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Grave Lotus Seed
🕑 Added 2025-07-18 15:16:51 +0000 UTCWondrous item, uncommon or rare
This leathery seed resembles a human eye, which eventually grows into a grave lotus. A grave lotus and its seeds can typically be found in regions tainted by necromancy or in the ruins of violent battles. When planted in soil and watered with at least 1 hit point's worth of blood every day over the course of 7 days, the seed grows into a mature grave lotus.
A typical grave lotus is a Medium plant. It blooms when it first matures; within the center of the flower is a random humanoid corpse. The corpse has never been inhabited by a soul, thereby preventing such spells as speak with dead from functioning. The corpse otherwise counts as a freshly deceased humanoid for the purpose of spells like animate dead and similar rituals. A bloom remains for up to 30 days or until the corpse is removed from the flower, at which point the flower withers. Each time the flower withers, there is a 50 percent chance that another one appears after 7 days have passed. If another flower doesn't grow, the withered plant instead leaves behind another grave lotus seed.
Rare versions of grave lotus seeds grow Large plants, which grow flowers that contain the corpses of Large beasts, monstrosities, or even smaller giants.
A grave lotus, regardless of its size, has a fleshy exterior. Inside the bloom is scarlet. The bloom drips with a blood-like ichor and smells foul.
The Rafflesia Necromantis is peculiar among carrion flowers. Rather than recreating the smell of rotting flesh (an irresistible perfume to carrion eaters), it instead produces the corpses themselves—how ghoulish! It is likely it uses this “fruit” to attract necromancers and other such creatures to propagate its seeds.
—The Hedgewitch's Guide to Magical Herbology
Comments
The Griffon's Saddlebag
I think if you wanted to cast Awaken on it, you could mold it into whatever personality made sense for it!
David S.
Also, I could totally see an early medical school secretly or semi-secretly growing a garden of these. A way easier and less ethically questionable method for securing practice cadavers than the grave robbing they resorted to in the real world.
David S.
So what are the thoughts on if some effect is used to turn them into a form of undead that is usually intelligent? Would it fail, would the spell give them a personality and understanding of the world, would they just be permanently feral, or would they be like a newborn and have the potential to eventually learn and develop?
