Thermo Fungus, Deep Dryads & Fungus Ships

This is the second draft of some nearly-game-mechanics-free notes
on a strange kind of fungus, some unusual dryads, and Drow fungus
ships for spelljamming.

I hope some of this might be use to some people!

If there is any interest, maybe we could knock together some SJ
stats for the fungus ships.


Thermo Fungi - ROM, 07/Sep/05

After an idea developed with John Dallman.

These fill a large hole in the ecology of the Underdark, and
other subterranean places far from the energies of the sun. Deep
underground fungi are often seen to be the obvious replacements
for plants, but, the standard ones can only feed on organic
material, so they depend on more material coming, ultimately,
from the surface.

However, there exist a class of bacteria called thermolytic
bacteria, which can get the energy they need to live from
differences of heat, as plants get their energies from sunlight.
Bacteria are single cell organisms, but you could have fungi with
similar properties, referred to as 'Thermo Fungi'; thermo-
synthetic rather than photo-synthetic.

Thermo Fungi live off differences in temperature, and their
mycelium can spread out great distances, many miles, to hot
places deep in the earth, and to cooler places, maybe nearer the
surface, or underground rivers or lakes. They can leach some of
the elements that they need for life from out of rocks, but
decaying organic material is also a useful source.

While they prefer a slightly moist environment, they can pump
water through their bodies from elsewhere, possibly over many
miles. They do not like even indirect sunlight, which burns and
dries them up, in a matter of hours, and rarely does any part of
them get any closer than fifty feet to the surface. However,
their spores are not harmed by sunlight, until they have started
to sprout.

There is often little evidence that these fungi are around,
except for their fine thread-like mycelium, running through
cracks below the exposed surface of the rocks. Where possible
these fungi use existing cracks, but given enough time they can
make their own way through the hardest of rocks, though this will
rarely affect the structural strength of the rock.

Mushrooms, which are the fruiting bodies of Thermo Fungi, may
occasionally appear, in cool dark places, deep below the ground.
These are edible, and have a wide range of pleasant tastes, and
some even confer an Infravision ability, if made a regular part
of a creature's diet.

Being eaten allows the spores of the fungi to be distributed
quite widely, in the droppings of creatures; they pass unharmed
through the digestion of almost all creatures. Though, the
circumstances allowing them to grow naturally are quite uncommon,
i.e. a good supply of organic matter to feed the new-grown
fungus, while it reaches out mycelium to at least two places of
sufficiently different temperature; a nearby volcanic vent, and a
cool underground river would be ideal. Thermo Fungus that cannot
establish itself, does not reach any significant size, and
typically dies after at most a few tens of years.

Thermo Fungi can form the base of an ecology, as, like plants,
they can make new living material from (in their case thermal)
energy, and non-living elements. As long as the core of the fungi
is not damaged it may live for thousands of years.

They use raw oxygen, made by breaking down carbon dioxide, or if
necessary extracted from rocks, as a defence mechanism against
things eating their core structure (their peripheral parts are
far less well protected, and their mushrooms not at all), though
they balance this with atmospheric nitrogen, to prevent oxygen
concentrations so high that their structure would spontaneously
ignite. If fire is damaging them, they will attempt to smother it
with nitrogen, which often reduces the level of oxygen below that
which will sustain the fire. In this way, they also form an
important source of fresh air, deep within the ground.

Thermo Fungi are not sentient, are immobile, and their only
offensive ability is to manipulate the level of oxygen near their
core, which is quite effective in killing, or driving off, most
things which breathe air, from other fungi, bacteria, burrowing
animals, and most larger things. Xorn and other creatures, such
as some of elemental earth, that need not breathe cannot be
affected. Those who carry fire near the core of Thermo Fungi, in
the form of torches or lanterns, may find them extinguished, as
they themselves have difficulty breathing. Only persistent
creatures that will not retreat to where they can breathe
properly, tend to be in any real danger.

Some Drow farm Thermo Fungi, and carefully feed small growths
with organic material, while directing their mycelium to sources
of heat and cold. They 'prune' the outer parts, once the fungi
has grown big enough, composting these to feed more specialised
fungi, which form the basis of their diet, or provide fodder for
food or other animals. If drow and other intelligent underground
dwellers know of the presence of wild Thermo Fungi in their area,
and understand something of their nature, they will often do
their best to defend them, in particular from death.


