The creatures of the Verdant Expanse that have merged with its growth, among them the Tree-Men, the Flower-Stalkers, and the Spore-Clouds.
Overview
The Overgrown are the creatures of the Verdant Expanse that have merged with its growth until animal and plant can no longer be told apart. The name covers its guardians, the Tree-Men, and its hunters, the Flower-Stalkers and the Spore-Clouds that take hold of a host and make it spread seed.
Appearance
They are green, flowering, and rooted in some part of themselves: limbs turned to branch, skin to bark, mouths to blossoms. Most move slowly, and some not at all.
Habitat and Range
They live throughout the forests of the Verdant Expanse, wherever growth is thickest, joined to the root-network that links its plants and animals.
Behaviour and Temperament
What unites them is that each has given up its separate shape to the Expanse, and serves it: some by guarding it, some by feeding it, some by spreading it.
Uses and Dangers
Their wood, fruit, and sap are among the riches herbalists come for. Their danger is that some of them count visitors as manure.
Lore and Belief
Travellers say that whoever stays in the Expanse too long becomes one of the Overgrown, and many who come back carry a piece of it growing inside them. Whether the Tree-Men were all once visitors is not known.
Herb-hunters tell of the one who went back into the Expanse to cut a lost companion out of a tree-man's bark, and of the companion's voice that asked her, from inside the wood, to leave him be.
Where It Appears
In the Writers’ Guide
- The Resonant Zones FoundationsA Natural History of the Zones
- Drowning Garden Flora A Bestiary of CaeldonLore and Belief
- Spore-Clouds A Bestiary of Caeldon
- The Overgrown A Bestiary of CaeldonLore and Belief