Yggdrasil's Child was a colossal spaceborne plant whose roots anchored the asteroids of the planetary body in Realmspace known as Garden.[1][2]
Description
The plant's main trunk was woven together from several hundred smaller trucks or limbs, each of which were 50 feet (15 meters) in radius. The main trunk had its own gravity plane that bent around its surface, and it would take the average person six hours to circumnavigate it. The long time was because of all the leaves and branches that one would have to push and climb around. The smaller trunks extended all around the total area of what was called a "planet", such that it always received sunlight no matter where Garden was in its 128-hour revolution.[1]
The main trunk did not appear to lead anywhere, as one would expect from a tree. Some tales of wildspace told that the tree actually grew into other planes of existence, as did its namesake,[3] but there was no indication that one could use the massive plant to travel outside of the Material Plane.
The bark of the plant was a scaly wood that was resistant to damage from cold, electricity, and heat. The leaves of Yggdrasil's Child were the size of ships' sails.[1]
The roots of the plant could reach 1,000 feet (300 meters) in length[note 3] and forked and stretched deep into the interior of each of the many asteroids of Garden, holding these earth bodies close together at distances between 100 feet (30 meters) and 100 yards (91 meters) from each other.[1]
Yggdrasil's Child had amazing rejuvenating powers, being able to heal damage at at exponential rate.[1]
Behavior
Garden took 1,022 Toril months to revolve around the sun, and in that year, Yggdrasil behaved similar to seasonal plant life on Toril, cycling through "seasons" of blossoming and growth followed by those of death and stasis when the gargantuan plant lost about half its leaves.[1]
Yggradsil's Child lived for about 2,000 years.[note 1] When it finally died, a new plant was said to replace it. Scholars believed that the next Yggrasil's Child would have some connection to one of Garden's moons named Grandchild, but exactly what this connection was remains unclear.[1][note 4]
Uses
A common wildspace tradition was to wrap the dead in leaves from Yggdrasil's Child before letting the bodies float freely in deep space.[1]
History
Yggdrasil's Child had been in existence for as long as spelljammers had been sailing Realmspace. Throughout history, some had assumed that the plant was sentient and tried to communicate with it but never with success.[1] By 1367 DR, it was estimated that the current plant had reached approximately half of its lifetime, aged at about 1,000 years.[1][note 1]
The plant received its moniker from northmen,[note 5] who named it after the great planar tree Yggdrasil.[1][2]
Appendix
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 It is not clear from the source whether these were Toril years or Garden years.
For reference, if these are Garden years, this would correspond to 170,333 years and 4 months on Toril. If Yggdrasil's Child was 1,000 Garden years old (85,166 years and 8 months on Toril), it would have existed since well before the beginning of recorded history on Toril, and most likely it was the first such plant. - ↑ This value is not given directly in the source but is calculated from the statements that the trunk is composed of "several hundred" trunks, each of which is "over 100 feet in diameter". The value of 1,700 is derived using geometry from the area of 300 circular trunks of 100‑foot (30‑meter) diameter woven together.
- ↑ The source says "1,000 feet across," but this conflicts with the description of each trunk being only 100 feet in diameter, so it is assumed to be in error.
- ↑ The source instructs the reader to see the entry on Garden's moon Grandchild; however, the only information provided about Grandchild is its size, shape, and color. No information about Yggdrasil's child is provided at all. There is also a discrepancy within the source regarding its shape. The main text describes Grandchild as spherical, yet a table gives the dimensions rather of an ellipsoid. Perhaps, Grandchild was supposed to invoke the idea of a seed, but this is speculation.
- ↑ It is not clear from the source whether "northmen" refers to worshipers of the Norse pantheon—which would make sense, considering the importance of the tree Yggdrasil to that mythos—or to the inhabitants of Northwest Faerûn.
Appearances
- Novels
- The Radiant Dragon
- Video Games
- Spelljammer: Pirates of Realmspace
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 Dale "slade" Henson (April 1991). Realmspace. Edited by Gary L. Thomas, Karen S. Boomgarden. (TSR, Inc), pp. 44–45. ISBN 1-56076-052-4.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Jeff Grubb (August 1989). “Lorebook of the Void”. Spelljammer: AD&D Adventures in Space (TSR, Inc.), p. 95. ISBN 0-88038-762-9.
- ↑ Elaine Cunningham (November 1992). The Radiant Dragon. (TSR, Inc.), pp. 40–41. ISBN 1-56076-346-9.