The Highbloom

The highbloom is one of the most visually striking — and most deadly — plants found anywhere in Thanria. It grows in clusters of five rows of petals that graduate from a deep reddish-orange at the outer edges to a brilliant yellow toward the center, where a rounded bulb crowns the bloom. The overall effect is a stunning explosion of color that draws the eye immediately. It carries a scent entirely at odds with its lethality — warm, sweet, like berries and cinnamon — which has led more than one unwitting traveler to reach for it before being warned away.

No one planted the first highbloom. The best understanding scholars and historians have reached is that the flower is another consequence of the God Rain — divine energy spilled into the mortal world and taking root in the soil in ways that were never intended and have never been fully explained. The first known patch appeared in a private garden outside Dubril, growing in the uppermost corner where no seeds had been sown, already well established by the time anyone noticed it. From there, it spread. It has been spreading ever since.

The danger of the highbloom is specific and brutal: contact with the plant during daylight hours is lethal. The blight it causes moves fast — a rash first, then boils, then worse — and there is no known cure once exposure occurs. At night the flower closes, and its toxicity diminishes enough to handle with extreme care, though few are willing to test that boundary. The plant now infests hundreds of miles of land across the eastern part of the continent, spreading as though every bloom is connected to every other, a single living thing with no apparent limit to how far it intends to grow.

It is beautiful. It smells wonderful. And it will kill you without hesitation if you touch it in daylight.

A rare few have discovered a way of encasing the deadly bloom in a crystalline shell that makes it safe to touch, while still retaining the flowers secondary, and lesser known, trait. Highblooms have a strange ability to interfere with the divine. The blooms seem to block connection with the gods of Tannerian.