Fungus

Fungi are rootless, leafless plants without chlorophyll that live as parasites or on dead matter: molds, yeasts, mildews, mushrooms and puffballs. Ordinary ones never fight but spread wherever damp and darkness let them, ruining rations and clothing; clean, dry storage prevents most of that. Their bodies are threads, which damp bread left out for a day or two will show under a lens, topped with colored spore heads. They multiply by budding, splitting, fragments or spores, a few alternating sexual and spore-making generations. Some like warmth, but heat kills them all.

They rot the dead into ammonia and renew soil. Yeasts raise bread and ferment ale, beer and wine; molds make cheeses like blue cheese. Pigs sniff out truffles, which no one can farm yet, a fortune for whoever learns how. Mushrooms may be eaten, but a bad pick can be fatal on the first try. Green molds serve as folk cures for infection, and alchemists extract many useful substances from fungi.

These mindless, slow-moving fungi live in dark underground places. Light within 30 feet or motion within 10 feet makes one scream for 1-3 rounds, and each following round carries a 50% chance of luring in wandering monsters. Violet fungi often grow alongside to kill whatever comes, and both feed on the remains. Purple worms and shambling mounds relish shriekers despite the noise. Their spores go into potions of plant control.

Violet fungi resemble shriekers, appear with them 75% of the time, and cannot harm them. Growing on rotting animal matter, they stand 4 to 7 feet tall with up to four branches; a 4-foot fungus reaches 1 foot, a 5-foot one 2 feet, and so on. They flail at any animal in reach, and the branch ooze turns flesh to rot within a round unless the victim saves vs. poison or gets cure disease.

A milky, fibrous, rotting blob sprouting small capped mushrooms, the phycomid senses heat, sound and vibration through organ clusters. It extends a tube and spits caustic alkali globs 1d6+6 feet. A victim who fails a save vs. poison sprouts fungus at the wound in 1d4+4 rounds, taking 1d4+4 damage; the growth then spreads, killing him in 1d4+4 turns and making a new phycomid. Cure disease stops it.

This huge, leathery puffball rolls, accelerating from 3 to 6, 9 and 12 over four rounds, and can keep going for hours. It bowls into or over foes; small and man-sized victims are knocked down and must spend the next round rising or stay down. Pocks over its hide sense the world and shoot spores at large foes or anyone who has wounded it: a jet a foot wide and 30 feet long that bursts into a cloud 5 to 20 feet across. A failed save vs. poison means death by internal infection in 1d4 rounds. Even on a success, victims are blinded and choking for 1d4 rounds, and attackers gain +4 against them, ignoring shield and Dexterity.

Spears and long piercing weapons do double damage, short stabbing weapons do damage as against small creatures, edged blades inflict 1 point, and blunt weapons nothing. It saves at +4 against magic missile, fireball, lightning and the like, taking half damage, but cold affects it normally. Charm, ESP and other mental magic fail unless made for plants.

With a false central eye and rootlike stalks, a gas spore passes for a gazer tyrant 90% of the time beyond 10 feet and 25% even up close. Inflicting even 1 point of damage makes it burst for 6d6 to all within 20 feet (3d6 on a save vs. wands). If it touches bare skin, it roots into the victim within one round and dies; without cure disease inside 24 hours, the host dies and 2d4 gas spores sprout from him.