Ice cactus

Nobody knows when the first ice cactus was discovered in the Fiery Frost Mountain. Nobody goes there because of the dangers. But everybody agrees that it is not a natural plant. It just cannot be.

The conditions where the ice cactus lives are highly volatile, changing from blistering heat to freezing cold in second and back. There is not any other plant that can survive that. The plant is not a cactus, and there is no similarity with other cacti. It was named cactus because of its tolerance to the inhospitable environment.

The plant itself looks like a rock. A dark greyish, roughly fist size ball. It is pretty easy to recognize, but it is quite a feat to get it because the ice cacti live in the lakes found in the mountain. And these lakes are sometimes ice lakes but sometimes lava pits. You must be amazingly fast or fortunate or both to get an ice cactus during the ice lake period. Not one person knows how the ice cacti survive when an ice lake changes to a lava pit. The current leading theory is that during the ice lake phase, the ice cactus draws as much moisture from the ice into itself and when the lake changes to a lava pit, that moisture is released slowly but steadily to protect the cactus. Of course, nobody was able to prove this theory yet. This theory comes from a couple of hobgoblin scholars who were able to get their hands on a couple of dried-out cacti and were able to analyze them.

The other theory is, of course, that it is magical. The lava-ice changes in the mountain is unnatural, but the mountain itself was created during the Rending, the lupians have unnatural origins and the lupian hybrids are the worst them all. Why will a small plant be different in this region? But of course, this theory has not been proven either.

I want to study the ice cactus where it lives, but it is so dangerous, and I'm so frightened

— Kuduzel, hobgoblin scholar