Poisonwood Willow

The Poisonwillow was a species of long, purple, willows native solely to the planet of Chin'tassia, noted for its drooping elongated branches adorned with dark green leaves, vaguely resembling palm trees

The wood in particular of the Poisonwillow was off an odd nature, often feeling and touching far more like wax than conventional bark, being vaguely slimy. Chin'tassi freely hacked down thousands of said trees to make torches, their flammability useful to them, but they also would carve wooden figures, bows and arrows, axe handles and numerous other hunting tools and weapons from it. Local Chin'tassi villages would often make huts out of the tree's wood.

The Poisonwillow tree was so named by humanity due to the gaping, orifice-like holes inside its trunk which continually and perpetually wept a poisonous, lethal bright green sap, congregating at the bottom of its trunk into a small pool. The liquid was lethal to Humans, during the First Chin'tassi Jihad many Humans died as a result of unintended contact with the fluid, touching their hands in it or even trying to drink it and dying horrible deaths. The Chin'tassi weaponised the fluid, tipping the heads of arrow blades and fired them at Humans from amongst the dense jungle foliage they hid in. There was no known cure, even up to the 29th century, although certain medical improvements meant it could be slowed in its effects, often for years. But for those unfortunate to be touched by the green liquid, the symptoms were acute burning, like acid running through your blood veins, as the green liquid shone through the skin. Convulsions and spasms would also follow, along with vomiting, with death following eventually.

Due to the ever flowing green sap, pools would be formed around it, and for the Chin'tassi, who were unaffected by the liquid and had built up millennia long immunity to its effects, would dance and bathe in the waters. A vast congregation of these trees eventually filled a crevice (possibly one formed by a stray asteroid centuries ago in the planet's history), and became the largest one of these pools, each tree collectively weeping their toxic tears into the pool. This vast pool was known to the Humans simply as "The Poisoned Pit", but but the Chin'tassi called it Kradrassa ni'torfoo (meaning The Moonblessed Lagoon). A clearer showcasing of the different perspectives on the trees could not be clearer. It was located near the Typhasian Ruins.

The liquid sa[p in the day time does not particularly shine, but at night, under the glaze of Chin'tassi Prime's massive red fire moon does it become luminescent. This phenomena is only found on Chin'tassia (the few samples taken back to Proxima Centauri never shone under the only natural moon there, the so-called Moon of Dusk). It appears to be a totally naturally, geographically located phenomenon to the unusual atmospheric band of Chin'tassi Prime (which had a faintly grimy mist-like quality to the atmosphere, frequently blocking out the sun even further and rendering the already large Fire Moon gigantic through a kind of magnifying projection effect).

Some Chin'tassi tribes tended to regard the trees with a kind of holy awe, finding the shining luminescence of them being somewhat like a moth to a light, enraptured by the bright lit green amongst the near-perpetual darkness and deep purples of the rest of the planet. For the Chin'tassi tribes that lived further away from the coastal seas, to the far west of the planet where the vast forests stretched on, they took particular reverence to the trees, and on Mid-summers nights would frolic and dance in the pools as part of the overall Dimmingtime Festival, the transition point in the Chin'tassi's long "years".

The liquid itself was also mildly flammable. It is, in fact, comparable to marsh springs, in the sense that it appears the faintly gooey nature of the liquid acted as a kind of flammable skim layer, capable of being set alight in high conditions of methane. The Chin'tassi, with their fire obsessed culture, loved this, and the sight of pillars of the lakes on fire was a sight enraptured them. For this reason too, the phenomenon seen on primarily swampy worlds, like the planet of Mistfall and the surrounding areas of the Sunken Swamp, often called Will 'O Wisps, were also found, as tiny balls of ignited gas would float on the surface. For the tribes of the forests they saw these are helpful spirits, perhaps even representatives of their ancestors who had come down from the red heavens above (the moon) to the pools below. Especially during the Dimmingtime Festival they were held in special reverence. It should of course be said that this was a localised belief system to the forest tribes, orthodox Moonblessed Priests did not believe in the nature of spirits, and for Chin'tassi far away from the forests, say, to the central-south nearer the grass plains, or scattered across the coast of the vast Blackblood Ocean, these beliefs were largely none existent (having their own folk customary belief systems and traditions, also considered heterodox and uncanonical by the central Moonblessed Priestdom).

Humanity of course, by contrast, thought the trees were malignant, evil, terrible things, seemingly proof if ever there needed be that the whole planet of Chin'tassia was a uniquely accursed and haunted place, populated with things that wanted mankind dead. A good example of the cultural attitudes towards the trees comes from part of the poem "Light Me a Little Lamp" by late-romantic Human poet Cornelius Rike, in his section on the world of Chin'tassia (then called Chin'tassi Prime):

"...To where the purple trunked, drooping Poisonwood Willow Tree

Ekes out it’s dripping poison from gaping holes, for all to see

It waters glow a sickly greenish hue, texture much like slime

Only in the moonlight does it seem to malignantly shine

The liquid gathers below the palm, congealing in a pool

Chin’tassi fear not the tree, only cats appear to mewl

Watch how he bathes amongst the phosphorescent, glowing spring

Watch how he pours it down his face, not once trickle seems to sting

Yet one touch my dearest Human friend, will make your skin burn green

For deadly death and monstrous sickness lurks under its green sheen

Chin’tassi tipped their arrows with it when we first did arrive

Scores of human folk did flail in pain, on their beds did they writhe

As it seeped its way into the blood, like a swing from death’s scythe

And from all those tainted from its poison tip, none did survive..."