PLAYER ANCESTRY: MYCOMORPH

In Vaarn many things have become intertwined, and much that was once the province of mankind alone – speech, reason, art, religion – has been granted to other forms of life and these beings hold themselves as humanity’s equal. In the mycomorph death and life are preserved in strange balance, for the creatures are formed of dead flesh and living fungus and they name their kind the ‘twice born’. A sculptor of living matter and artisan of decay, the mycomorph remakes human flesh in its own image, and there is no shortage of raw material in the blue hinterlands of Vaarn.

Mycomorphs have developed from an enemy type to a fully-blown player ancestry as I’ve developed the setting. Many of them are hostile, but I don’t see why you couldn’t play as a sane, eloquent mould-man if you wanted to. They’re not intended to be the classic ‘mushroom man’, instead taking the form of human corpses that have been twisted by the cultivation of far-future biotech fungus.

First, roll four d20s to generate the basic form of your mycomorph:

	BODY	HEAD	COLOUR	TEXTURE
1	Childlike	Classic Mushroom	Milky	Rubbery
2	Corpulent	Frilled Growths	Cream	Warty
3	Soft	Spherical	Ashen	Slimy
4	Skinny	Spires	Blue	Fuzzy
5	Skeletal	Conical	Taupe	Hairy
6	Bulbous	Cup-like	Crimson	Velvet
7	Long	Human	Yellow	Soft
8	Squat	Tendrils	Orange	Tree Bark
9	Flexible	Hollow	Black	Leather
10	Stretched	Dandelion Fuzz	Violet	Jelly
11	Hulking	Mask-like	Olive	Burnt
12	Giant	Eye Garden	Lime	Sponge
13	Muscular	Cratered	Rust	Veined
14	Decaying	Cauliflower	Iron	Downy
15	Broken	Flat	Gold	Dry
16	Lanky	Veil-like	Bronze	Damp
17	Powerful	Coral-like	Indigo	Pitted
18	Imposing	Filaments	Translucent	Crusty
19	Weak	Brain-like	Rose	Spiny
20	Withered	Geometric	Brindled	Feathered

Next, roll three d20s to generate your mycomorph’s name, personality, and the special quality of their fungal flesh:

	NAME	PERSONALITY	SPECIAL QUALITY
1	Dovenglass	Abrasive	Bioluminous
2	Oulbrier	Arrogant	Poisonous Spores
3	Mockbridge	Assertive	Paralysing Spores
4	Headhill	Charismatic	Psychedelic Spores
5	Tirrin	Daring	Mind-slaving Spores
6	Yearns	Decadent	Aphrodisiac Spores
7	Cerilgreay	Eloquent	Poisonous Flesh
8	Rendmoor	Extravagant	Paralysing Flesh
9	Eamont	Hedonistic	Psychedelic Flesh
10	Purplebeck	Impulsive	Mind-slaving Flesh
11	Arraby	Irritable	Aphrodisiac Flesh
12	Kabergill	Melancholy	Absurdly Flexible
13	Pearthika	Paranoid	Mute But Telepathic
14	Devandarsh	Quiet	Can Clone Self
15	Coronam	Religious	Feeds on Toxins
16	Ashwine	Romantic	Feeds on Plastic
17	Ekramavati	Scholarly	Feeds on Metal
18	Whitmon	Stern	Feeds on Radiation
19	Froswhirl	Vain	Acidic Blood
20	Kirth	Volatile	Light Enough to Float

Finally, as is customary, I will use these tables to make a Mycomorph PC for Vaarn. I roll a hulking blue mycomorph with jelly-textured flesh and a cup-like head. For a name I roll Mockbridge, for demeanour I roll irritable, and for special quality I roll aphrodisiac spores.

I have a fairly clear image of Mockbridge already. They were formed from the dead body of a gladiator slave, who was thrown, their head smashed in by a mace, into the nightsoil pits outside the walls of Gnomos. A wandering spore entered this corpse, and began to rebuild. The head was beyond repair, so the mycomorph sprouted a towering blue vase-shaped growth, something like a pitcher plant. I imagine the fungus being traps insects inside the cup, and feeds primarily in this fashion. Mockbridge emerged from the pit after three days of restless sleep, with only faint memories of their previous life as a human. They are large and imposing, but actually far weaker than their size would imply, as their flesh is soft and jelly-like. Mockbridge emits spores which have an intense aphrodisiac effect upon mammals, but have no genitalia or sexual desires themselves, which may explain the mycomorph’s extreme irritability. It’s hard to get much sense out of humans when all they seem to think about is reproduction.