Watching-lilies are a flower once native to the Dragonback mountains that featured prominently in magefolk art and legends. They are considered extinct by most scholars, but few remain in isolated greenhouses, tended and guarded by healers and mystics.
Watching-lilies were small flowers that had large pointed petals and a visible seed head. At the beginning of maturity, these seeds were white all around, but as they matured, the seeds turned brown and black from the inside to the outside. A flower in its prime had an eye-like coloration, with white on the outside, brown in the middle, and black on the inside. The black seeds were edible and had healing properties when applied to injuries as a paste. They were also used for blocking magic temporarily and easing the effects that magic caused. The brown seeds acted as mild anasthetic, but the white seeds were inedible, causing nausea and drowsiness. The stem was a dark green color with small leaves at the base. The flowers bloomed year after year in the same place, growing in clusters of 3-6 flowers.
Watching-lilies bloomed in sunny areas on the foothils of the Dragonback mountains, mainly in the Mari Valley. They were cultivated by the first magefolk settlers when they were discovered to have healing properties. They grew best in the well-watered climate on the windward side of the mountains.
When the first magefolk arrived in what is now Marisen, the people took interest in the Watching-lilies. Soon after, watching-lilies became common in magefolk art as a symbol of the all-knowing and healing goddess Nyx. Even today, magefolk scholars of medicine paint the symbol of an eye surrounded by petals, a remnant of this fascination with the watching-lily. Watching-lilies were plentiful in the days before the mage wars, however after the Iksandi empire drove the mages into the mountains, they burned the Mari valley, killing most of the plants. The flowers that survived were taken by the mages into the mountains, but some mages were intercepted and killed during their escape. The largest collection of Watching-lilies is in the infirmary at Selkros, where they have currently three clusters of lilies which are used in medicine and kept in climate-controlled greenhouses.