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Fungril

"We have always been here. The city does not know this because the city does not look down."
— Soft-Wet-Listening, a Fungril elder in the Vegetal Entrails

The fungus-folk of the Underground — sapient, slow, soft-bodied people of fruiting bodies and mycelial networks, native to the Vegetal Entrails and emerging into Cadwallon's lower spaces over the past several centuries. Cadwës who have heard of them at all assume they are creatures rather than people. The Guild of Sewer Workers know better. The Fungril are the city's quietest population and its best-informed.

What They Are

  • Sapient mushrooms — humanoid in arrangement (head, torso, four limbs) but composed of fruiting bodies extending from a vast subsurface mycelial network. An individual Fungril is more accurately a fruit of the larger organism — multiple Fungril speaking together are one being thinking aloud.
  • Soft-voiced and slow — speech is breathy, sometimes synced across multiple bodies, often takes a beat to start. The pause is not thinking; the pause is the network propagating the question.
  • Light-averse but not light-injured. They can walk Cadwallon's streets at night. They prefer not to.
  • Networked memory — what one Fungril knows, the local colony knows by the next moonrise. Crossing colony lines requires effort; deep knowledge can be siloed.
  • Long-lived as individuals (~100 years); essentially immortal as colonies — a Fungril network may date back to the pre-Cadwallon era

Where They Live

  • The Vegetal Entrails — the founding home. The strip-leaf tunnels and the Fungril mycelium are co-evolved; the Entrails are the Fungril network's surface vasculature.
  • The Shades (Var-Nokkt) — the largest above-ground Fungril community, in the flood-prone lower section; the Guild of Sewer Workers HQ is also here, and the relationship is deeply cooperative
  • The [[Sewers]] — Fungril stewards live in many sewer junctions, paid quietly by the Guild of Sewer Workers to monitor flow and report blockages
  • The [[Litiocs|Labyrinth approaches]] — at the deepest reach, the Fungril network thins; no Fungril has ever returned from a Labyrinth-direction expedition

In Cadwallon

  • The Guild of Sewer Workers alliance is generations old and informal. The Guild employs Fungril couriers, listeners, and rescue-finders; in return, the Guild protects Fungril colonies from Cadwë interference and brokers the rare necessary contact with the surface.
  • Shrew relations — most shrews don't know about Fungril; the deep-tier shrews know and pay for guidance
  • The Tractor is a slow disaster. The deep-bore drill has cut through three confirmed Fungril colony cores since 999. The Architects do not know this. The colonies have been quietly relocating, but the network is fraying.
  • What they know — Fungril memory extends underground. A Fungril elder may know what was happening in the Cynwäll city when Sinlis Mantis arrived, because their colony was already there.

Relations

The relocation

A Fungril elder approaches a free league quietly — through the Sewer Workers — with a desperate ask: the next Tractor bore will destroy a colony that has been continuous for over 600 years. The elder needs the bore redirected. The Architects will not listen to a mushroom. They might listen to Cadwës with the right credentials. The reward is information the colony has been accumulating for six centuries.

What S'ylice told them

The Fungril network bordering S'ylice's chamber has, over the past year, been receiving a sustained communication from her — a story she is telling slowly, in installments. The colony does not understand most of it; they have the sense it is for someone else. They are looking for the someone else.

See Also