Alabaster Moss

Alabaster Moss

“The dog that trots about, finds a bone.” - Golda Meir

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Summary:
Marring the landscape as a cruel bone-white scar, Alabaster Moss evokes a sense of otherworldly eeriness, a veritable tombstone to what was lost in the ancient past. Most often seen on ancient battlefields, the moss clings close to the ground, sprawling across the earth in a spider-like fashion; small and bulbous clumps of the growth standing no higher than six inches. Narrow reddish floral bodies poke sparsely from within the moss, giving it the faintest fleck of color amidst an otherwise blank sea of off-white.

As legend tells, the Alabaster Moss came about as a representation of the divine’s sorrow towards mortalkind; wars and conflicts spilling the blood of men and beast, piecemeal demolishing nature for the furtherment of the engines of war. This despair led to the birth of a marker, a tombstone provided by no man, and only set upon the realm by the extension of life herself. An alabaster color, prostrated eternally upon the ground where countless men fell, the moss serves as a gravemarker, to last till the very earth forgets the presence of those who died, and their bodies are all but a faded memory. It only grows in places of great loss, where the bodies of man and horse had piled high, and the ground was stained crimson by the ever-full coffers of war.

Basic Description:
Alabaster Moss is a low-lying ground shrub which takes the appearance of a lichen-like substance, possessing many spindly and bulbous branches that trail from the central stalk. Being an eerie bonelike color and harboring many small internal pockets, the best approximation to the Alabaster Moss is a surface-dwelling coral. Much akin to coral, the plant grows and branches in varied directions, lacking entirely in leaves, and instead being covered in thin, hairlike protuberances.


Rarity: Rare

Location:
Alabaster Moss is only known to grow in locations where battles, mass graves, and other horrific events have occurred. This is naturally due to the high concentration of calcium, iron and other nutrients that have found their way into the earth due to the volume of decomposites. It would be possible to grow the plant elsewhere, so long as the environment possesses an exceedingly high concentration of such elements.


Properties:
Spiny and lacking entirely in leaves, the plant is most similar to a coral.
It possesses very little in terms of nutrients, and animals tend to not eat it.
Alabaster Moss grows only in locations rich in decomposites, such as mass graves and battlefields.


Special Properties:
The hollows and pockets within the stalks of the Alabaster Moss contain relatively high concentrations of elemental oxygen and sodium, and is quite flammable.