Moldling

On its own a moldling looks like an ordinary blackish-brown mold: a flat, spongy mat of fine threads and short fruiting stalks with the cloying smell of dried-out flesh. It is never found that way, though. It always lives inside a host, usually a long-dead body, which it animates so the whole thing looks like a fungus-crusted zombie. Unlike mold creatures that merely push cadavers around, the moldling truly creates and commands undead, and few hunters who realize the mold is the real enemy grasp how intelligent and unnatural it is.

The moldling cares only about spreading its spores. It shadows prey using hide in shadows (50%) and saves its best weapon for the moment success is nearly certain, often while the victim is busy fighting the host. Then it exhales a 10-foot cube of spores from the host's mouth, which rolls forward 20 feet per round as though pushed by magical wind, though real wind can scatter it. Witnesses must pass a horror check or freeze in fear; they count as stunned and get no save against the cloud.

Those engulfed are infected unless they succeed at a save vs. death magic. Over up to two weeks the fungus matures, costing the victim 1d8+3 hit points plus 1 point each of Strength and Constitution every day. The flesh wilts and puckers as mold spreads beneath it, and the body gives off the stench of a rotting corpse, which is close to the truth. Everyone meeting the infected person must save vs. spell or suffer as if from a fear spell, except those who already knew them before the infection.

When hit points, Strength or Constitution reach zero, the victim becomes a ju-ju zombie controlled by the moldling within 1d3 days. This can be undone only by casting heal followed by exterminate, which kills the moldling and restores the victim's life, hit points and ability scores.

A moldling in a ju-ju zombie host has all of that undead's traits plus more. Its heavy blows drain 1d4 levels from anyone failing a save vs. spell, and has a 30% chance of being infected. It is immune to necromancy-school wizard spells, negative energy, illusions, charm and sleep, takes no damage from cold but double damage from fire, and is harmed by healing spells for the amount they would have cured. Unlike most undead it is vulnerable to spells that affect living organisms, and although it needs oxygen, blocking the corpse's airway will not suffocate it. Any magical or psionic contact with its alien mind requires a madness check.

Moldlings form no society and ignore one another, driven only by the urge to reproduce. After draining twenty levels through a host, it must abandon it like a hermit crab leaving an outgrown shell. Strangely, the ju-ju zombie is freed once the moldling infects someone new, and it may go on terrorizing the area by itself if the new victim's friends do not destroy it.

The fungus was once a humble decomposer, but long burial in the corrupt soil of the misty dread realm tainted it, and two wicked outsiders, reputedly a mad druid and his necromancer sibling, bent it into a partner of the undead. It thrives in the realm and has spread through the graveyards, sewers and abandoned buildings of a rat-haunted domain, where it is found nowhere else and is loathed by every sane inhabitant.