Cushion Fungus

A mature cushion fungus is a velvety oval mound about knee-high and up to 8 feet wide, colored in soft shades from pink to purple. It looks like an inviting place to lie down.

Any draft or rise in heat, such as a torch or a warm body, triggers a nearly invisible spore cloud 40 feet across, one round after a source comes within 30 feet or two rounds after it comes within 31-60 feet. The cloud shimmers like heat haze; noticing it takes a Wisdom check on 4d6 or invisibility-detecting magic. It lingers 5-8 turns.

Breathers save vs. poison or fall into deep sleep within 1-4 rounds. A successful save still brings 1-4 rounds of confusion, as the spell, plus another save 10 rounds on for anyone who lingers nearby. Sleepers stay down until removed from the cloud and treated with neutralize poison, or they wake on their own in 1-3 days.

A sleeper collapsing within 3 feet of the mound must pass a Dexterity check on 1d20 or crash onto it and burst it, releasing a dense 60-foot cloud for 2-5 turns; saves there are at -2 and failure means 3-6 days asleep. An unburst fungus keeps puffing spores while anyone nearby breathes or snores.

It thrives only in dead-still air: sealed vaults, crypts, blocked caverns, forgotten dungeons. Spores carried into a drafty area never mature.

Untended sleepers starve and die of thirst in 4-16 days, and the spores begin digesting them. Velvet slowly coats the corpse until a new cushion fungus stands there 5-30 days after death, or only 3-12 days if the victim burst a fungus when falling. A victim who wakes in time just needs food and water.

Metal, gems and jewelry go undigested and remain inside, so oddly lumpy cushions may hold treasure, though cutting into one releases spores. Alchemists and wizards are said to prize the spores for brewing sleep, confusion and feign death potions.