"Impossible Trees"

Name: Lignum contritum, "Outsider's Bane", "Impossible Trees", "Quantum Trees"





Description: Lignum contritum specimens can take a wide variety of forms. Some closely resemble regular Realspace trees with unsettling aspects to them, branches twisted into odd forms that seem to slightly defy physics or perspective- producing a faint sense of unease. Others are massive fractal-line structures, rows upon rows of impossible branches stretching infinitely into the sky. No matter what they look like, all of them appear to be innately wrong in some way or another.











Behaviour: Specimen of this species are a spatial anomaly, barely trees at all. It's hard to tell if what they do can really be considered behaviour or not. Getting their energy directly from hyperspace, lignum contritum seems to change position at random, "teleporting" instantly from one place to another. This effect only occurs when the tree is not visibly being observed by a living being. For Visitant with their Alphas and Firstborn with their observers, keeping a lignum contritum specimen in one place is an easy task- but for realspacers, not so much.





Tamability: Their behaviour, if you can even call it that, can only be barely influenced or predicted by experts.





Where is it found?: Hyperspace, on most habitable worlds. They also appear randomly in high-cuil areas.





Rarity: There's at least one or two in every high-cuil, inhabited world. In some cases, they come in groves.





Diet/Method of gaining nutrients and energy: It's unknown how the species sustains itself, though it's theorized that its source of energy is an exploit in hyperspace physics.





Products?: Confusion.





Reproduction: Lignum contritum specimens appear in high-cuil areas seemingly at random, their source unknown.





Size: As small as a bush to larger than a redwood.





Weight: ???





Lifespan: Occasionally, these anomalies will vanish at random, never to be seen again. This can happen five minutes after creation, five years, or never at all.





Abilities: 





-The ability to move when not being observed.





-Realspacers that look at this impossibly-structured plant for longer than a glance will quickly grow uneasy. They'll feel tempted to look away, and staring at it for a long period of time can cause paranoia, anxiety, confusion, seizures, temporary amnesia and eventually blackouts. Individuals who experience this find themselves unable to describe what exactly was wrong with the tree, and may become confused or agitated when questioned further on the subject.





-Hyperspace dwellers enjoy the presence of the odd trees and frequently construct so-called "impossible parks"- filled with large groves of lignum contritum.  Areas containing a high density of the specimens will rearrange their internal structure at random. Winding paths and rivers change their route daily, and landmarks are constantly moved to different areas. This is what makes the parks so popular.





Flaws: 





-While its appearance is upsetting to realspacers and it can move at random, it's still just... a tree. The worst it can do is give you a really bad afternoon, mess with your garden, or get you lost in a park for two hours. It can still be burned, chopped down, or destroyed- its wood isn't much different from that of a common oak and it loses all anomalous properties upon death.





-Can't survive below four cuils.





Other: None.