The Myrroweave: A Silent Veil
The Myrroweave is a fungal lattice that hangs like veils of frost across the Valemire canopy. To the untrained eye, its pale shimmer looks like dew or mist, but in truth it is a living net: a web of bioluminescent hyphae, each strand humming with a faint current. Locals call it Seythra, “the quiet eater.” Wanderers have given it the name Myrroweave, for the way it glows like spun mirror-thread under the moons.
Though feared by the careless, it is not mere hazard. The weave is both predator and steward. It prunes the swamp of excess, binding insects, birds, and small beasts in a cycle of quiet dissolution. Those who live near its colonies respect it as much as they avoid it, learning its signs and warning children to give it wide berth.
Appearance
Fine cords span tree to tree, gossamer and nearly invisible by day, radiant at night with a soft blue-white pulse. From a distance they resemble frost-lace, sheets of delicate ice, though the swamp air is warm and heavy. Close inspection reveals that the threads throb faintly with life, drawing down into hidden roots anchored in tree hollows and swamp mud.
Habitat & Function
The Myrroweave thrives in the wettest groves of the Valemire, often clinging high in Ashwillows or swamp cedars. It seems to prefer places where waterways choke with insects and birds feed in excess. Where the weave grows, the balance shifts: swarms thin, carrion vanishes quickly, and fish return in greater number to the clear channels.
It does not overfeed. Weaves that take too many creatures wither within weeks, as if balance itself were their sustenance. They endure only where the circuit holds — death passing into root, root into soil, soil into bloom.
Behavior
- Predatory Net: The strands carry a faint electric charge. Moths and sparrows stiffen instantly; larger animals stagger but escape with burns and numbness. The victim softens, body reduced to nutrient slurry drawn down through the cords.
- Measured Appetite: It never consumes all at once. Only a few bodies vanish in any given night, leaving the rest untouched.
- Silent Growth: Expands slowly, sometimes vanishing from one grove only to appear in another weeks later.
Diet
Feeds upon small birds, insects, bats, frogs, and any creature under twenty pounds that lingers too long in its net. On rare occasions, larger animals blunder into the weave, but seldom perish — stunned, scarred, then freed.
Relations with People
The people of the Valemire do not treat the weave as holy, but as a reality of the swamp. Folklore and warnings shape their view:
- Parents tell children, “Step under the white threads and the forest will count you.”
- Hunters avoid camping beneath its glow, lest their dogs vanish by morning.
- Fishers note where the weave hangs, believing clear water nearby is a safer place to cast.
The Myrroweave is neither hated nor revered, only recognized — a hazard to be respected, a rhythm of the land to be acknowledged.
Traits & Rumors
- Luminous Threads — Glows at night, lighting whole groves in a cold shimmer.
- Paralytic Current — Stuns small prey instantly; numbs larger creatures.
- Memory Net — Whispers, dreams, and voices of the dead are said to linger in its hum.
- Balance-Keeper — Never overfeeds; vanishes from places where prey is scarce.
Dangers & Encounters
- Travelers may stumble into a glowing veil stretched across a path. The paralysis is brief, but enough to leave one disoriented.
- Hunters risk losing their hounds if they camp too near.
- Adventurers might find a grove overhung with Myrroweave, forcing them to cut through — at great risk of drawing the fungus’s retribution.
Oddities
- In dry seasons the weave contracts, leaving behind brittle, salt-crusted husks of its strands. Locals grind these into powder and claim it numbs pain when rubbed into wounds.
- Some lattices are found strung with feathers, insect wings, or bones, arranged in patterns too deliberate to dismiss as chance.
- A few claim that the weave hums in rhythms resembling language — not words, but intention.
- Sleepers beneath its canopy sometimes dream vividly of the dead, memories sharpened uncomfortably upon waking.
Notes & Reflections
The first time I lay beneath it, I felt not fear, but a quiet reckoning. As though the forest itself, through the weave, was recording me: my warmth, my weight, even the thought of me. It is no beast of hunger alone, but a ledger — life taken in, life written down.