Deep Dryads

Some rare 'wild' Thermo Fungi, large and at least hundreds of
years old, may become the homes for dryads. These 'Deep Dryads'
resemble elves, though their ability to change their skin and
hair colour, to the varied colours that mushrooms and toadstools
take, allows them to look like either drow, or surface elves, if
they wish. They can similarly change the colour of their clothes,
which can resemble anything from simple gowns to the complex
leathery structures of some fungus.

Unlike normal dryads, who live in trees, and can freely move
through plant material, these dryads can freely move through
earth, though solid rock with no cracks in it slows them down
greatly. The immense size of their fungi means that they may
appear to be able to move more freely than surface dryads, but
they cannot actually move any further away from it. They have a
Speak to Fungi ability, rather than a Speak to Plants ability,
and Infravision in line-of-sight. They don't like, though with a
bit of practice can tolerate, direct sunlight, if the highest
extensions of their fungi go close enough to the surface for them
to experience this.

Otherwise they are very similar to dryads, with the same Charm
and Dimension Door abilities, a similar range of languages, and
they have a detailed knowledge of their subterranean
surroundings. In particular they know of all the properties of
fungus, in their area, though they lack the skills to make use of
these, except in their raw form.

Drow who know what these dryads are, tend to treat them with a
certain respect, and some hint that they are, in some way, secret
lesser servants of their goddess - and the fact that the dryads
wont discuss this just confirms it. This relationship has led to
the dryads on occasion being equipped with drow adamantite
daggers, and even drow hand crossbows, with sleep venom darts,
for self defence. The occasional drow male may disappear into the
fungus with a dryad, on a temporary or long term basis. Other
humanoid creatures that might be acceptable, such as elves, half
elves and humans, are rarely encountered by these dryads.


Spelljamming Fungi

Many centuries ago, an almost unknown group of drow researchers,
who had become envious of the elven plant ships, completed their
researches on fungus ships. This was very difficult, as the
Thermo Fungus that they started from quickly withered and died,
even in indirect sunlight, but they managed to breed a variety
with a dark brown, almost black, pigmented protective layer.

The drow fungus ships take the shape of a large disc, one nearly
featureless side of which is pointed towards the sun, and absorbs
heat from it. The back side of the disc, which radiates heat off
into space, is where the drow have their living quarters. Part of
the disc is pulverised stone, mixed with organic material like
loam, and all of the disc is threaded through with the mycelium
of the fungus.

Embedded in the disc are many lumps of ice, which the fungus
keeps frozen by pumping heat away from them, and act as the water
stores for the whole ship. The drow store meat and other
perishable food stuffs near the ice, wrapped so that the fungus
does not consume them. This is their food store, along with other
fungi they grow on the dark side of the disc, and with water from
the ice, and the air that the fungus renews, they can stay in
space indefinitely. Unlike the Thermo Fungus that they culture
below ground, they do not harvest the material of the ship, as
this upsets it.

These ships can come in a number of sizes, but as the fungus
continues to grow, it may exceed the capacity of the Helm, and
the ship may need to be split, for example in two. The fungus
feeds by slowly digesting the embedded rock and organic material,
and uses the energy gained by the difference in temperature
between the sunward and spaceward sides of the disc. Every so
often it may be necessary to feed the ship another small
asteroid, which it will slowly pulverise over a period of several
days, so as to sustain it for many months, or even years. Bodies
of large space beasts also make a suitable food source for the
ship.

Drow fungus ships are capable of very long voyages, but their
structure is such that they cannot enter the gravity field of all
but the smallest planet, as they would just fall apart. These
ships are very slightly more intelligent, or at least reactive,
than their underground dwelling relatives, and defend all parts
of themselves from injury, not just their cores. If the ships are
destroyed, spores drift off in all directions, but there is very
little chance of any of these germinating.

Trained drow sailors can navigate the narrow passageways inside
the ship disc, and may even stimulate the ship to open and close
man-sized pores on either surface of the disc. The drow at the
Helm can see all around the disc, even the sun side, though drow
dislike for sunlight tends to mean they normally put little of
their attention there.

If it has considerable reserves of organic material, a fungus
ship can spend periods of several days out of sunlight, while
continuing to refresh the air around it, but it will not be happy
to do this for more than a maximum of a couple of weeks, after
which it will become dormant, ceasing to refresh the air, or
cooling it's ice, and after a couple of months, start to die.
After two years away from sunlight it will be completely dead,
just a loosely held together floating mass, with a few viable
spores.

--
Dreamer
dreamer@??????.?????.??.uk
http://www.romsys.demon.co.uk/