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#1 [fr] 

Xyphacanthus - Act 4: The Answer to the Question of a Prince (02/23)

Sometimes simple questions can infuse you without being wished for and they can haunt your mind for a long time before you can eradicate them. I received one of these from Prince Yrkanis whose naivety of his youth managed to defeat my botanical knowledge.

The Prince had then been not more years old than the quantity of fingers I possess, and his father had made me his tutor at the same time as he had appointed me to be the organic architect of his Kingdom. The memory of this afternoon clearly comes to mind for me, and I still remember leaning over a sapling of the greenhouse that my regular watering did not seem to satisfy.

With his neck stretched and balancing on his toes Yrkanis was watching the Rotoa growing in a corner of the room. Liria and I had been trying, so far unsuccessfully, to acclimate these plants with the vegetation of the forest, and this one had persevered a little better than others.

"It has no leaves?"

Getting only barely distracted from my botanical questions, I mechanically won some time:
"Hmm?"
"The Rotoa, it has no leaves?" asked the boy.

Without looking up from my work, I think I replied:
"This is a plant that grows in the Prime Roots. It does not conceive light, therefore it does not need leaves."
"Ah."

Under my hands small Irena leaves cracked, parched like from the sun of the Burning Desert, despite of that a small lake formed at it's feet.

"And the flowers - are they edible?"
"The blossoms? No. They look succulent, but nobody eats the flowers, some even say they are toxic."
"And is this true?"
"No, I don't think so."

The Prince gathered his thoughts for a moment and then continued:
"And Armas, do they eat the flowers of the Rotoa?"
"Neither Armas, nor any other animal. The blossoms are not palatable and you would get sick, my Prince," I said a bit abruptly since my patience was eroding.
"Then the thorns – what use are they?"

With a small knife I turned the humus around a sapling that refused to drink, in order to incress the water that would penetrate the roots. Time was pressing, plus only a single leaf of the small shrub was green, the rest had been replaced by a dull and ominous yellow.

"If nothing wants to eat the flowers, what use are they?" he insisted.
"Rotoas don't have thorns, my Prince. And I really have to focus on that..."
"They do have! This one has! There."

Now completely distracted and also intrigued I got up to join the young Yrkanis. His little finger outstretched he scraped the earth around the roots. Hidden beneath the humus, small pointed growths defended the underground branches of the plant, and I was surprised that I had never noticed this.

The child was silent for a moment, deep in thought and in his observation of the Rotoa before resuming in a deciding tone: 
"Anyway, it does not make sense: no one could attack from the ground, the danger always comes from above."
"This is quite true."
"But then; the thorns, what use are they?"

Standing next to the child I watched this curious plant a moment before answering, defeated:
"I do not know. I have no idea, my Prince."
"Ah," Yrkanis replied, before going to look at another plant.

Even if the Prince had seemed satisfied with my answer, this was not the case for me. This issue continued to haunt me for years and my knowledge has been vexed for a long time by the small thorns that seem to serve no purpose.

"Personal Notes on Botany and Horticulture" by Lenardi Bravichi.

***

Cuiccio Perinia looked up from the notes of Bravichi Lenardi. Grabbing his coat he prepared to leave and meet the adventures in the Royal Conservatory after their return from the Prime Roots* with seeds of Rotoas that had been modified by the Botanist Gilado Almati a century ago.

(*) Sunday, February 23rd, 2014 at 20.00 GMT.

Last edited by Ghost of Atys (1 decade ago)

#2 [en] 

Cuiccio Perinia will accompany the Zoraïs and Matis who want to block the Kitin mounds of the Jungle with the help of Rotoas on 14h - Quarta, Winderly 22, 1st AC 2577 *. He will meet with the volunteers next to Still Waters south of Zora.

(*) [OOC] Friday, 7 March 2014 20:00:00 UTC (1 decade ago)

#3 [de] 

From the notebook of Filira Salazar Caradini, member of the Royal Academy of Yrkanis:

... while Kitins are still seen, they seem to be somewhat confused and definitely distracted, being still aggressive, but less attentive than usual. Most extraordinary are the Rotoas, though. Filira Cuiccio already told us that the roots of the original Almati Rotoas we planted surprisingly continued to grow while the mother plant - as expected - began to wither. However, now there are new, pretty huge blooming Rotoas near the sites where the original Rotoas were planted. From what we know, the first plant didn't live long enough to develop pods or seeds. Those would give some sort of explanation for the new Rotoas, but then they would develop less structured, more chaotic, on the places the seeds fell onto the soil.

The solution might lie, in fact, in Filira Cuiccio's surprising revelation. The new Rotoas are probably some sort of scions growing from the roots of the original Rotoas. From a scientific point, this would be nothing less than sensational, for that behaviour of the Rotoa is, I think, unknown to science yet, while pretty common in mushrooms. But then this might be a new way of the Rotoa to deal with an environment not natural and, in fact, normally deadly to it.

From what I could see, the new Rotoas grow in a sort of circle around the original plant. If the roots spread that far and developed new plants, under the bark there must be a rather solid, thick root braid pretty deadly for the Kitins, and definitely suited to close down the tunnels on a rather big scale. The whole thing took already too much time for my taste, but if this is the case we learn much more from the experience than expected.

Last edited by Salazar (10 years ago)

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Salazar Caradini
Filira Matia
Royal Historian
Member of the Royal Academy of Yrkanis
First Seraph of the Order of the Argo Navis

#4 [de] 

From the notebook of Filira Salazar Caradini, member of the Royal Academy of Yrkanis:

... unfortunately, Mac'Od Bittty's researches, as indeed my own, show that that substance the Rotoas might emitt - or the effect they have on Kitins anyway - is limited in impact to the white Kitins of the Deep and has no effect whatever on the Kitins more or less natural on the bark. That would imply that while the Rotoas were able until now to adapt to an environment not natural to them, they were not able to evolve that far to adapt to the Kitins which are assimilated on the bark for a long time already. They affect only the Kitins whose natural surroundings they use to share, down in the roots. This is a setback in a way, for it makes every research towards an anti-Kitin remedy more complicated. However, if we are able to distill something which affects those Kitins invading the bark again and again, it would make living for us Matis, for all hominkind much easier ...

Last edited by Salazar (10 years ago)

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Salazar Caradini
Filira Matia
Royal Historian
Member of the Royal Academy of Yrkanis
First Seraph of the Order of the Argo Navis
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