Tanglebrush

Tanglebrush is a plant that appears to be a tangle of sharp, thin, barb-tipped vines that emerge from a central core somewhere within its mass. A Tanglebrush plant is capable of self-locomotion using its vines, dragging itself across floors and climbing trees. It is infamous for its non-lethal but extremely painful method of feeding from victims.

Tanglebrush plants actively and mindlessly seek out sources of warmth. They gravitate toward sunbeams, animals, people, and even open flames and forest fires.

Habitat
Tanglebrush plants are found in tropical jungles, where an abundance of warmth is present. They can rarely be found in caves.

Biology
A tanglebrush plant is comprised of its tangle of vines, gathered around and issuing from a spherical central core. These vines are prehensile, and the plant uses them to drag itself across the ground.

If a tanglebrush fails to identify a suitable source of heat, it can bury itself in the ground to collect nutrients until such a heat source presents itself.

On nearing a source of heat, the plant will stretch its vines toward it. In the case of the sun or an open flame, they will reach for it until they reach a threshold for incoming warmth or have no way to reach any closer. In the case of an animal or person, there is a somewhat different reaction.

With a living target, a Tanglebrush plant will seek to burrow its vines into whatever exposed flesh it can reach, to exploit as much of its target’s bodily warmth as possible. This process is excruciatingly painful, though wounds caused by a Tanglebrush do not bleed due to a property of the vines, and the vines themselves appear able to distinguish between vital organs and surrounding tissues (though they have no qualms with shredding muscles to prevent or organs to quell a violent response). As a result, the victim of a tanglebrush rarely dies unless they attempt to rip the vines free, which causes damage on the way out.

f a living being produces no heat, such as is the case with dolls, the plant will leave them alone. A Tanglebrush plant with a living host appears to derive some form of sustenance from their victim, generally growing larger than those that use warmth from sunlight or flames.

Through an interaction that has been theorized to be magical in nature (though others argue some natural adaptation of the plant), the vines of a Tanglebrush absorb heat and direct it to its central core. During this process the plant becomes very hot, uncomfortably so for living hosts, and it is not uncommon for victims to sport burns from the overheating plant.

Once a Tanglebrush has taken its fill of warmth, it retreats from the heat source (extracting its vines from living creatures without causing further damage, though the grubby nature of the vines often causes infection of wounds) and seeks out somewhere dark and cool. It is there that the boiling core of the plant splits open, and fresh Tanglebrush plants (Between five and ten depending on the size of the plant) emerge. These new plants then begin to seek out the nearest source of heat, to repeat the process anew.

Sociology
As mindless beings, tanglebrush plants have no social behaviours.

Trivia
Dead Tanglebrush plants have been occasionally spotted attached to animals or floating down rivers and streams. How the plant died is unknown, but the clinging vines are not easily removed by creatures without hands to remove them with.

Tanglebrush plants will flee from cold.