You have, through deliberate autocolonization, ritual cultivation, or tragic happenstance, become host to a sentient fungal colony. Your nervous system is a lattice of mycelium, your flesh ripe for fruiting, and your mind joined by this profoundly alien consciousness. Hosting this presence, while not likely to earn you a spot at any noble's feast hall any time soon, has left you with a unique attunement to the fungal organism thriving within you. Whether it's an innate understanding that you and it are one now, or the influence of its decentralized mind urging you to preserve and spread it, you are certain that ending this symbiosis would be supremely harmful to you now. Whatever "you" even are at this point.
- Skill Proficiencies: Nature, Perception
The fungal consciousness that has joined you grants you a unique, if alien, sense of unity with other creatures capable of becoming inoculated with its spores. You are the source of a 20-ft radius haze of swirling, psychotropic spores that deepen your connection to creatures around you. You can suppress these spores as an action, and maintaining this suppression requires concentration. While the spores are active, though, you gain the following effects:
Rapport. Creatures with an Intelligence of 2 or higher that aren’t undead, constructs, or elementals can communicate telepathically with one another while they are within 20 feet of you.
Mycelial Mimicry. As an action you may deepen the psychotropic effects of your spores, convincing nearby creatures that you mean no harm and leaving many sufficiently confused so as to wholly discount your presence. This functions as a limited version of the pass without trace spell, requiring no spell slot or casting but effecting only yourself. Once used you cannot activate this ability again until you have completed a long rest.
These spores are perceptible, and as a result may impose disadvantage on [ability]persuasion[/ability] checks with NPCs who are afraid or disgusted by such a sight at the DM's discretion.
Suggested Characteristics
Sentient Substrates are molded by the intermingling of their mind and body with a fungal other. This may be a fully symbiotic partnership, where the host retains their individuality and agency and simply carries and nurtures their mycelial body, or they may be more fully parasitized. The fungus itself could be a naturally occuring one, such as a humanoid-targeting variant of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, or more arcane in origin.
| d6 | Personality Trait |
|---|---|
| 1 | I prefer the company of plants and fungus to that of people. |
| 2 | I am as much fungus as person, and many of my thoughts and sensibilities are seen as strange or alien by others. |
| 3 | I am easily distracted, and seem to occasionally become lost in conversation with my fungal other. |
| 4 | I am so attuned to the necessity of decomposition to fuel renewed life that I have lost any sense of fear for my own mortality. |
| 5 | I am far, far older than I should be, and frequently make wildly outdated references or comments. |
| 6 | I am convinced that this colonization is a new and profound paradigm for living beings, and evangelize it to any who would listen. |
| d6 | Ideal |
|---|---|
| 1 | Colonization. As host, I must spread the blessings and mind of my fungal other. |
| 2 | Fruiting. I am convinced that I have not yet reached the final stage of my symbiosis, and am constantly experimenting with my own form to encourage new, myco-mutagenic developments. |
| 3 | Nonlinearity. Linear time and progress is a product of the inherently limited scope of those consigned to live, die, and end. I aspire to transcend such limitations. |
| 4 | Mycorrhizae. I am a steward of fungal blooms, and will rearrange and alter any environment I enter to make it more suitable for new cycles of growth and decay. |
| 5 | Panplanism. I am constantly experimenting with psychotropic substances, and attempt to live simultaneously across a spectrum of consciousnesses. |
| 6 | PIlgrimage. My fungal other chose me for a reason, and I exist to carry it to its destined home. |
| d6 | Bond |
|---|---|
| 1 | I would die to preserve the mycelial consciousness I carry. |
| 2 | I will someday find a way to spread the blessings of this infection to others. |
| 3 | I owe my life to the hermitic druid who first inoculated me and taught me to live as host. |
| 4 | Everything I do is for the substrate my fungus initially fruited from. |
| 5 | This fungus enabled me to survive a plague that wiped out the rest of my community, and we carry their legacy with us. |
| 6 | I seek to enable my fungus to decompose and subsequently fruit from a specific relic. |
| d6 | Flaw |
|---|---|
| 1 | I always smell faintly of damp leaves and wet earth. |
| 2 | I am extremely uncomfortable in spaces unsuitable for fungal growth: indoors, in direct sunlight or intense heat, sterile environments etc. |
| 3 | Our habit of speaking in plural often upsets the un-colonized. |
| 4 | Wherever I go, I leave small fungal blooms. |
| 5 | Things tend to decompose or otherwise rot quicker around me. |
| 6 | My mycelial mind often guides my hand, causing me to behave erratically or unpredictably to those around me. |
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