Petal Splitters

“We fight where rot cannot reach.”

Once part of the militant bloom order during the War of Hollow Roots, the Petal-Splitters were Mycelian warriors bred to tear fungal threads and sever communal thought. Trained in Rootsever Combat—a martial art focused on pressure, silence, and memory disruption—they were both feared and honoured across Thalos.

After the war, their tactics were deemed sacrilegious, and their spores were symbolically excised from the Garden records. Rather than perish, they scattered, becoming the first diaspora of Mycelian wander-fighters, drifting across biomes, cities, and conflict zones.

Petal-Splitters reject conventional violence. Their warfare is spiritual corrosion:

• Disruption Over Death: Disable communal linkages, fracture sporesong unity.
• Memory Dimming: Use combat-infused spores to erase battle trauma or ancestral rage mid-conflict.
• Glyphless Armor: Wear fungus-grown shells free of tattoo resonance, so enemies cannot read emotion.

Though exile stripped their formal rank, many now offer protection to Voids, mercenary guidance to Velari rebels, or serve as bone-veil bodyguards in Orraspire’s shadow districts.

Traits

• Speak a hybrid tongue: Part sporesong, part martial breath technique called Shai’tun Pulse.
• Carry Petal Scrolls: Bioluminescent records of their original garden, etched only by footwork.
• Practice Burial Kata: A mourning fight-dance performed after battles to restore psychic equilibrium.

Settlements

• Katafield Rings: Rotating camps marked by spiral trample patterns. Each circle denotes number of battles survived.
• The Bloomforge Isles: Coral-fungus islands where wandering Petal-Splitters exchange rootcombat with exiled Velari in ritual duels.