Mycogramm

Mycogramms are small, unusually cunning fungal organisms that evolved in crypts and battlefields where corpses are plentiful. A single spore can remain dormant for months, waiting for the scent of blood and decay. When a fresh corpse is found, a Mycogramm sends ribbon-thin hyphae into the body's head and spine, knitting itself to nervous tissue and learning the simple motor patterns of the host. Over days it reconditions muscles to obey its chemical impulses, producing a puppet that obeys crude commands. Towns and grave-wardens near the fen-lands tell of whole squads of fallen pikemen dragged into shallow pits by unseen threads; the scholar Hest Oln of the Collegium Vireo wrote a small pamphlet, "On Corpse-Binders and Their Habits," describing Mycogramm colonies that collect trophies of helmets and coinpouches to attract scavengers. The hunters' guild of Varek Hollow keeps a ledger of suspected Mycogramm lairs; they are careful to burn the bodies and soil to prevent spore spread. Some funerary cults deliberately avoid certain crypts rumored to be 'braiding ground' for the fungus, while necromancers sometimes attempt to harvest Mycogramm fragments as cheap, untrustworthy puppetry components.

Imagine a squat, fleshy base the size of a medium barrel, mottled pale-gray and moss-green with wet, glossy sheen and a network of dark vein-like pores. From its crown unfurl dozens of translucent tendrils, each as thick as a pinky at the root and tapering to hairlike filaments tipped with pinhead sporopods. Small, ink-black pustules dot the sides and weep a viscous amber that smells faintly of iodine and wet soil. When attached to a corpse, several tendrils coil into the neck and temples, while others weave under clothing into joints; where hyphae pierce skin they leave a lacework of pale scarring and fungal bloom. Scale: the Mycogramm is roughly three-quarters the height and mass of a human waist-high barrel; its tendrils will reach across a human-sized bed and its base fits through a standard doorway. Textures: slick, rubbery main body, velvety inner pores, fibrous translucent tendrils with beadlike sporopods.