Draugvine

Description:

is a venom-laced shore-creeper, named for the restless dead known as draugar. Found curling through salt-scoured stone, dried lakebeds, and forgotten tidewrack, it thrives where wind howls and water once whispered. Its hooked thorns pierce deep, delivering a slow, creeping venom that numbs the blood and stirs the mind into fever. Said to bloom where the drowned still dream, it is both feared and revered—used by poisonbinders, sea-seers, and desert oathkeepers to awaken memory, bind spirit, or end pain without fire.

Structure & Growth:

• Creeping vine with segmented runners that hug low ground and snake through rock, salt, and sand


• Hooks into surfaces with jagged black thorns—difficult to pull free without tearing flesh


• Blooms only beneath moonlight or eclipse, unfurling small, violet-gray flowers in hidden clusters


• Thrives along lake shores, coastal cliffs, desert basins, and brine-choked ruins

Color & Toxins:

• Vines range from ash-grey to bruised violet, with a faint sheen under starlight


• Thorns are glossy black, sometimes mistaken for obsidian splinters


• Sap is thick, dark red, and caustic—causes welts, fever, and hallucinations if absorbed


• Toxin travels slowly, inducing paralysis, thirst, and cold-burning pain at puncture sites

Scent & Reaction:

• Crushed leaves give off a sharp, briny scent with notes of scorched kelp and bloodied iron


• Skin contact causes delayed numbness followed by deep, itching heat beneath the skin


• Dried flowers, when smoked, bring vivid dreams of sea-voices, salt-ghosts, or long-buried truths


• Burning vines emit a bitter grey smoke used in rituals to call or drive off the drowned dead

Folklore:

"Where Draugvine grows, the dead have not finished their tale. In salt-stung villages, dried coils are wound into wreaths and hung over doorways to keep draugar and sea-wraiths from crossing the threshold. In the desert, it is burned before oath-making or vengeance rites, binding the speaker to truth beneath sky and stone. Some say it first sprouted from the bones of a drowned jötunn cast upon both shore and sand. When its flowers hum on moonless nights, wanderers know they are not alone."