Chilies, Various

Class:	Animate Plants
Hab:	Arid areas
Fre:	Common
Num:	10-10,000
Lair:	Sessile; 100%
Size:	3' shrubs to 50' trees
Move:	Sessile but branches move fast
Def:	Tough, somewhat springy wood
Att:	By type; chili oil burns flesh and organic materials
Int:	None
Spec:	Hot hot hot! Some domesticable
Posns:	Culinary and alchemical value; some cultivated

Chilies

Chilies are pepper plants with very hot fruit. Those described here are rather dangerous varieties, evolved from ordinary chilies by strange "weird science" mutating radiations, sorcerous experimentation, or as divine presentations - whether presented to reward the faithful or punish the insolent may not be clear.

These chilies are classed as animate plants because they are neither smart enough nor mobile enough to be vegimals.

Chili Trees

Chili trees come in three varieties, clubbers, floggers, and spritzers. The chili trees use their fruit to defend themselves - sometimes quite aggressively. Because of this, old fruit stays on the tree for a full year, dropping off only when replacements become available.

Chili shrubs may just be young chili tree saplings or they may be specific varieties that never grow over a yard in height. Chili shrubs are known in almost as many varieties as chili trees.

Clobberers

Clobbering chili trees have fruit shaped something like large flabby paddles. In combat, they whap, smacking with the sticky fruit to leave a swath of sticky, caustic oil.

Floggers

Flogging chili trees have fruit in long, flexible strips which they whirl like whips. While the damage they do is comparable to that of the cobbering chilies, their reach is substantially further. They are also far more aggressive.

Spritzers

Spritzing chili trees have fruit shaped a normal, blocky pepper or like a Chinese lantern flower pod. They do not strike at their foes. Rather, they take aim and spritz a spray of pepper oil, jetting the wet cloud at their foes.

In all cases, the chili oil is caustic enough to burn flesh; it will also soon destroy leather, fabrics, and most other organic items, and even some inert items such as even limestone or marble or bronze. If it gets in the eyes, blindness and intense pain are immediate; the blindness may be permanent.

Chili Brush Barrier

Chili brush is generally composed of smaller relatives of one of the types of chili trees or shrubs described above.

Chili brush barriers may grow quite densely, forming a solid wall of shrubs where there is sufficient moisture. In these areas, the dense chili brush forms a formidable barrier indeed.

In drier habitats, chili brush may grow as widely-spaced scrub. In this case, a traveler may easily avoid contact with the bushes when traveling slowly, but when in a hurry, or fighting, or otherwise distracted, brushing up against the chili bushes is inevitable. Sometime seemingly wide-spaced scrub bushes actually have long, springy stalks and a surprisingly wide range of reach.

Chilies are a favorite food of the Bonnacon (which SEE), a beast of traditional mythology famous for its incendiarily fiery flatulence.

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Apr 4, 2006