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Description

Monstrous creature, a bit like a hybrid of a mollusk and a plant. If memory serves, it was a deadly predator, as it has stabbed, the flower bud-like "head" into the flesh of a Whale Skink and released some sort of pressurized substance, which caused the larger monster to partially explode from the inside!

It did seem like a relative of Lophaian vegetation I've drawn before. Lack of any leaves and morphology suited for greater mobility perhaps suggests that this a heterotrophic form, which the plant-creature assumes when it needs to migrate to a new location.

"Many were small and furtive, and crept viper-wise on the ground. Others were tall as pythons, rearing superbly in hieratic postures to the jeweled light. Some grew with single or dual stems that burgeoned forth into hydra heads, and some were frilled and festooned with leaves that suggested the wings of flying lizards, the pennants of faery lances, the phylacteries of a strange sacerdotalism. Some appeared to bear the scarlet wattles of dragons; others were tongued as if with black flames or the colored vapors that issue with weird writhings from out barbaric censers; and others still were armed with fleshy nets or tendrils, or with huge blossoms like bucklers perforated in battle. And all were equipped with venomous darts and fangs, all were alive, restless, and sentient."

Clark Ashton Smith, The Demon of the Flower

Description

Monstrous creature, a bit like a hybrid of a mollusk and a plant. If memory serves, it was a deadly predator, as it has stabbed, the flower bud-like "head" into the flesh of a Whale Skink and released some sort of pressurized substance, which caused the larger monster to partially explode from the inside!

It did seem like a relative of Lophaian vegetation I've drawn before. Lack of any leaves and morphology suited for greater mobility perhaps suggests that this a heterotrophic form, which the plant-creature assumes when it needs to migrate to a new location.

"Many were small and furtive, and crept viper-wise on the ground. Others were tall as pythons, rearing superbly in hieratic postures to the jeweled light. Some grew with single or dual stems that burgeoned forth into hydra heads, and some were frilled and festooned with leaves that suggested the wings of flying lizards, the pennants of faery lances, the phylacteries of a strange sacerdotalism. Some appeared to bear the scarlet wattles of dragons; others were tongued as if with black flames or the colored vapors that issue with weird writhings from out barbaric censers; and others still were armed with fleshy nets or tendrils, or with huge blossoms like bucklers perforated in battle. And all were equipped with venomous darts and fangs, all were alive, restless, and sentient."

Clark Ashton Smith, The Demon of the Flower