Pestiferous Vine
A hybrid fungus-plant that enslaves mobs via parasitic worms — a dungeon trope, killed by feeding it poisoned blood.
Story so far
A Pestiferous Vine is a collective mind-control monster Mordecai calls a lazy-writing 'trope' of the third and sixth floors — a real hybrid of fungus and an off-Earth plant that excretes mold spores infecting parasitic worms, which in turn infect other mobs into a tri-symbiont slave relationship, regrowing them from a single spore. Crawlers die by the hundreds to them, yet they're among the easiest to kill if you know the trick: the vine loves moisture and blood, so dripping a few drops of poisoned blood onto a vine breaks its link to all its symbionts, turning it to mulch in about fifteen to twenty minutes — painlessly and without its knowledge. The catch: if it suspects, it can be cured by an equal amount of the same blood carrying an antidote, so it will try to bleed the poisoner.
Ringmaster Grimaldi is a Pestiferous Vine.
Appearance
A pale-green fungal vine/bush with spreading roots; excretes mold spores and controls worm-infected host mobs.
Role
The vine-monster archetype behind the circus quest and its kill mechanic.
Relationships
Sources — 1 recorded facts, by chapter
- A hybrid fungus-plant that enslaves mobs via parasitic worms — a dungeon trope, killed by feeding it poisoned blood.