Chromatic Mold

To ordinary eyes chromatic mold is a thick, furry patch of dark brown fungus, rarely in large colonies because of how it spreads, though a single patch can reach 12 feet across. Through infravision it looks completely different: a shifting maze of heat signatures that appear as whirling, kaleidoscopic colors.

The mold is no hunter, but it kills just the same. Anyone viewing it with infravision must save vs. paralyzation or be drawn helplessly toward it. Any size S or larger creature that comes within 3 feet triggers a spore burst filling a 10-foot radius. A victim who fails a save vs. poison inhales them and wanders about as though under a confusion spell while the spores devour it from inside. Death comes within 10 hours, a new patch erupts from the body, and the corpse is fully consumed 12 hours after that.

Hold plant halts the incubation only while the spell lasts. Cure disease ends the infestation if cast in the first 10 hours; afterward it destroys victim and mold together.

Fire burns away a 10-foot patch in 1d4 rounds. Cold does it no harm but cancels the fascination and prevents normal spore release. Any forceful contact, even a magic missile, makes it spray spores by reflex.

This stationary hazard grows in warm, damp caves of the deep underworld, sometimes alone and sometimes beside other molds and fungi. Drow, duergar and deep gnomes often burn out an entire cave network if even one chamber shows signs of it.

Though lethal to most humanoids, the mold seems harmless to some underground scavengers; burburs devour great quantities of it without ill effect.

This rarer and more dangerous cousin looks identical, heat patterns included, but also vibrates, producing eerie, captivating sequences of tones that snare creatures through hearing the way chromatic mold snares through infravision. One master bard who survived an encounter described its strange phrases climbing and falling through conventional and bizarre scales in unsettling half-steps.

The sound may carry for miles through echoing tunnels, but its pull works only within 60 feet. Creatures with human-normal hearing must save vs. paralyzation or be drawn helplessly to it; those with keen hearing save at -1 and echolocating creatures at -3. Its spore burst works just like chromatic mold's, and those failing a save vs. poison are confused as the spores incubate. The mold erupts after just 8 hours, and death follows 8 hours later. Clerical magic that halts or kills chromatic spores works equally on sonic ones, and burburs eat them happily.