Lantus Wardens

There is no higher post in the Lantus Arboreum than that of Warden other than the Arboreal Council at Gjallermore. Wardens are the Lantus equivalent of a ship’s Aspect, but instead of serving just one ship they serve entire planets.

A Warden is a Lantus who’s body is chosen on a freak chance of DNA and Ecology to become functionally immortal, their every cell being replaced by a highly sophisticated synthetic blend of nanites and plant life. Their very touch can re-sculpt the ecology of other Lantus, bioluminescent buds flowing beneath their footsteps wherever their shadow falls. Their appearance gradually becomes more garish over the centuries they may live, their bodies having been fully replaced with a living kind of tree, gnarled and continually blossoming with hundreds of varieties of fluorescent hybrid seeds.

Wardens are the embodiment of the Lantus way of life. The flowering seeds their bodies produce both go towards maintaining the gardens aboard ships and in their fellow Lantus, but also in colonizing yet untamed worlds. They assist in the Terraforming process as intimately as the Xeriscape Drones do. They craft and plan the intelligent layout of forests and streams, crafting grasslands with their very minds. The foliage bends to their will, connected with their brains through a chemical and lithic network of signal pathways in the glowing plants themselves.

If anyone should threaten a world under a Warden’s projection they will surely die. They are ruthless warriors, the very land beneath their clawed woody hands rising up to act on their orders.

Wardens eat sunlight, transform soil to Calorics, and can craft Nanites of their own to heal others nearby. They have a radically altered form of the Gene-Weaver’s DNA encoding organ in their brains that allows them to interface with another Lantus’s body through a kiss and reshape their ecology to fit the whim of the Warden. This has been used to turn living people into plants – either as punishment or reward is hard to say. It’s also been used to strip away damaged tissues and save children born of incest which would otherwise die in their mother’s womb or shortly thereafter.

Wardens are like the demigods of the Lantus, second only in opinion to Rylith herself. They tend to worship the Wardens, praying to them for guidance, forgiveness, and healing. Unlike idols however, the Warden can actually hear their thoughts when sent through the glowing eyes of a Lantus, and for a select few, even grant their wishes if they are within reason.