Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Maldin" data-source="post: 5545710" data-attributes="member: 27170">I've known about this group of fungi for quite a while (part of what I do IRL is studying arthropods), however my brain clicked into a slightly different DM Mode. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devil.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":devil:" title="Devil    :devil:" data-shortname=":devil:" />I created a very rare lower-planar fungus that can infect inhabitants of those planes (it would have to, wouldn't it, from an ecological point of view - even if they are immune to "normal" diseases), as well as other unfortunate creatures (such as PCs!). The fungus begins to take over the mind of the creature (as the real fungus takes over the brain of ants), causing them to seek out groups of other potentially infectible creatures, and as the fruiting bodies begin to burst through their cracking skin will berserk-attack any creature within site/range. In the advanced stages the creature begins to slow (as a slow spell) as the fungus grows through its muscles and skeletal structure, eventually freezing the unfortunate fiend (or whatever) into a grotesque statue resembling these unfortunate insects...<img src="http://ezquara.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/zombie-fungus-5.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Cordyceps.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />A prime creature (and some outer planar creatures) would obviously die due to extremely compromised internal organs, and that would be the end of it. An immortal fiend, however, might still be both insane and alive indefinitely in its statue-like pose... possibly reaching out with its mind in ways that only a truly twisted DM would use. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devil.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":devil:" title="Devil    :devil:" data-shortname=":devil:" />I ran an adventure on the lower planes where the PCs raided a baatezu cache. Within the cache they found three magical arrows that had tiny vials of glass filled with a brown powder built into the arrowheads. Their first use resulted in the rather spectacularly gruesome death of a fiend (with a lot of collateral damage, including secondarily infected fiends). Once they realized what had happened, they blew quite a few high level fire spells in an attempt to sterilize the scene of the brutal battle to prevent the spread of the disease.Check these pages out for more information about the real fungus:<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyceps" target="_blank">Cordyceps - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</a><a href="http://ezquara.com/?p=14077" target="_blank">Zombie Ants Controlled By Four New Species Of Fungi</a>Denis, aka "Maldin"Maldin's Greyhawk <a href="http://melkot.com" target="_blank">http://melkot.com</a>Loads of edition-independent Greyhawk goodness... maps, magic, mysteries, mechanics, and more!And the new home of <a href="http://melkot.com/wogcomic/" target="_blank">Mortellan's World of Greyhawk webcomic</a>!</blockquote>

Verification