Fungi (sage study)

Fungi is a sage study in the field of Plant Life, investigating the fleshy and edible fruit bodies of several species of mushroom, including those that grow above and below ground. Mushrooms are eaten for their food value and for other qualities, some of them magical. Mushrooms are also a poison source.

The study includes yeasts, lichen and mushrooms, gas spores, shriekers and violet fungi, as well as sentient forms of fungus such as beholders and yellow musk creepers.

Sage Abilities

The sage abilities below are those acquired by a character through the study, according to status.

Amateur Status

• Cultivate Mushroom: grow fungi of any variety.

• Know Fungi: identify name of genera and species of fungi on sight; recognize edible from poisonous mushrooms.

• Mushroom Hunt: know when and where to search for edible or poisonous mushrooms in a wild environment.

Authority Status

• Brew Curative: enables the preparation of a mushroom-based concoction with the potential to reduce the lethality and chronic nature of a disease; the brew requires 12 hours to make.

• Detect Fungus: recognises the odour given off by dangerous fungus-based creatures, forewarning the character when approaching within 120 ft.

• Fermentation: provides knowledge of yeast and fungus in creating safe-to-consume femented alcoholic beverages and in food processing (the pickling of vegetables and making of yogurt).

• Hallucinogenic: gives knowledge of how mind-altering psychotropic substances can be prepared from mushrooms that produce these effects; enables calming and comfort to those suffering from fear and madness.

• Prepare Vexation: gives knowledge regarding the mixing and making of vexation poison, an ingestive poison designed to kill the imbiber.

• Find Truffle: enables the finding of a truffle within 1-4 hours, minus the number of minutes equal to the character's knowledge. Combined with goodberry, a freshly found truffle can heal 1d4 hit points.

Expert Status

• Scour & Purge: employs fungi to consume and eradicate the evil that's invested itself in structures and around graves, cleaning the ground so that it's wholesome once more. Fungi must be cultivated and require a month's time to scour an area of 36 combat hexes.

• Shamanism: from hunted mushrooms, the character is able to produce a powerful, chewable ball that grants both hallucinogenic effects and the ability to see into the ethereal plane — and to speak with intelligent creatures there. The practice requires the employment of a drum, rattle, gong or pipe, as well as a brief period of dancing and singing (10 rounds), following an hour of meditation. Once accomplished, the character can speak directly to a companion that has recently died, but remains within the time span of being raised from the dead (a period of no more than 29 days). The shaman may also ensure fertility in a woman for a period of one day, or relieve a curse for the space of one week (whereupon the curse will reassert itself).

Sage Status

• Cultivate Truffles: ensure the proliferation of easily located truffles with the planting of truffle-yielding trees. A successful harvest will require three years, but beyond selecting trees to plant and ensuring the proper soil, no additional care is required. Up to ten acres may be managed, with each acre producing one useful truffle per day.

• Monstrous Fungi: enables the breeding of monstrous forms of fungi from ordinary-sized hosts. Requires laboratory, hallowed ground, monument, pens large enough for breeding and a space of 3-12 months to create a growth bed that begins to spawn random fungus-creatures with 2-7 hit dice. From 2-8 such creatures will emerge per month once the growth bed is established. Does not allow any special control of what sort of fungus are bred.

See Druid Sage Abilities