BloodBloom - Tears of Cael's Wives

All right then, the ever humble Altario has deserved himself aura, as well!

Having given my praise, here is the promised check. Comments, praises and mutterings in limegreen. Suggestions for changes in orange. Corrections (ie, where changes are necessary in my opinion) in yellow.

One general thing: You need to spell “Bloodbloom” and “Tears of Cael’s Wives” in capitals throughout. I’ve corrected this in the overview, but not in subsequent sections.
Anyway, so here we go:

BloodBloom aka Tears of Cael's Wives

Categorization > Flower

Overview
The tears of Cael's wives owe their secondary more common name to the barbarian commander Caeltakkar, who assisted the orcs in the Third Sarvonian War at Greyrock Maw. (It’s always good to start a text without assuming that the reader still remembers the title, and knows which part of the compendium s/he is reading. Sounds paradoxical, but I’ve found it to be a good rule. That means, among other things, that your overview must begin by saying that you’re writing about a flower. Also, your overview never explicitly mentions the most striking thing about the bloodbloom’s appearance – its colour!

How about starting the overview with something like this: The Bloodbloom is a rich karikrimson flower that grows exclusively in and around the Greyrock Maw gorge (is this a gorge? That’s unclear. Make it clear!) in the Tandala Highlands. It is more commonly known as “The Tears of Cael’s Wives” (mind the capitals here!), a name that it owes to its association with the barbarian commander Caeltakkar, who assisted the orcs in the Third Sarvonian War.” – Any good?) It is this man's ferocity and cruelty to the people of Sarvonia that is attributed as the main cause of the crimson Bloodbloom sprouting up ~~around Greyrock Maw~~ on the site of his most famous battle. People of Astran say that before the decision to rename Greyrock Castle to Caeltakkar Keep, these flowers had never been seen ~~before~~ (repetition of 'before'), not here in Greyrock Keep, nor anywhere else along the Tandala Highlands. While their origin is shrouded in ~~lore and~~ (less is more …) myth, the fact remains that the Tears of Cael's Wives grow strong and wicked (I like that! Strong and wicked!) in this limited area (“… in this limited area” is a bit bland as an expression. How about: “… out of the tortured soil” [?] – a matter of taste, I suppose), as if nature itself refused to let the spilt blood wash away.

Description
The bloodbloom is relatively simple in composition, rather it is the appearance of this flower that strikes at the viewer, both captivating them and instilling a distinct sense of awe and dread; something so striking could never come from good . Six oval shaped petals flow away upwards from the stem, overlapping concentrically. Half way up, the petals then double over and bend outwards, their tips drooping back towards the ground. Striking about the flower is that while the centre is always lusciously coloured and whole, the hanging edge of the petals are irregular and seem to be in a constant state of wither, as if the flower were manifesting against itself. (I think you could make the Description section a lot more atmospheric. The thing is: in the first sentence of this paragraph, you make the mouth-watering announcement of the flower’s striking appearance – and then you spend the next three sentences describing distinctly unstriking aspects of it! After such a first sentence, the reader wants to know what’s so special about this flower. So I’d suggest to rejig the order of things here: keep your first sentence, but then immediately follow with a description of the colour – ie with your second paragraph, maybe reformulated slightly to fit its new position. Say everything there is to say about the colour and its effect on people, and then start a new paragraph to focus on the more mundane aspects of the flower.)

The colour of the Tears of Cael's wives is always a distinct, rich karikrimson. Dull yet radiant it catches the eye, even in autumn, when the Tandala Mountainsides are covered in rich orange and browns. As if by magic, this flower’s colour draws the traveller’s gaze, not summoning them, but instead instilling in them an uneasy sense of dark awe. While the shades of the bloodbloom may vary, they will never stray too far from between Karikrimson and Aerullin red. (Slight contradiction here, for you say “always a distinct, rich karikrimson” above. Decide on one or the other!) The withered edges of the petals on the other hand, often dried up and shrivelled, fade into rich browns and blacks.

Each stem, while fairly stout(insert comma) only sprouts a single flower, holding these droplets of blood (I guess that “droplets of blood” – an evocative expression, by the way! – is supposed to refer to the petals, but this reference is a bit obscured here, because the last thing you talked about just before this sentence is the petals’ fading into brown and black. If you re-jig the order of this section as I suggested, you could maybe make the reference clearer, or say something like: ”… sprouts a single flower, from which the petals hang like so many droplets of blood …”) at only a palmspan over the ground, but each 'plant' will grow several stems from one spot. Further feeding the myth that these flowers are the earth's manifestation (I don’t think ‘manifestation’ is the best word here; protest? Remonstrance? Indignation? Lament? Wrath? ) against the sorrowful bloodshed that occurred in this area, the bloodbloom only grows from the soil.(I don’t understand. Where else but the soil should it grow from?) In this it has become very efficient and resilient though, considering the rocky terrain of the Tandalas. As if to further emphasize its colour, these 'tears' also hardly grow leaves. Compared to other flowers, the relative size of the leaves to the flower is very small, though apparently enough to sustain the flower's extravagant colour and life. Looking at the nutrition these flowers need, observation suggests that they require surprisingly little of it, considering how dense these patches of flowers are sometimes found to grow in areas of the Greyrock Maw.

