Myconids

Myconids are enigmatic fungoid people who live in isolated colonies in the Underdark. They are renowned for their skill in alchemy, not speaking, and answering those who approach them in kind to how they're approached. Attackers will be fought off, but polite requests for aid are, silently, answered with aid; and nothing else is known about them.

## Personality

Myconids are a peaceful, if xenophobic, people. This is likely largely due to the fact that the Underdark is home to an incredible number of hostile cultures, all warring with each other in an eternal struggle, and the myconid have realized long ago that their best opportunity for survival is to just stay out of it and keep their caps down. Mostly, myconids are content to tend their fungus farms in the Underdark, and just survive unimpeded, but occasionally one will be tasked with a mission that sends them out into the world, or be the lone survivor of a stricken circle.

## Physical Description

Myconids are, essentially, humanoid mushrooms. They exhibit a vast variety of *particular* mushroom traits, and their life cycles involve several stages of different sizes, so it's difficult to describe the myconids in general terms. However some, very few, generalities can be made. Typically, myconids resemble mushrooms that have two arms and two legs emerging from their stalk, and two eyes in their caps which can be completely concealed by closing their eyes. Very occasionally, an individual with more than two legs or arms will appear.

A myconid lives for about 24 years, appearing to be, essentially, a large toadstool when it first sprouts. At the age of four, the myconid reaches maturity, and becomes mobile. From the years of four to eight, the average myconid stands about 1 1/2 ft tall, but they can range anywhere from one to two feet tall, with occasional outliers who are shorter or taller. Around the age of eight, they grow again, averaging around three feet tall at this time, but, again, individuals might be anywhere from two to four feet tall, and possibly slightly beyond those bounds.

At the age of 12, the myconid is considered to have reached full adulthood, entering something like middle-age. These myconids average about six feet tall, but range from four to eight feet tall.

As myconids grow older, they may grow even more, up to 16 feet tall, but this varies by the individual.

### Myconid Reproduction

Myconids, like non-sapient fungi, have a truly vast array of methods of reproduction, but, in general, all forms involve spores, and there are two forms of reproduction that are most relevant for the myconids- sexual and asexual.

Myconids can reproduce with other myconids, though it bares no resemblance to humanoid sexual reproduction except in the most technical terms. It is very common for myconids to reproduce this way as a circle, rather than discrete couples.

However, myconids can also produce spores which will grow without any other myconid involved. This is most commonly done on the death of the myconid, especially violent death, which causes the myconid's body to automatically expel their spores. There will always be some amount of variation in the myconids which grow from these spores, but also, almost always, one will be identical to the "parent" myconid, to the extent that the new myconid is in all ways, an extension of the "parent" myconid's life. It is still true that, generally, a myconid lives only 24 years, but in this way, it is reasonably common to find myconids who have experienced much longer lives through cyclical rebirth.

Myconid society has no native concept of gender, and largely ignore the concept when exposed to it in other cultures.

## Alignment

In general, myconids concern themselves only with themselves. They will, generally, put the good of their circle or tribe above their own individual good, but also generally put the good of their circle above anything else (except, maybe, the myconid people as a whole). There is a general tendency for myconid society to believe that myconids to should all act in a certain way, but they don't apply this belief to people outside of their race. As a whole, myconids are generally neutral.

## Religion

Those rare explorers who have had the opportunity to observe myconid societes variously report that they practice ancestor worship, animism, pantheism, or even a godless euphoric cult tradition.

These are all wrong. Or they're all right in small ways, but fail to comprehend the full truth.

Myconids revere a massive, interplanar fungal entity named Armiloyae, who is believed to touch all planes, but mostly reside outside of the known cosmology. Myconids do not worship Armiloyae, as such, at least in any way which non-myconids would truly recognize as such. Myconid religious practices involve spore-aided melding of the circle's consciousnesses in a hallucinogenic mass-dream state. They believe that in death, a myconid's consciousness can join Armiloyae, to exist for eternity in a state which resembles the aforementioned, but in the way that the sea resembles a bucket of water.

## Language

Myconids do not speak, but can learn to understand and read spoken languages. Instead of speech, myconids who are twelve years or older can make use of specialized spores which allow them to communicate telepathically to a range of 120 ft. These spores can be released in a 120 ft spread, or as a 40 ft ray which affects only a single individual.

## Names

Within their circles, myconids make little use of names, though the concept is not foreign to them. They just have little need for names as a telepathic race. There are two forms of names which myconids might have- reputational names, and job names. Reputational names are given to myconids by their circles as reference or recognition of particularly noteworthy things the individual has done. They might be reverent, but derogatory reputational names are more common. Job names are names adopted by myconids whose jobs have taken them outside of their circles to interact with the outside world. These names are commonly based on types of mushrooms and other related terms, but played with to give them an individuality.