On Loria Broadly
The Flora
Loria’s green is not scenery. Forests, reeds, and thornlands set the terms of travel, trade, shelter, and belief. Bioluminescence is common, not as ornament but as language; vines grow thick as columns; some groves seem to shift their paths between one dawn and the next. Most folk treat the flora as neighbors—aware, slow, and powerful in their own way.
Where the Green Lives
The heartlands are a misted belt of rainforest, swamp, and wetland—Pacific Northwest density meeting the heat of Indonesia. Dawn fog hangs low; everything breathes. Sheer coastal cliffs break into geometric stacks of stone, while inland terraces carry root and reed. Far to the northwest, a volcanic scar burns black and red beneath a constant plume; almost nothing grows there.
Bioluminescence concentrates in the forested lowlands and open grasslands. Plants here evolved light for pollinators, warning, and communication: some caps signal night-flying insects, some roots “pulse” to coordinate fruiting along the Underroot, and some leaves flare at passing shadow—deterring browsers the way a cuttlefish flashes. Three moons give ample night; the plants answer in kind.
Drinking the Sky
Water is not only in the ground. Many species harvest the air itself. High boughs drape with veil-roots—fans of hair-fine filaments coated in a hygroscopic gel. They comb mist, bead it into droplets, wick it to storage bulbs, then down to the trunk. In drought, whole canopies survive on sky alone. Villagers weave their own veil-frames and hang them from rafters to fill cisterns overnight.
The Titans and Their Ladders
Tower species anchor settlements. Great trees and woody spirecaps share the canopy; their bases hold workshops and sleeping hollows cut along the grain so the host keeps growing. Up the trunks, living vines as thick as a person’s waist climb in slow spirals. They are often slate-grey and wrinkled; after rain, new growth moves visibly—an inching, snake-slow reach toward light. Some bristle with thorns the size of a knife; others fruit heavy, apple-big berries that feed half a village.
These vines are roads. Where they arch between trunks, people plank them into sky-bridges. In safer districts they are public; in troubled woods they are hidden—hoisted ladders and camouflaged entries only locals can find.
The Brindlefolk in the Trees
The Brindlefolk—small, quick, clever—have been driven into the canopy for generations. They carve rooms into living wood, then grow bark back over their doors. Rope-paths and trapladders vanish into the leaves; tunnels run down through roots to springs and bolt-holes. Where rulers are kinder they trade openly—herbs, graft work, and sky-honey. Elsewhere they keep to the green, because slavers still hunt the small.
Teeth, Venom, Patience
Hazardous plants are part of ordinary life. Some release invisible plumes that numb the lungs when trampled. Others are pits that close: lamp-bright throats snapping shut, slamming prey into sour fluid that digests bone to slurry in days. There are slow movers too—groves that lean by inches across a path over a season, or creepers that tighten by heat and breath. Hunters learn the counters: bark mantles to cross seed-firing shrubs; cool water to slacken throttle vines; charcoal masks for spore-fog.
Most of these are not monsters. They are the land feeding itself.
The Ash Belt and the Threading Flower
Nothing gentle grows in the northwest lava fields—save one small thing. A rare, fractal “flower” (not true blossom) threads roots down through basalt, hair-thin for hundreds of meters, seeking seams of mineral and heat. Field hands call the plant threadroot for what it gives: fibers drawn from its cable-roots that twist into ropes stronger than iron in water. The living part above ground is dark—deep purples and reds with a lime-white heart, tendrils whiskering like a cat’s. It doesn’t know it’s beautiful; it only knows to reach.
Harvest is harsh work and dangerous. Some Houses try to fence the ashlands for threadroot rights; accidents and sabotage are common.
Uses, Crafts, and City Light
Plant work is everyone’s work. Food comes from flood-tolerant grains, bulb-terraces, vine-fruit trained up ladders, nut groves on the hills. Rope and sailcloth come from reed and bast; hulls from ironwood ribs; resin seals roofs and boats. Dyes run blue and rust from marsh plants; oils fuel lamps where moonlight fails.
Tolmir strings bio-lamps along its worst fog alleys—living jars of soft green light cultured from leaf photophores. In Shroud, harbor beacons glow without flame, pulsing to the rhythm of Orriven’s slow arc.
On Speech and Sense
Most folk accept that plants are aware—different speed, different sense. They feel pressure, taste air, listen through root and leaf. The Underroot ties signal to signal until groves act like single bodies. Some scoff and cite measurements that say otherwise; most shrug and go on speaking softly to the grain they sow.
Two schools stand out:
- Root-listeners wait and watch, mapping leaf-turn and sap-rise like music.
- Graftwrights work with knife and twine, splicing for strength, shade, or light. Their bridges grow sturdier with decades, not weaker.
An advisor in House Eldrath—Ilyra Fen, the plant-speaker—sits council on all matters green. People say she can stand in a grove and have the grove answer. Whether that’s miracle or practice is a question most don’t press.
Laws, Taboos, and the Return
Harvest follows rites. Certain rings are left untouched; certain trees are cut only on Highlight’s last moon; certain climbs are paid with a braid of firstfruit. To break taboo is to risk the Return—Loria’s quiet law that what you take comes back around, not as punishment, but as balance. A cutter who wastes timber might find storms in his path for a season; a village that feeds a grove in lean years may find its flood spared their doors.
The Return isn’t moral math. It’s how the world answers.
Seasons in Leaf
- Wake: Mist-drinking trees run full; veil-roots bead and flow at dawn. Sowing begins the day Cynvara rises earliest.
- Highlight: Resin and dye peak; coppice cycles turn; sky-bridges are repaired after storms.
- Wane: Nuts and bulbs; grafts are set and bound; canopy tightens against cold winds.
- Shroud: Leaves thin; glow-bloom spreads through understories; bio-lamps are divided and replanted before the long nights.
Philosophy of Place
Treat the flora as quarry and it will feed you—for a time. Treat it as neighbor and it will keep you longer. Paths close to those who hurry. Doors open for those who bring water to the thirsty root. In Loria, the green is not decoration. It is the medium of life, the slow intelligence under every step, and the first voice you hear when the world goes quiet.