The Beast Fears Fire - Underworldly Fungal Colonies

Dream this morning, going to Indian Notch in Bolton, a version where Bolton Lake has waves like the ocean, a massive sea wall that intersects an even more massive wall, lit up and decorated like an early 20th century swimming pool - miles and miles of cherub faces. Also, a secret tunnel with a door to a subterranean apartment where a misanthropic acrobat lived. Yeah, I got nothing.

Underworldly Fungal Colonies [Hardship 2]
Impulse - To Deny Passage.

Crick knowledge of fungi does not extend much further than being able to divide the local varieties up into the ones you can eat, the ones you can't and the ones you probably shouldn't, but will make you see things if you do. There's also the fourth category, and about that, wise Cricks try to know as little as humanly possible; understandable, given that the fourth category is the stuff that comes from the Underworld and will try to kill you just for being kind of nearby.

Fungi is all over the Underworld, particularly the places that are not finished and furnished, and there are millions of classes, orders, families that are perfectly harmless, or, at least, fit neatly into one of the first three categories. That's all we have to say about them. There are also a couple thousand or so species that will cross the street to murder your ass, and a couple of them can even walk to do it.

There aren't a lot of Underworldly mycologists out there, so a lot of the accounts of UFCs remain kind of vague. The vast majority of dangerous UFCs are some variation on the theme of mold, and how poetic do you think someone is going to wax on the shapes and textures of mold? Hobgoblins are the most likely to write anything down about whatever it is the rues brought in and is now growing through their bones, and goblins aren't the most intellectually rigorous creatures in the world. Their accounts tend to be very direct, focusing on the color of the UFC and the awful thing it does.

Think of it as a sort of pick-and-mix of fungoid terror.

Harm - 31 fucking flavors of badness. I mean how do you choose?
There's the kind that gives off delicious smelling spores that make you hungry and then grows exponentially in your gut when you eat it.
There's the kind that, when the spores germinate in your sinuses, grows up into your brain and zombifies you.
There's the kind that steals your body heat to grow and holy shit, don't set it on fire.
There's the kind that eats your skin off. Like you do.
There's the kind that turns goblins into kill-crazy cannibals.
There's the kind that unconsciously uses witchcraft.
There's the kind that gets you so high it burns out your nervous system.
There's the kind that shoots little shiny black splinters that cause a nasty fungal meningitis.
There's the kind that generates the brown note.
There's the kind that generates the O note. Okay, that one's kind of awesome.
There's the kind that generates the note that breaks bones. Decidedly less awesome.
There's the kind that floods your mind with its maudlin poetry and tries to depress you to death.
There's the kind that causes spontaneous gender reassignment, and turns everyone at the table into assholes. Actually, I take it back. This kind doesn't exist.
There's the kind that generates local tesseracts and promises you baked goods if you cooperate with it on its experiments.
Basically, there's something for everyone, usually in the form of a Hard Move.

Driven by a strange desire, unseen by the human eye.
I don't think I need to belabor the fact that collecting spores from this stuff and unleashing it on people you don't like is like a whole candy store of dangerous mischief, for starters. UFCs, like most other underworldly denizens, do poorly in direct sunlight, which limits their spread on the surface. Some UFCs concentrate magic crystals (particularly the ones that launch magical attacks at passersby), others clean contaminants, and still others incorporate other useful or precious materials into their fruiting bodies. Some are nutritious and good to eat. Some are nutritious and good to eat if you're a goblin. Some make goblins who eat them nutritious and good to eat. Okay, strike that last bit. Goblins are never good to eat.