Stormflowers Species in Wyral | World Anvil
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Stormflowers

The weather is wild and untamable - except for a pioneering experiment in the Jade Tower, no mortals have ever even attempted to exert continuous control over the winds and clouds of the upper atmosphere, and found very little success even in singular instances. So the rare stormflowers are a unique species of wyrflora indeed, to be able to create localised weather patterns. Storm clouds hang perpetually over the areas that these tree-like plants root themselves, and the constant lightning strikes kill everything besides the stormflowers themselves - creating a grey backdrop in which their electric blue and white petals are all the more... striking.  

Caged Storms

Delicate Death

Stormflowers can grow as tall as large trees, and act like them in many ways. Their stems are made of hardy wooden bark, usually scarred from so many years of being hit by lightning, but the 'trunk' grows a bud at its tip instead of branches, which eventually sprouts into the flower that these wyrflora are known for. The flower petals, stunning shades of blue and white, are always radiating pollen too heavy to be swept away - creating windfalls of gold across the otherwise-barren ground.   While a stormflower itself is a sight to behold, its surroundings are far less beautiful. It is as-yet unclear what unique property of the species allows it to exert magical force all the way in the upper atmosphere, perhaps because of how difficult it is to get near enough to study one. From the moment one sprouts, a localised storm system forms over the plant, placing most ambient wyr in the area in constant use. Due to the nature of storm magic - that is, to be attracted to or repelled by itself - any Vessels that could store wyr are rendered unusable, making it near-impossible to cast within the storm system. And that is only the magical issues that stormflowers present; as might be expected, the storm system experiences constant, magically-enhanced lightning strikes which render the earth barren.  

Lightning's Blessing

Interestingly, the first records of stormflowers, like the Lifewells of the southern continent, date back to the Lirustime. Most people, as well as scholars, hold that they were blessings given out by Fulmen, the Just Stormbreak Wolf. When the Midnight surged, leaving yawning chasms into the darkness which endlessly consumed wyr, Fulmen created these as 'anchors' - their wyr-capturing ability allowed them to somewhat stabilise the disrupted currents of wyr, and thus, ironically, make it easier for mages across the world to cast.   In the millennia since, they have become increasingly rare - they were never common to begin with, and the pollen they produce is too heavy to be moved long distances by normal winds. When they do manage to reproduce, it is unsurprisingly thanks to a larger storm, which may provide strong enough winds to move pollen from one flower to another. But considering how any homesteads or farmlands - or even small settlements - would be destroyed by the growth of a nearby stormflower, perhaps this is less of a blessing than a curse.

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