I'm going through Champions' lore for a tree based hero, and I found a little blurb about their version of Yggdrasil in The Mystic World book. In it's brief description it sounds a bit like The Green from Swamp Thing, and I was wondering if this is the Champions equivalent and/or if there are anymore sources for info on Yggdrasil?
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The description of Yggdrasil on p. 42 of The Mystic World is the most thorough source on it in any published Champions Universe book. Since it's relatively brief, I don't think there would be any harm in reproducing it here for interested CO players.
Yggdrasil is most simply defined as the Astral Plane created by plant consciousness, but this requires some explanation. Plants possess no consciousness in any human sense, but they react to their environment and to each other. An individual plant’s “mental” field is much weaker than a human’s, or even an animal’s, but there are an awful lot more plants in the world than there are sessile creatures! Yggdrasil, the ash tree supporting the world in Norse myth, supplies the most popular name for the dimension created by these massed “mental” fields.
Unlike Faerie, which grew from human ideas about Nature, Yggdrasil is truly a realm apart from humanity. A wizard who enters Yggdrasil — physically, astrally, or clairvoyantly — finds nothing comprehensible in human terms. Sight and sound do not exist in Yggdrasil. Something like touch, taste, and smell exist in this dimension, since plants react to tissue damage and chemicals, but even these senses register in ways alien to human minds. Just learning to interpret the sensations of Yggdrasil can take years.
Yggdrasil is deadly. Humans who think plants are placid and gentle don’t know much about the vegetable kingdom. Plants compete with each other, as individuals and as species. The trees in a forest strive to overspread each other and claim a greater share of precious light. Different species secrete chemicals to attract or repel insects, or to boost or inhibit another species’ growth, a vegetable diplomacy known to every master gardener. Parasitic plants slowly, vampirically feed upon their hosts. Forests and fields are places of silent, ruthless war.
Yggdrasil reflects this war. Human visitors to Yggdrasil encounter the psychic equivalent of chemical warfare, parasites burrowing into their bodies, and even less comprehensible attacks, all driven by passionless, relentless hunger. Yggdrasil doesn’t ignore animal intruders: to the spirits of Yggdrasil, animals are fertilizer that needs to stop moving. Visitors must leave quickly or go mad... or maybe not leave at all.
The alien Hzeel have conquered a race of mobile sapient plants, the Prylenish. Their royal family escaped to Earth, and are currently working incognito as gardeners at Ravenswood Academy. Prylenish have the power to change their form to resemble other beings, such as humans, by "growing" into the new shape over several days. They also have a natural empathic bond with plant life. A hypothetical "super" Prylenish might have superior versions of those abilities, or other superhuman powers. The Prylenish receive a couple of paragraphs of description in Champions Beyond, and their royal family is detailed more in Teen Champions.
Unknown to humanity, some two million years ago, the asteroid belt in our solar system was a planet, inhabited by sapient plant beings known as Phytians, created through Progenitor experiments. A Phytian equivalent to a technological supervillain discovered some hidden Progenitor devices and tried to use them to blackmail his world, but accidentally destroyed it. It's possible some remnants of Phytian technology and even biological matter persist in the asteroid field. See Champions Beyond for a little more on the Phytians.
From what you related about your proposed character, you might find something useful in the description of "Botanoworld," a dimension conquered by Istvatha V'han, as per Book Of The Empress p. 174:
In Botanoworld, a first sphere dimension that’s about one-fifth the size of Earth’s reality, animals larger than great cats haven’t evolved on any world V’hanian personnel have discovered, and they’re never very numerous. Instead the dominant lifeforms are all botanical. Many of them would seem like “ordinary” plants to Humans (sessile living things that create their own “food” from soil, water, and sunlight), though their sentience would come as a surprise (assuming Humans could even understand their speech). But others are wholly alien — plants that have evolved the ability to move, even fly. None of them are exactly “plantmen” in the sense used in some Human fiction, but across the dimension planet after planet has seen sentient plant species evolve and create civilization. All the civilizations have one thing in common: a deathly fear of fire. Starting a fire is a capital offense in many of them; using fire as a weapon in war is the equivalent of launching a nuclear bomb. As a result, Botanoworld’s technology has evolved in very different ways from that of most dimensions; it’s much more “organic” and doesn’t “mix” well with other dimensions’ technology.
Botanoworld has one significant advantage for Istvatha V’han: its version of Yggdrasil (page 142) is particularly large and “rich” in certain resources... and it’s very, very easy for V’han or her people to reach via Botanoworld. They still haven’t found a really good way to exploit it, since sentient animals have difficulty remaining sane and alive in a dimension manifested by sentient plants, but its promise is so great they keep trying.
The idea for my toon is it is an avatar created by the collective consciousness of Yggdrasil to protect nature from human influence (pollution, deforestation, etc.) It doesn't speak and is barely autonomous, but draws it's power from plant life. Does this seem like the sort of thing Yggdrasil would be used for?
There is another possibility inherent in the setting. The San Sebastien Swamp outside Vibora Bay unites all the living creatures within it in a huge collective consciousness. This consciousness is intelligent, and can focus itself in animals or plants within its confines, perceiving through their senses, controlling them, even speaking through them. The Swamp has a benevolent personality, and considers itself the guardian not only of its own territory, but of the city of Vibora Bay.
When the San Sebastien Swamp feels the need to take action beyond its confines, it creates a large humanoid avatar primarily made out of vegetation, but also including rocks and mud, and sometimes small animals. Local legends call it the Skunk Ape, for its general shape and size, and also because it can emit a cloud of noxious gas which debilitates others by its stench.
A Skunk Ape is intelligent and self-willed, although it shares the personality of the Swamp and can communicate telepathically with it. The SSS can create more than one Skunk Ape at a time, although that requires great expenditure of energy.
Perhaps a Skunk Ape, or something similar created by the Swamp, develops a more independent personality and wants to interact with the wider world. Or if you want it to be as mentally limited as you described, some accident or battle may have damaged its mind, perhaps by severing its link to the SSS, leading it to wander off.
The San Sebastien Swamp and the Skunk Ape are briefly described in Champions Universe, but given significantly more detail in the Vibora Bay source book.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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