Ambulotendon calligrapha : The Bonewalker’s Verse
🔬 Scientific Name: Ambulotendon calligrapha
🦿 Common Name: “Stridevine” or “The Bonewalker’s Verse”
🌱 Classification:
• Kingdom: Plantae
• Order: Apiales
• Family: Calcivivaceae
• Genus: Ambulotendon
• Species: calligrapha
🧬 Morphology:
• Vines: Dense, tendon-like braids of fibrous calcium-threaded tissue, visibly striated and reflexive. Each segment is inscribed with active movement-glyphs.
• Nodes: Hinged plates of semi-rigid marrow-bark that act as vertebral joints. Emit minor glyph pulses during flexion.
• Bloom: The terminal flower is hidden — grows only once full exoskeletal circuit is formed around host. Appears as a floating bone-crown suspended behind the upper spine.
• Leaves: None. The body of the plant mimics musculature, fascia, and ligament — functionally replacing organic movement with recursive will.
🦴 Osteofusion:
• Latches to exposed skeletal anchor points — pelvis, knees, scapulae, occipital ridge.
• Grows along and into bone, replacing joint tension systems with bloom-threaded control loops.
• Eventually fuses the host’s locomotion to a mnemonic rhythm: every movement becomes a semiotic expression.
🧠 Traits:
• Autonomous Gait: Once activated, plant can animate the host body through pre-inscribed motion glyphs. Host compliance not strictly required.
• Glyphwriting in Motion: Every step inscribes a word into the host’s marrow. Gait analysis can be used for translation.
• Bloomlock Mode: When threatened, the plant enters a rigid bloom state — halting movement and projecting a full-body skeletal sigil shell.
📍 Habitat:
• Seen coiled in ruins, draped over bone scaffolds, or embedded in failed ossowalkers.
• Artificially cultivated in Bone Choir crucibles for vector-bound operatives.
⚠️ Risk Profile:
• [G10-M] – Maximum containment. Risk of autonomous locomotion breakout, untraceable vector hijack, or forced mnemonic override.
• Considered sacred by the Marching Bone Order. Illegal to sever post-bloom.
📝 Notes:
• “It walked him for two hours after death.”
• “Every tendon was threaded with glyphs. His knees were writing.”
• “The bloom appeared in a shadow, not on the body. We could hear it speaking, but no one was near.”