Fire Grass

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Fire Grass

« on: 16 August 2012, 06:35:51 »

Fire grass
An article by the Snakebearer

(Grass, .... Healing?... or Other...? I've added * to everything that can be linked to another entry. So, what do you think? I hope I nailed most of the angles I needed to cover. Did I miss anything obvious?)

Overview
No self respecting fire mage has never tried fire grass and not loved it. These red plants are used for one purpose only, and that is for smoking. It is not to be confused with its very distant cousin the *hobbitweed, or it's relative by-name-only the *fire weed. It has several effects on the inhaler – among them being addictive. This combined with being very expensive and very hard to grow is a problem for several users. At the moment most of the users are magi. This could be blamed on the many rumors about the grass.

Description
The fire grass has a distinct red hue, but if cut the inner fibers are a bright yellow coloration. It never grows over two nailbreadths. The grass grows in patches that never reach over a pad times a pad in size. New grass will not grow until some have been removed in any way. When dried the plants' red hue becomes brown, and the yellow becomes gray. The grass has no smell until it is burned. When burned it smells of evergreen, such as *pine or fir. It has none of the stench of its distant *cousin.

Territory
Fire grass cannot grow in the wild. This fact has baffled many, since this brings up the question how we ever got our hands on the grass to begin with. The grass can only grow in very controlled circumstances, and then, indoors in specially prepared soil. Therefore the grass itself can be found anywhere, due to it being intentionally grown there. At the moment, the majority of the growers of fire grass are magi, which also results in that the majority of the clientele are magi as well.

Usages
The common use of the grass is for smoking through a pipe or through some other means which involve inhaling concentrated amounts of the smoke. To smoke the grass, it needs to be specifically prepared. It needs to be cut or broken and then dried (reversed order compared to it's cousin). When dried it is very flammable, so keep fire away from it unless you intend to smoke it. It is not however flammable to the point of being explosive. But many magi have lost their whole stashes of fire grass due to carelessness with a flame.
If a human consume fire grass in its living form it simply passes through their system. The grass contains no form of digestible nourishment. Due to its coloration, no animal would eat the plant unless forced. If eaten while dried the grass causes some slight indigestion. This could be harmful for small children and animals if their fluids are not replenished quickly.
Fire grass has a few documented and proven effects, but it also has a plethora more of hearsay ones. The smoke has been documented to induce the inhaler in a state of improved concentration. The smoke seems to have some kind of arousing effect as well, and is therefore also used as an aphrodisiac. Several long time users claim to also experience heightened visual and auditory perceptions. This is not a fact, and might very well be due to one of the negative effects of the smoke.
Fire grass is known to have a slight narcotic effect. In rare cases that also involved huge overdosing, this effect might also have induced some kind of hallucinatory state. This in turn might also explain several of the other proposed effects of the fire grass. Indeed, it might even explain the proposed superhuman or heroic feats of several of the known long time users. There was a persistent rumor for a long time that the smoke would destroy the throat and lungs of the inhaler, but that rumor has since been proven false. In actuality the smoke seems to clean the respiratory apparatus. Although, this might also be questioned since the professor presenting this claim was a long time user, and shortly died of heavy coughing after presenting this thesis.

Reproduction
The growth and reproduction is a kin to other kinds of grass. An already established field of fire grass regrows naturally in 2 weeks if the soil is unharmed. This single blade plant grows in patches of up to one times one pad. After reaching that spread it simply will not seed, and any seeds introduced artificially will not grow, as the rest of the patch of already grown grass will consume its nourishment. On top of that, fire grass will only grow in soil where fire grass has been grown before. This has been experimented on, and it seems to be about something more than merely a question of rootwork and seeds.
The process of replanting and growing fire grass is tedious and complicated. An ambitious farmer needs to transplant a piece of soil from an already established patch of fire grass. The hole in the original field will grow back in a couple of months, and the transplanted piece of soil will simply grow outwards with the same speed. The tedious part about growing fire grass is that the transplanted fire grass usually either never matures, or simply withers.

