Diversity | 0/5 | There is only one consistent version of Blueblades. No variants have been discovered as of now. |
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Ecosystemic Hazards | 5/5 | Remaining too long in the expansive fields of Blueblades can be a slow and painful end to one's life. |
Terrain Navigability | 1/5 | Blueblades are very easy to walk through, although it may be slower than walking on bare dirt or sand. |
Liminal Resonance | 2/5 | Within Rootspace, Blueblades' effect on the neurological systems of humans and other lifeforms is only amplified. The further from Rootspace a field of Blueblades is, the slower it begins to affect the mind. Overall, this grass is a non-threat if one navigates themselves through the area affected swiftly and with precaution. |
FOREWORD:
Blueblades1 is a native variant of grass only found within the Arborescent System. The literal blue of the grass2 is a break from the overwhelming greens of the spaces within Arbor, although the beauty of it is only surface level. Without sharp instinct and quick movement, anyone can fall victim to the whims of its pacification. Like an ocean suddenly emerging in the middle of a forest, the plant spreads outwards onto all horizons, drowning those unlucky enough to overextend their stay in its fields.
Biology:
Blueblades break the conventional norms seen in other grasses, making its biology a wonder for many Visionists within Arbor. For example, the height of a Blueblade can vary from 127 millimeters to about 1.52 Meters, creating a range unseen anywhere else. Another important aspect of a Blueblade is its aforementioned blue color, which has been observed to attract wildlife away from the safety of their lush green surroundings into the expanses of the plant’s network. This works towards the Blueblade's benefit, as it can use the wildlife for nutrients after the specific animal fully loses consciousness.3
The rough, sharp texture of the leaves and stems of a Blueblade give it the latter half of its name, with some wounds and cuts being a guarantee when moving through the fields unless one uses the proper safety equipment to keep their body from touching the plant. This property of the Blueblade has been assumed to be a natural defense mechanism to prevent individual patches from being derooted. The roots are an expansive network, so when one Blueblade is tugged upwards, all the others suffer some amount of damage. This feeds into the ideas and theories about how the Blueblade's network spreads, with the leading concept stating that it runs its roots miles and miles outwards, beginning to grow and establish new fields in more open areas between dense tree lines.
It could be anywhere beneath anyone, spreading further and further throughout the many lands of the Arborescent system… like a veiled plague. Nature consumes itself here, and this only perpetuates that.
Uses & Origin:
Although extended visits to Blueblade fields are incredibly risky ventures, short-term harvesting of the plants can reap many benefits for those who require them. A simpler use for a Blueblade would be to extract a natural dye from it, which can serve many purposes in survival. Leaving marks on trees to create a coordinated path or simply adding flair to clothing, the blue pigment can be a handy tool to have. Not many other plants can give that intense, stand-out coloring. The dye extraction can be completed by breaking a stalk of a Blueblade into smaller pieces and mixing the fragments with heated fluids for around an hour.
Through experimentation with Blueblades and the process of extracting dye, it was also discovered that the plant is entirely edible and can serve as a good caloric resource if one consumes the tuber clusters that act as enlarged, starch-rich parts of Blueblade roots, connecting outwards to hundreds of individual Blueblades. These tuber clusters existing on the grass's underground roots are due to Blueblades sharing genes with Begonias yet skewing the tubers with their incomprehensible growth. However, to even begin the process of consuming one of these plants, one must deal with the awful stench that comes from a dead Blueblade. This smell is most akin to rotting meat, although the majority of people have made a connection to the musk of spoiled eggs. To deal with the smell, the application of native tree sap onto the plant does well and adds a bit of flavor to the basic “nothing” taste of a Blueblade. Not many dishes have been made with the plant due to the immense struggle to actively harvest and grow it, if done at all4, but it has been stated on multiple occasions that it “Compliments cooked meat quite well.” It has also been observed that the plant can be used to mix into tea, providing a soothing effect with phytomelatonin helping the body prepare to pass toward sleep.