Territory
More astounding than the flower's reverberating colour though is its thick-headed resistance to grow anywhere but in Greyrock Maw. First sighted in this small spot in the southern Tandala Highlands, the Tears of Cael's Wives has never expanded outside the reaches of Caeltakkar's Keep and the mining expedition that took place in its vicinity during the third Sarvonian War. Officially, no attempts have been made to this day at growing these flowers away from Greyrock Maw, revered fear (revered fear? Why revered?) of the flower's sombre myth robbing anyone of the intention to meddle with it. As such, the bloodbloom remains growing solely in this single spot in Southern Sarvonia.

Usages
This flower is inedible and since it is not picked or studied, no particular uses have been determined for it. All the same, it is whispered amongst artists that crushing the bloodbloom's petals to make crimson paint mixture results in a puddle of real blood; a constant curse and reminder of the bloodshed that happened. (Shudder!) In a few cases though, locals have come to harness this curse and the flower's message of benign hatred. The bloodbloom has never been known to be used as an overt assassin calling card (see my comment from the previous post), but it has (you’ve italicized ‘has’ in your text; if you wanted Artimidor to integrate the italicization, it would be a good idea to mark italicized words in a conspicuous colour, and include a little request to Arti at the beginning of your post to alert him to the italics and their marker colour) become the sign of dissatisfaction and hatred for local feuds and ill will from one local to another. If a farmer had the misfortune of some of his sheep being killed by another farmer's dog, but was then not compensated for it to his satisfaction, they would pick a couple of bloodblooms and place several of these flowers outside of the accused farmer's doorstep. A sign of utter dissatisfaction and lingering hatred. (BIG shudder!)

Reproduction
Many like to think that the Tears of Cael's wives do not reproduce like ordinary plants do. Instead it is common folklore that this flower spawns up out of the blood drenched ground regardless of pollination, good seasons or bad seasons. Being a manifestation of the earth's protest, it is believed that the bloodbloom grows from the ground at random, and always in dense patches, like the gigantic pools of blood that would have been found staining this land in the time of war.

More reasonably though, it is assumed that the plant is simply very resilient and can thus grow in patterns that seem to defy external conditions. Naturally though it requires its kin to reproduce and further its growth, thus explaining the relative clustering into pools. (I’ve corrected two “its” just in case, but I think you could do without these two sentences …)

The bloodbloom blooms further into the season, when most other plant life has long dried up. Often surviving into the early days of winter, one can witness a beautiful, ~~if not~~ albeit chilling sight: the view after the first snowfall, when the blanket of white snow is marked by the bright red flower. It has been described as looking out over a pristine field covered in drops of blood. The flowers will soon wither and die after this. (Shudder, shiver, and tremble!)

Myth/Lore
A fierce and twisted man, Caeltakkar abducted many women whom he kept as his personal harem for several years. He raped and mistreated them several times before he finally decided to kill and eat them, sending away his soldiers in search of new flesh. This is the man after which the bloodbloom is named; a cruel dedication of the earth to the insatiable blood-thirst of this barbarian. (Note on Caeltakkar: From beginning to end, I am unsure whether Caeltakkar is an orc, or a human from the North who helped the orcs. Might be useful to make this clear in the overview, or if not there, then in this section.)

Caeltakkar was the commander that won the orcs their victory in 297 b.S. at Greyrock Maw. The Allies had established a mining encampment with which they hoped to penetrate into the Tandala Depths, thus thwarting the orcs’ main route of attack into Southern Sarvonia. It took the orcs many skirmishes and countless losses until they called upon Commander Caeltakkar, who with his ruthless and tyrannical actions had earned quite a reputation for himself. He sieged the Allied forces at Greyrock Maw, and although both sides suffered great losses, Caeltakkar managed to stop the breach before it succeeded. The countless dead that had fallen in this area of the Tandala Highlands fed the ground with blood. While nothing happened in the aftermath of battle, nor immediately after the war, once the populace opted to rename Greyrock Castle to Caeltakkar Keep, the land, as if with character, protested and spewed out these crimson flowers. Until this day, they pearl the mountainside, reminding travellers of the blood that was spilt here.

Great entry – a beautifully detailed description of a magical plant, a true piece of fantasy writing, and an atmospheric addition to the Herbarium.

And good luck with that masterwork!