Beyonder Spores

Overview

Two of the Beyonders spread themselves by spore. Qzoth, the Becoming, sheds protean spores that set anything living changing and never let it stop. The Rust Flower sheds rust spores that wear out whatever they touch. Neither is a fungus of this world, though both behave enough like one that people name them so; each is a piece of its Beyonder, carried out ahead of its Incursion.

On Caeldon only the protean spores are real. They sleep in the burned ground of the Wrongwood, left by the Qzoth Incursion (c. 4,000-c. 3,500 BR), and wake when it is dug or ploughed. No Incursion of the Rust Flower has ever reached Caeldon; its rust spores are what one would shed.

Appearance

Protean Spores

Too fine to see one at a time, they show as a faint, warm-coloured haze over the Bloom or over broken Wrongwood ground, pinkish or the yellow of old fat, that thickens where flesh is changing fastest. On skin they leave a raised rash that itches and then moves. The air near them smells of blood and milk.

Rust Spores

These would be visible: a reddish-brown dust like rust filings, drifting off every crumbling surface of a Rustfall and settling in a thin bloom of orange spots. Each spot would spread in rings as the surface beneath it gave way, shedding new dust as it went, and a cloud of them would rasp faintly as it moved and taste of iron.

Habitat and Range

Both are thickest in their Incursion and thin out from it, but neither stays there. Protean spores now sleep in the Wrongwood's burned ground, which holds them still; once it is broken they travel on wind and water and in the bodies of the infected, so a village down the valley may wake to a fever that does not stop. Rust spores would ride on the dust of a Rustfall and on the Rust-Hosts that walked out of it, and a host passing through a town could leave hinges and rafters spotted after it had gone.

Behaviour and Temperament

They have no will of their own. They settle, take, and spread, and each infection sends out more of them. The protean spore takes only what lives, flesh and plant alike. The rust spore takes everything, steel, wood, stone, and skin.

Abilities

A protean spore infects on contact. It begins with a rash, a fever, or an extra joint; within hours the infected is unrecognizable, and within days may no longer be one organism. No ordinary filter stops it.

A rust spore corrodes what it lands on. A spot on a blade rusts it through, a spot on a beam rots it, a spot on a hand cracks the skin and thins the bone, and every spot sheds more spores as it crumbles.

Life Cycle

Neither grows from seed. The spores are shed by the Beyonder itself, by its hosts, and by everything they have taken. A Flesh-Host buds new spores with every change; the dust a Rust-Host fell into at its end would still be full of them. Fire clears both, and the protean spores also fail where form is held perfectly still.

Uses and Dangers

They give nothing. Their danger is that they move faster than the Incursion that sheds them and turn each victim into a new source. People near an outbreak cover every bit of skin, wrap their mouths, and burn whatever begins to change. Against rust spores, tools and sound goods would have to be oiled, waxed, and sealed. What a healer can do against the protean spores is told with the Changing Fever.

Lore and Belief

Most people who meet the protean spores have never heard the name of the power behind them, and know them as a plague, the Changing Fever; the rust spores would bring the Red Dust. Dark Entities are known through fear, taboo, and rumour (see Knowledge of the Cosmos), and many take the fever for a god's punishment. Some say a written name worn against the skin keeps the fever off; holding one's form in mind does help against Qzoth, but a scrap of parchment does not do it alone.

Where It Appears

• Qzoth, the Becoming
• The Rust Flower
• The Wrongwood