Nature

Player: @First Player

NAME: Rory Parrish
KNOWN ALIASES: Nature
AGE: 28
PLACE OF BIRTH: Plainfield, IN
ABILITIES:

• Doctorate in Botany
• Manipulation of plants and toxins
• Enhanced strength, speed, senses, durability
• Limited shapeshifting

Rory Parrish, a plant ecologist who got tired of academia’s dusty grant committees, pivoted toward applied research. His specialty: extremophiles—plant species that thrive in places so hostile normal flora just gives up. Glacial mosses that photosynthesize under snow. Radioresistant lichens growing next to uranium mines. Fungi that treat volcanic gas like perfume. His pet obsession was something local botanists called lignophyte sigma, a weird little shrub that seemed unable to die. Freeze it? It sprouts back. Burn it? It regrows from ash. Starve it of sunlight? It just straight up goes dormant.

The plant was rumored to grow in a very disputed stretch of remote forest in South America controlled by an illegal logging syndicate and, less openly, a cartel using the land as a smuggling corridor.

Rory secured funding under a conservation initiative and brought a small research team into the zone, armed with satellite data and optimistic naivety. The deeper they pushed into the forest, the stranger things became: The plants weren’t surviving abuse—they were countering it, adapting faster than threats could escalate.

He and his team set up a camp near the densest part of the forest, unaware they were trespassing on cartel-controlled land. Eventually, Rory finally cracked it. Beneath a cluster of half-burned stumps, he found a living network of vines still pulsing with bioluminescent sap. Under the microscope, he identified microscopic spores acting like synapses, passing signals through soil instead of neural tissue.

That’s when the cartel showed up.

Paranoid that the scientists were local authorities gathering evidence, they stormed the camp, weapons drawn, and while Rory's team insisted they were simply scientists, the cartel refused to risk witnesses. They torched the campsite to erase any trace of intrusion, triggering a catastrophic defense response from the forest. Vines whipped, trees bent like living limbs, and barbed roots swung. The response didn’t discriminate either—bullets, botanists, everyone was prey. Rory tried to run, but a root spear erupted beneath him and punched through his torso. He dropped, bleeding out, vision blurring with ash and bioluminescent sap.

Rory awakened encased in a hardened bark-like armor, thick plates fused to muscle, pulsing with green light, alive only because the spores adapted his biology as emergency life support. Desperate, they abandoned their collapsing host network and infiltrated his bloodstream and nervous system. The entity that now lived inside him began to communicate in fragmented impulses, eventually forming a personality Rory nicknamed “Bud.” Their relationship started transactional—Bud needed a host to survive, and Rory needed Bud to keep his heart beating. Over time, they become reluctant partners.

Rory seeks to protect nature. Bud seeks to rebuild what was burned. Neither fully understands the other, and neither can function without the other.

🌿Plant Control & Manipulation
Rory can accelerate plant growth and manipulate existing vegetation as though it were an extension of his nervous system. Bud acts as the biological interface, routing impulses through spores and root-like fibers in Rory's body. He can command vines to entangle targets, cause trees to bend or sprout new limbs, carpet an area in fast-growing moss, or produce seed pods that burst into choking pollen clouds. Since the symbiote evolved in fire-scarred environments, it can also generate defensive toxins—paralyzing sap, hallucinogenic spores, corrosive thorns—though Rory's limits their use to avoid turning “eco-defense” into “bio-terrorism.”

🧱Enhanced Physiology
When Bud deploys the bark-like exoskeletal armor, Rory's physiology gets a significant boost. Muscle fibers are reinforced with lignin analogs, giving him strength closer to hydraulic machinery than human tissue. His reflexes heighten as Bud routes environmental data through a quasi-mycelial sensory layer. The armor absorbs blunt force like layered hardwood and can disperse kinetic energy through branching structures, making him hard to stab, shoot, or break. Without the armor Rory's only marginally enhanced, like someone permanently riding a mild adrenaline wave.

🐛Limited Shapeshifting
Bud can reshape the bark-like armor into functional structures, though nothing overly complex or mechanical. He can extend roots from his feet to anchor himself, lash out with whip-like vines, sprout branch-blades, grow thorned gauntlets, or form crude shields and spears. This is more like molding wet clay than transforming into separate organisms—mass has to come from somewhere, so dramatic shapes either pull from nearby plant matter or temporarily cannibalize parts of the armor. The shapeshifting is instinct-driven; Bud is great at forming predatory growths, while Rory has to consciously guide shapes when he wants something nonlethal, like a ladder or a defensive cocoon. Overuse can leave him physically exhausted as Bud draws energy from his metabolism.

🌱Nature vs Nurture

Rory and Bud share a body but have wildly different Yelp reviews of humanity.

Rory sees people as flawed but salvageable—like a city park that needs a cleanup crew and maybe a stern talking-to about recycling. Bud, meanwhile, views humans the way gardeners view Japanese beetles: loud, hungry, invasive, and strangely resistant to pesticides. Rory argues things like “education leads to change” and “society can adapt.” Bud counters with “forests never committed tax fraud” and suggests pruning half the species and replanting from cuttings. Rory tries diplomacy; Bud suggests selective extinction with the cheerful confidence of a toddler learning to use pruning shears. Both want a healthier planet—Rory plans policy, Bud plans carnivorous snaptraps.