Emoshrooms
Introduction
It was beautiful to see.
The dance of the luminous spores surrounded the settlement like the warm embrace of a nurturing mother. A while back, the air had been filled with screams; terror gnawing at the soul, hunger devouring flesh.
Then they found this place.
No one cared that it stood beside an old graveyard. The whole world was a graveyard anyway.
Upon their arrival, the cries stopped - a synchronized silence.
The spores came at night, brushing against their thoughts, calming the storm within. That very night, they sat around the fire and shared their last provisions. They were barely enough to feed one person. For all ten of them, it was merely a taste trying to outsmart starvation.
And yet, somehow, they all felt full.
Nights turned into days. Days into weeks. The the ten became twenty, then thirty, until a small hamlet rose from the bones of the forgotten. And still, the spores danced. Still, they nourished.
Soon, Fear became a memory.
Grief lost its teeth, as the names of the lost slipped out of memory.
Faces blurred.
Words hollowed.
Voice became irrelevant.
Their bodies were fed. Their souls?
Emptied.
That’s when the dance stopped.
The feast was over. The spores vanished.
And the blooms, having taken what they needed, moved on.
Origins
The Cataclysm fractured more than just the world. It shattered the veil between magic and reality, merging the two into an unstable amalgam of memory and possibility. Civilizations crumbled. Nature twisted. Nothing stayed pure, not even death. But not everything born of this upheaval wants to kill you.
Mostly.
The Painkiller Fungus, or Emoshroom as it came to be known among the survivors, is one such anomaly. These fungi are the unnatural offspring of fungal life and Wyld magic. A cruel form of evolution, perhaps, or an eerie fusion sprouted where magic and grief collided.
They form colonies with a hive-like awareness, sensing patterns and emotions to feed on. What survivors find - a shimmer in the dark, a flicker at the corner of their breath - is just a piece of something deeper. Every bloom is a nerve ending and every spore a messenger. Every colony ends up to a single body, stretching across ruins and silence.
The blooms do not move quickly, but they do move, trailing sorrow like scent. The sharpness of despair draws them, the heat of grief awakens them. And in this new world, where life survives only by forgetting what it’s lost, the Emoshrooms have found a neverending feast.
Common Names
The Painkiller Fungus, the Emoshroom, the Grey MercyParts of the Hive Mind
- The Rootmind (the central, unseen body)
- The Blooms (mobile satellite fungi)
- The Symbiospores (spore clouds facilitating exchange)
Bloom Variants
- Mourning Blooms
- Rage Blooms
- Solace Blooms
- Fungal colonies demonstrate complex, hive-like behavior. Each bloom acts as a sensory node, connected beneath the surface by what seems to be incorporeal mycelial threads.
- The spores are releashed selectively when exposed to emotional stimuli.
- Nutrient transfer occurs passively via spore inhalation and dermal absorption. No ingestion necessary. Explains high toxicity if eaten.
- Bioluminescence colors exhibits slight changes depending to emotion and/or bloom variation. Suspected chemical communication.
Migration patterns connected with enviromental conditions?No! Observation shows they follow emotional “hotspots”. Colonies can relocate slowly over months or years.- Long-term exposure leads to progressive emotional dulling, memory gaps, and physical fatigue despite improved nutrition. Exposure time depends on polulation numbers affected at the same time.
- Hypothesis: Emoshrooms rely on emotional energy as an integral part of their metabolism, creating a trade-off that sustains both species. The psychological toll may be a byproduct; not the intent.
This is fantastic and I am saving it for the August reading challenge!
That means a lot coming from you <3 Thank you so much!!