Learning From The Best
From The Pardusian Chronicles
Nature has always brought us the most beautiful sights across the known universe like the incredible carrassath. The chemicals in its petals are affected by sunlight and oxygen and water and have radical changes when any of these change. And as nothing is constant, the petals change colour from hour to hour. A truly remarkable plant.
However, the other side of nature is deadly. Nature has produced some of the deadliest plants and creatures known to any being. The fearsome bukax plant has a vapour defence powerful to stop even the Ska’ari in their tracks.
But it was a few years ago that an independent research company hired me for a very dangerous task involving my knowledge of deadly animals and plant life. I was asked to research the Pholupos plant. The pholupos is a sea dwelling plant found only on certain Keldon class M planets where the salt concentration is low. I am unable to disclose the exact planets and locations of these plants due to them being endangered and their ability to kill almost any living being. My exact research was to analyse its defensive capabilities.
The pholupos is of medium size, approximately two grads (one Earth metre, three Ska’ari bhaals, seven Rashkir mips) in all dimensions. The plant supports a large bulb in the middle, bright red in colour, that holds the fruit of the plant – four seeds which when ripe were considered among the greatest tastes in Keldon society.
However, surrounding the bulb is its protection. Usually around nine small bulbs on thick tentacles grow from the short centre stem surrounding the centre bulb. These bulbs are regarded as one of the deadliest weapons in all of nature. They each fire 3 fast groups of spores, rather like a buckshot, at any aggressors simultaneously before more spores are fed from the centre stem. The spores are made of a hardened carbon shell, fired at a rate that can easily pierce most armour.
This research was not going to be easy. The pholupos was harvested for its seeds before the Great War by shooting from the plant down through the middle of the stem with a thin electrode and burning the core of the plant from above water. However, I needed to research a live plant.
I decided to first test some armours against it with robots. I lost four robots before I managed to find a combination of armour that allowed the robot to return to the surface – even though it was still peppered with holes. Nothing seemed to work so I decided that I should try a different tactic that would be highly costly, but would let me get the results I would need. I decided to use bait in the form of yet more robots. As I was to be analysing its spores I thought this would be useful in the long run anyway.
Using this tactic I managed a little over 7 hours researching the plant. I had been shot at twice, taken a spore through the leg for which I still have the scar and the plant had even saved me when it shredded a young vralgew that swam up behind me. But the results were priceless and the company were very pleased.
It was over a year later that I saw my research attached to the side of a battle scarred PASC in the form of what is now known as a bio-spore array.
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