Gurglush-ra
Overview
The Gurglush-ra is a plant located in the dark ocean-caves of the homeworld of the Chronomancers. Its colour varies from soft blue-green to dark blue, sometimes black. It consists of one large core - the seed - and a lot of veins. Depending on age, environment and other factors it can get a few hundred years old.
Habitat
The Gurglush-ra exists in various locations and in several variations of itself. Most of the variations are similar to the normal plant, but some of them are more aggressive than others.
They live in darker caves where next to no light hits the ground where they feed on... well, anything. Be it fish, plants or careless visitors like Humans or unexperienced Chronomancers who dives to careless. The plant loves cold water and small cracks where it can stuff itself into to protect the digesting system located in the seed right with the "heart".
Sometimes a Gurglush-ra lays flat on the ocean floor and awaits slow, injured or just lazy things, be it another plant or living things.
Behaviour & Appearance
The Gurglush-ra looks originally like a darkish green ball of thread with a brown core beneath it. When it is settling in a dark cave or in a crack it starts to grow dark tendrils, colour ranges from faint green to dark blue or black. Those have small thornes which bury inside the soon-to-be-eaten-prey and, even when it is only a plant, can pull with enough force to even get small boats under water.
Gurglush-ras are slow eaters and slow movers. They tend to stick with a position for years, if not decades, where they devour their prey slow and painfully with their digestive liquids. A Chronomancer for example would take a few weeks to get entirely eaten when he wouldn't drown before.
Gurglush-ras look harmless like normal grass on the ocean floor, but if you notice the tendrils moving, you should run swim away as fast as you can. Not that the plant is fast, but there is probably more than one.
Variants
The Gurglush-ra come in a few variants. They are all more or less alike with one core and hundreds of tendrils, but some are so chilled they only feed on plants and move literally next to never. Others are so vicious that they follow their prey even out of their protective environment to eat something. Which isn't very fast, a slow walker can out...walk them, but still.
There is only one report of a flaming red variant, deep below in the darkest canyons of the Chronomancer homeworld. The legend goes that this variant feeds entirely on blood. Which is nonsense, but so goes the legend.
Usage
Besides being used as traps, the Gurglush-ra is used by the Chronomancers only for a really strong acid (made out of its digesting system) and the liquid inside the tendrils. This very thick and green liquid is the main ingredient for the Chronomancers Favourite, a dessert-like dish.
Strangling tales
"Under the sea... Darling it's better ... Down where it's wetter..."
"What?"
"Sorry?"
"Why are you singing that?"
"Because we are under the sea?"
"Yes, but... why? What is it?"
"Oh, an old terran movie. You wouldn't understand it."
"Where is my son?"
"Gone."
"What do you mean with gone?"
"What I said. He wanted to go into the water and stepped on a Gurglush-ra."
"Oh. That fool."
"It is a nasty business to harvest the liquid. You can't do it without danger and you can't raise them outside the ocean. We do not know why, but they don't grow outside of it, not even when we bring the same water with us."
"Maybe they don't like you?"
"That is a plant. Why should a plant have feelings?"
"I do not know. You are walking quantum computer and you still have feelings."
"Point taken."
"I swear by my brain and the brain of my ancestors!"
"No way..."
"I swear it!"
"I heard you the first time; that doesn't make it true or false!"
"But you have to look for yourself. Come on."
"To look at what exactly?"
"The mouth... the mouth full of teeth where no mouth shouldn't be..."
Eeek. Scary!
Yup!