Spo Mushroom
"There is no need to fear a Spo. Instead, you should welcome it and join our network. The mushroom is not only tasty but also provides us with all we require: Shelter and community. Join the Spo and become family with us." An infected trader telling about the Spo.
by Stable Diffusion
Basic Information
Anatomy
The Spo is a true monster under the mushrooms. It can reach up to 100 meters in height and radius with enough time. The mycelium network of the Spo can span over several hundred square kilometers, resulting in the Spo being one of the biggest living beings on Bardor. The mushroom is mostly tinted in a light yellow with a white stem and yellow hat. The hat insides are mostly hollow and filled with yellow spores. The biggest Spo mushrooms have chambers in their hat, which are big enough for humans to live inside.
Genetics and Reproduction
Inside the giant hats of a Spo Mushroom, it grows trillions of little yellow spores. In spring, the hats open its spore chambers and the wind grabs the little dust-like spores and carries them through the air. Observers can see these as clouds of yellow dust.
Now it heavily depends on what these spores come into contact with. If the place where they land is simply fertile ground, then the spore can slowly grow mycelium. In the case that there is already a Spo Mycelium in the ground, it will combine itself with the already existing one. In short, the spo spore becomes a part of the bigger Spo, fusing with it.
The more interesting case is when a Spo spore is breathed into the lungs of a living being, may it be an animal or humanoid. The Spo infects the host with the Spola Infection, growing inside its host.
Growth Rate & Stages
The Mycelium never stops growing as long as it can get new sources of nutrition. In the ground, it can grow up to one meter in any direction per year.
To spread its spores and to infect new hosts, the Spo grows mushrooms out of the ground. These mushrooms are what we can see. The Spo mushroom grows slowly, only making around 30 cm in height per year. To reach 100 meters, a mushroom requires at least 320 years, often more as growth slowly calms down after they hit around 50 meters. To grow to such giants, they also require enough space. Mushrooms that grow in big fields never reach such heights as they share the nutrition of the mycelium with the others around them.
Inside a host that is infected with the Spola Infection, the mushroom grows together with its host.
Ecology and Habitats
The Spo can grow in fertile soil only that receives enough rainfall and has temperated or Mediterranean temperatures. Wet swamp-like regions in warm, humid climates are best for the Mushroom. Too cold or too warm can destroy the overground mushrooms and without them, the mycelium slowly falls into slumber as it does not receive the nutrition it requires to continue growing. As long as the mycelium is connected to other plants, it can at least keep itself alive and can try later to grow new mushrooms.
The Spo is only native on the Atlanesis continent, in the northern part with enough rainfall. There you can find the biggest Spo that is documented with an age of over 1000 years.
Insides infected hosts, the Spo can survive in any climate that its host can live in.
Dietary Needs and Habits
The Spo requires nutrition from other living beings to thrive. It connects itself with either hosts that are infected with the Spola Infection or with plants to get the nutrition required. Additionally, the Spo requires large amounts of water.
The big mushrooms of the Spo also often connect themselves with many plants around them, partly even fusing with them, to do photosynthesis to collect energy for the mycelium.
Additional Information
Uses, Products & Exploitation
The mushrooms of the Spo are eatable as long as they are small. They provide nutrition and have a calm and earth-like taste.
The downside of eating a raw Spo mushroom is a near guarantee infection with the Spola Infection. The bigger mushrooms can be used as homes for infected ones. By telling the Spo via the psionic network, a Mushroom can grow with chambers inside its stem and hat, as well as narrow hallways to reach them. This way, the Spo can provide its infected ones with shelter.
Average Intelligence
Surprisingly, the Spo can be very intelligent. It all depends on the hosts it can infect with its Spola Infection. If a Spo infects several intelligent beings, it also becomes intelligent just like them. This can become dangerous if the Spo is able to infect many beings at once, as its own intelligence is additive to all its hosts. Especially big Spo can become sentient and fully self-aware beings, able to plan ahead and even research their own environment.
Perception and Sensory Capabilities
The Spo has no eyes or ears. It can't measure its environment with its own body alone. But the Spo can feel other living beings with its psionic capabilities. Additionally, every living being who is infected with the Spola Infection also acts as the eyes and ears of the Spo.
The mushroom uses its hosts to find new, good places to grow new mushrooms from its vast mycelium network.
Symbiotic and Parasitic organisms
The Spo is a fully symbiotic mushroom, which infects all animals and sentinal beings that breathe in its spores with the Spola Infection. This infection creates a psionic network between all infected ones in a certain area and the mushroom itself. The Spo does not control its hosts, nor does it have an interest in hurting them or consuming them. The infection is beneficial for both sides. Infected ones can communicate telepathically with each other and the Spo itself as soon as it gains self-awareness by infecting enough hosts. The area of the psionic network depends on the size of the Spo itself and the brain capacity of the hosts. Human hosts that are infected by a big Spo can communicate with other infected humans over several kilometers.
While the infected ones provide the Spo with nutrition, it grows inside them and strengthens their bodies against other infections. Slowly it will infect more and more of the body and take over the functions of the organs till all the insides are controlled by the Spo.
If a mycelium of a Spo finds the roots of a plant, it will invade the plant and begin to spread inside of it. This often results in little yellow mushrooms of the Spo growing from such an infected plant. Same as living hosts, the Spo has little interest in harming the plant but lives in a symbiotic relationship with it.
Civilization and Culture
History
The first documented seeings of the Spo are around 200 BC in Atlanesis. During these days of chaos and civil war on the continent, many fled into the forests and swamps to escape the bloody fights and raids. The Spo, which began growing in these areas, was often eaten by the survivors and the first of them were infected by the Spola Infection.
Over the years, the Spos of the area formed small communities around themselves and grew and grew. One after the other made contact with the other Spo through their growing mycelium networks and fused to a single gigantic Spo that controls the area in the north of the continent today.
Scientific Name
Fungus Tele
Lifespan
Several thousand years
Average Height
Never stops growing
Geographic Distribution
Related Organizations
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