Lore:
The mysteries behind the several unexplainable aspects of the grass have caused several magi to pick up a particular interest in the grass. What some of them whisper about is that the grass in itself possesses some kind of magical property. This might also be why it seems that magi are more fortuitous when it comes to growing the plant. They have even gone so far as to suppose that the fire grass is an artificial magical creation.
This rumor has even made several magi experiment with using fire grass as a reagent for spells due to its supposed latent magical property much like the *fireblossom. The grass is indeed consumed when used as a reagent for fire spells. But if this is due to the actual use as a reagent or simply being a reaction for being too close to a flame is unknown. This does not prevent many magi for believing in the grass’ supposed power.

Footnote: It might not also be surprising that the majority of the stoic believers are smokers themselves.


« Last Edit: 16 August 2012, 06:52:12 by Snakebearer »	Logged

Ta`lia of the Seven Jewels

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Re: Fire Grass

« Reply #1 on: 18 August 2012, 02:56:22 »

A quick look-over!

Fire grass
An article by the Snakebearer

(Grass, .... Healing?... or Other...? I've added * to everything that can be linked to another entry. So, what do you think? I hope I nailed most of the angles I needed to cover. Did I miss anything obvious?)

Overview
No self respecting fire mage has never tried fire grass and not loved it. These red plants are used for one purpose only, and that is for smoking. It is not to be confused with its very distant cousin the *hobbitweed, or it's relative by-name-only the *fire weed. It has several effects on the inhaler – among them being addictive. This combined with being very expensive and very hard to grow is a problem for several users. ~~At the moment~~ most of the users are magi. This could be blamed on the many rumors about the grass.

Several users? For whom?
'At the moment ' is not necessary here if you don't want to add something special about the future or history. I think 'presently' would be the better choice of words.

Hobbitweed??

Description
The fire grass has a distinct red hue, but if cut the inner fibers are a bright yellow coloration. It never grows over two nailbreadths. The grass grows in patches that never reach over a pad times a pad in size. New grass will not grow until some has been removed in any way. When dried the plants' red hue becomes brown, and the yellow becomes gray. The grass has no smell until it is burned. When burned it smells of evergreen, such as *pine or fir. It has none of the stench of its distant *cousin.

How does the grass look like? I know only, that it is red and two cms high.

Territory
Fire grass cannot grow in the wild. This fact has baffled many, since this brings up the question how we ever got our hands on the grass to begin with. The grass can only grow in very controlled circumstances, ~~and then,~~ indoors in specially prepared soil. ~~Therefore the grass itself can be found anywhere, due to it being intentionally grown there.~~ At the moment, the majority of the growers of fire grass are magi, which also results in that the majority of the clientele are magi as well.

I think you ned a native speaker to help you, at present it sounds a bit jolty and some information is provided more or less twice.

The grass grows only under very controlled circumstances: indoors in specially prepared soil. As it is cultivated, it grows from.. to <name locations, but don't spread it over all of Caelereth>

But hey, I'm no native speaker either, ask somebody else

Usages
The common use of the grass is for smoking through a pipe or through some other means which involve inhaling concentrated amounts of the smoke. To smoke the grass, it needs to be specifically prepared. It needs to be cut or broken and then dried (reversed order compared to it's cousin). When dried it is very flammable, so keep fire away from it unless you intend to smoke it. It is not however flammable to the point of being explosive. But many magi have lost their whole stashes of fire grass due to carelessness with a flame.
If a human consume fire grass in its living form it simply passes through their system. The grass contains no form of digestible nourishment. Due to its coloration, no animal would eat the plant unless forced. If eaten while dried the grass causes some slight indigestion. This could be harmful for small children and animals if their fluids are not replenished quickly.

Fire grass has a few documented and proven effects, but it also has a plethora more of hearsay ones. The smoke has been documented to induce the inhaler in a state of improved concentration. The smoke seems to have some kind of arousing effect as well, and is therefore also used as an aphrodisiac. Several long time users claim to also experience heightened visual and auditory perceptions. This is not a fact, and might very well be due to one of the negative effects of the smoke.

