Poisonous Fungi

Overview

Fungus feeds the deep. Whole holds and root-houses live on it, and in the forest it is a gathered food and a trade good. Among the good caps grow bad ones, and the worst of them, the pale cap, is a slow betrayer: the eater sickens, recovers, and dies. Poisonous fungi are as much a matter of teaching as of luck.

Cause

Three dangers lie under the one name. The pale cap is a wild mushroom of woods and damp caves, smooth, white to greenish, with white gills, that looks much like several good kinds; its poison works slowly on the belly and the liver. The mad-cap, small and brown-capped, brings visions and frenzy. And in cultivated beds stray growths must be pulled: tenders remove any growth of another colour, and a bed left alone runs wild (see Fungus Beds). Workers of Nature Magic keep spore strains that are benign, intoxicating, medicinal, harmful, or soporific, and loose them with Spore Cloud.

Who It Strikes

It strikes gatherers who do not know the caps: outsiders, children, and the hungry. Dwarves and Kobolds, who eat the fungus of the hold beds, and the Dark Elves of the root-houses are raised knowing which caps to leave, and are seldom caught. Small bodies die soonest of the pale cap.

Signs and Course

The pale cap gives no warning at the meal. Most of a day later come violent cramps, vomiting, and a watery purge that lasts a day or two. Then the eater seems to mend and may get up and eat. This is the false recovery. A few days on, the skin and eyes yellow, the belly swells and aches, the eater bleeds easily, grows confused, and sinks. Those who live past the yellowing mend slowly over weeks.

The mad-cap acts within the hour: laughter, sweating, bright visions, then terror or frenzy, ending in heavy sleep by the next day. Harmful spores bring coughing and a sore chest, intoxicating ones a stagger and wild talk, soporific ones sleep.

Contagion

It does not pass. A household that ate from one basket sickens together.

Treatment and Its Limits

Against the pale cap, the stomach must be emptied before the first cramps, which is to say before anyone knows. Once the cramps come, Toxin Draw can still pull some of the poison, and a healer who knows the course uses Organ Steady through the false recovery and after, at heavy cost to the healer's reserves over many nights. Cure Affliction helps if repeated. Water and broth keep the purging eater alive. The mad-cap wants only watching, so the eater does not walk into water or off a ledge.

Mortality

Unhelped, the pale cap kills about half of those who eat a whole cap, and most children; a few survivors keep a weak belly for life. The mad-cap seldom kills by itself, but those in its frenzy fall, drown, and fight. Spore strains kill only when a harmful strain is loosed to harm.

Lore and Belief

Folk tests abound and fail: a silver spoon that blackens, a cap that peels, a cap that the slugs have eaten. Hold children are taught instead to know each good kind by name and leave the rest. Some say the pale cap grows where something died, and in the Roothollows it is called the guest's cap, a grim joke about outsiders. Mad-cap visions are taken by some for messages, and the takers argue about what they mean.

A siege tale tells of besieged townsfolk who sent a basket of pale caps out to the enemy camp as a peace gift; whether the tale is true, no army since has eaten mushrooms sent from a wall.

In the Medieval Era

The fungus-eating peoples of the Roothollows, the Stonewake Deeps, and the Ironspine holds meet the danger with teaching and tended beds, and their losses are few. Most deaths come in woods and on the surface, among gatherers in hungry years and travellers who trust a cap that looks familiar. Village healers seldom know the false recovery, and many a pale-cap death is laid to a fever that came after.

Where It Appears

• Nature Magic: Spore Cloud
• Fungus Beds
• Glowing Fungi
• the Writers' Guide chapter The Schools of Magic