With the stench and the pacification process that the plant causes within organic beings, many Visionists have placed its origin within the darker recesses of the Arborescent system. This makes sense in concept due to the precedent that has been set by spaces further from the heartwood, with death and decomposition being overly present.5 Manipulation of consciousness is also a very common thing to see in places further from the heartwood, which is what defines the Blueblade. However, despite all the functional evidence pointing towards Blueblades being sourced from these spaces, there is no possible way to determine the actual origin point at the time that this article is being written.
The Pacification Process:
The pacification process acts as the dark heart of a Blueblade, propelling its existence from an anomaly to an active threat to various forms of life. Anything in contact with or in the vicinity of a Blueblade is at risk of being affected by the plant, and unless action is taken to prevent the slow creep of a Blueblade's grasp on the mind, death is an utmost guarantee. Although the “How?” of the plant’s hijacking of the brain has still gone unanswered despite extensive research and testing, this problem still stands certain. There may never be an answer, but in reading this, somebody can at least know the signs to look for to avoid the descent into eternal sleep.
The process itself takes root over an estimated eight-hour period and can be broken down into four stages:
Stage One: Light Effect
Stage One shows the initial signs that can signal that someone is in danger of falling victim to the pacification process. This stage is defined as the ambient effect of existing within an area with the plant and usually begins during the first two to four hours of being exposed to/being in the radius of a field or concentration of Blueblades. The starting symptoms are barely noticeable, with the main effects being an uptick in eye twitching, repeated scratching of the ears, and one’s eyelids staying shut for a longer time than usual during a blink. If this is noticed, immediately attempt to move away from the area where the symptoms were discovered. If an escape is not found, Stage Two is but a guarantee.
Stage Two: Definite Effect
Stage Two is the true beginning of a Blueblade's grip on one’s consciousness, with its effects becoming blatantly obvious to those affected. It begins around six hours after someone has entered the general area of a Blueblade field, with its arrival being evident through ten minutes of clarity followed by a complete loss of stamina. One may struggle to move and carry weighted objects that they were once able to do without care. Movement becomes sluggish, and the thought of sleep may enter the head of an affected person. Do not let it subjugate your mind.
Counteracting the lethargy gained can be done quite easily with any sort of access to a caffeinated item, but not escaping after this stage has taken effect can seal anyone’s fate.
Stage Three: Transitionary/Heavy Effect
Stage Three represents the transition from being awake to the total loss of consciousness that caps off the pacification. Stage Three begins after eight hours of constant exposure to the radius of a Blueblades field. Hallucinations and intense fatigue apply to all until they are whisked away into complete slumber. From then on, all mental activity ceases, and any person(s) affected will be completely unresponsive. There is no coming back from this. It is death, slowly seeping into your neurons until they all go dark.
Stage Four: Engulfment
After death, a Blueblade's job is not finished. The ground itself begins to shift, slowly absorbing anything near the affected person(s), including the person(s) themselves. This is a slow and brutal process - usually taking a day or so for any items to fully become entrapped below the ground. It is nigh impossible to recover anything once it has passed downwards, making any corpse collection efforts completely null unless a body is still in the process of Engulfment. It is unknown if the Blueblades plant uses its prey’s husks for sustenance or perhaps does something else with them.
In complete defiance of this danger, some communities do attempt to harvest Blueblades away from their main settlements and use the plant as one of their main sources of food. Usually, this is done to ensure nutritional security, as Blueblades regrow unnaturally fast and can be farmed in most environments regardless of the weather. These farmers who face death without fear have been given the name “Sleepwalkers'', as they spend hours upon hours slowly cutting away at dense tangles of roots beneath the earth to get to the tuber clusters6, completely bypassing the pacification process through the maintained consumption of caffeine. Some have also crafted makeshift weapons to make cutting through roots easier, and it is a necessity to have some sort of nose plugs to prevent the awful smell. What would be considered a death walk to most is simply another day of work for these few who provide for all those who rely on them.