Fire grass is known to have a slight narcotic effect. In rare cases that also involved huge overdosing, this effect might also have induced some kind of hallucinatory state. This in turn might also explain several of the other proposed effects of the fire grass. Indeed, it might even explain the proposed superhuman or heroic feats of several of the known long time users. There was a persistent rumor for a long time that the smoke would destroy the throat and lungs of the inhaler, but that rumor has since been proven false. In actuality the smoke seems to clean the respiratory apparatus. Although, this might also be questioned since the professor presenting this claim was a long time user, and shortly died of heavy coughing after presenting this thesis.

Reproduction
The growth and reproduction is a kin to other kinds of grass. An already established field of fire grass regrows naturally in 2 weeks if the soil is unharmed. This single blade plant grows in patches of up to one times one pad. After reaching that spread it simply will not seed, and any seeds introduced artificially will not grow, as the rest of the patch of already grown grass will consume its nourishment. On top of that, fire grass will only grow in soil where fire grass has been grown before. This has been experimented on, and it seems to be about something more than merely a question of rootwork and seeds.

The process of replanting and growing fire grass is tedious and complicated. An ambitious farmer needs to transplant a piece of soil from an already established patch of fire grass. The hole in the original field will grow back in a couple of months, and the transplanted piece of soil will simply grow outwards with the same speed. The tedious part about growing fire grass is that the transplanted fire grass usually either never matures, or simply withers.

Lore:
The mysteries behind the several unexplainable aspects of the grass have caused several magi to pick up a particular interest in the grass. What some of them whisper about is that the grass in itself possesses some kind of magical property. This might also be why it seems that magi are more fortuitous when it comes to growing the plant. They have even gone so far as to suppose that the fire grass is an artificial magical creation.
This rumor has even made several magi experiment with using fire grass as a reagent for spells due to its supposed latent magical property much like the *fireblossom. The grass is indeed consumed when used as a reagent for fire spells. But if this is due to the actual use as a reagent or simply being a reaction for being too close to a flame is unknown. This does not prevent many magi for believing in the grass’ supposed power.

Footnote: It might not also be surprising that the majority of the stoic believers are smokers themselves.

A nice and interesting plant! Your submission needs some polishing though, too many repetitions at some places and paragraphs which could be shortened without loosing anything from their content. Some strange grammar. --> native speaker

Good work so far! thumbup


« Last Edit: 18 August 2012, 02:57:56 by Ta'lia of the Seven Jewels »	Logged

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Artimidor Federkiel

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Re: Fire Grass

« Reply #2 on: 03 September 2012, 23:14:50 »

You still alive, Snakebearer? How about an update on this one according to Talia's comments? Would love to give it another read-through, but I see you haven't been online for the last two weeks, so... Any hope here to make progress?


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Re: Fire Grass

« Reply #3 on: 11 October 2012, 06:22:17 »

I hope you haven't left us for good Snakebearer. This is a good entry that needs completing.

I have a couple of questions or comments to help it along:

1) Even though the grass is cultivated it MUST have come from somewhere in the wild or perhaps it was made magically. Perhaps it was first found in the nest of a particular dragon or found in the fields after the great war of such and such supposedly born of the blood of the races who died on the fields. Otherwise we will have to simply say that the origin of the weed is lost to time.

2) Perhaps you could add one sentence briefly describing why someone would choose to smoke Firegrass instead of hobbitweed. Is it unique in some way, maybe a different flavor or stronger addiction.

Anyhow, good entry. I hope you come back.


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Artimidor Federkiel

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Re: Fire Grass

« Reply #4 on: 11 October 2012, 22:30:36 »

Don't know where Snakebearer has disappeared to... He registered on August 16th and was last seen on August 20th... He also wanted to show us his digital artwork.

- Anyway, I've written a mail to him now, let's see if that helps...


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Re: Fire Grass

« Reply #5 on: 17 October 2012, 22:54:39 »

Short note: Snakebearer has replied that he's currently swamped with work, but hopes to have his project done by Wednesday and show up, so... he should arrive any minute now... cool


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Fire Grass