Some local wildlife groups have begun to adapt to the presence of the Blueblade in their ecosystem after long periods. They not only avoid falling victim to pacification but also use the plants to their benefit for sustenance. These animals can be divided into two groups: herbivores and carnivores. The herbivores primarily burrow under the ground to reach the tuber clusters, and the carnivores wait for prey to become afflicted by the process so they can easily catch and consume them. Specifically, it has been observed that scavenger birds tend to hover above older fields, waiting for anything to lose consciousness so they can swoop in and begin to consume their carcass. Pocket Gophers have also been seen creating tunnels near the fields, allowing them consistent and easy ways to access the roots with a linear escape if their fatigue grows too strong.
Finally, some do believe that once the pacification process has taken its toll and someone has passed away, it is not the end of the affected's consciousness. This concept was first brought to light by the lone remaining member of a 3-man archivist team, who had lost his other two companions to an encounter with a Blueblades field in one of the heartwood-adjacent spaces that had not been properly notated as being a host of the grass. In his writings, he raved about how his companions' consciousnesses had simply been absorbed into some sort of mind network that the field had held in its roots. This concept quickly took hold in many Vagrant-aligned groupings and has remained popular to this day. Like most things relating to Blueblades, there is no evidence to prove this concept as anything close to fact. An excerpt from the writings of the lone member states the idea of his belief, although it is not to be taken as fact. Stay aware.
I remember stumbling out of the valley that day. Everything in my body was screaming at me to go back, to at least take them alongside me, but I couldn’t muster the courage. I just kept running into the trees until I passed out somewhere deep in the forest. I… had thought I was going to die alongside them. Waking up to the darkness of the forest once more, I thought myself to be dead. Birds chirped all around me. The faint breeze rustled leaves in the distance. It was like waking up from a nightmare. For a few seconds, there was nothing but utter bliss in my mind. Then the thought of Malik came back, and I remembered just why I was lying down in some random bush. I wanted to cry. Vomit. I paced around and around the stump of a nearby tree, simply just working through the concept that they were gone. My stomach felt like it had frozen solid, and I simply murmured their names through my stifled cries. That's what I did for the next four hours. I just sat there with my thoughts, quietly dripping tears into the dirt.
Had we been careless enough to let our minds be consumed by plant life as we chatted on and on about how everything around us had led us to this moment? I didn’t know then. None of us could have known that a field was nearby. It was a hilly area, and it must have been obscured from our view before we set up to sleep for the night. That stupid fucking “Cheers Up” thermos filled to the brim with coffee had saved my life. Those were the thoughts that were racing through my head as I finally got up and decided to begin walking. I didn’t have a direction or a goal, but after whatever amount of time passed, I found one of the split stumps that would take me back to the heartwood. A stump that would take me away from the place where I had lost my friends.
It took a long time for me to recover. Days spent wandering in other spaces, not communicating with any fellow Vagrants on what my goals would be. I needed to muster up the strength to make my way back to where they had passed, to at least see if there were any memories not consumed by the ground itself.
Eventually, I found myself back at that stump, reentering the place that had taken Jess and Malik from me. It didn’t take too long for me to find the hills. I found myself staring at the same area where I had tried to shake them awake, only to find that their bodies had already lost all their warmth and that the sediment was sinking beneath us. What I faced now was not that same open area looking directly out towards that orange sun. It had been overtaken by the Blueblades, now standing as another one of those fields. It was… an astonishing sight.
I did not go further then. I simply sat and stared towards the field, listening to the noises of nature around me. It did not take me long to realize that I could hear them, with their tiny whispers, speaking into my brain. It was unintelligible, complete gibberish being released from the exact voices of my friends. They kept speaking, and I kept listening. I sat there for so long that I almost found myself once again on the verge of death. This proved something to me. Malik and Jess weren’t gone. They had simply been reborn.
I make it a priority to go to that field with each day that passes by. Even now, as I write this onto the page, I sit, staring at the same field I have looked at so many times before. My breath is still taken away.
Explore deeper into Arbor. Find a field of these magnificent plants. Sit down, tune out all else, and simply prepare to listen.
In time, the symphony of the dead, masterfully playing the wind, will find you.
— Unknown, Pathways Beyond Darkness.