Species and Backgrounds

Peoples of the Deep

We are not many peoples. We are one song, sung in different mouths.

— Sporefather Umble, Sporesung elder

You will not find the folk of the Mycelial Deep in any surface bestiary, and they would not thank you for the looking. Three peoples call the deepest Reaches home before all others: the Sporeborn, who died once and were continued; the Glimmerkin, who carry their own small suns through the dark; and the Myconids, eldest of the Deep's waking folk, who have kept its memory since the Waking. Others live here too—Gleaners come down from the surface, exiles, wanderers, the merely lost—but these three were made by the Deep, or remade by it, and it shows in the way they move, the way they grieve, the way they glow. What follows are their stories and their gifts. Play them gently. Every one of them is, in some quiet way, still becoming.

Sporeborn

To die in the Mycelial Deep is not, always, to end. When one who is loved is laid into the loam, the Sporesung sing the rite of continuance, and sometimes—not often, and never on command—the Weave answers. A gravebloom rises. It wears a familiar face. It remembers the taste of rain it never tasted here. This is a Sporeborn: a person the Deep refused to release, continued through the Weave and returned to walk among the living with the loam still warm under their tongue.

No Sporeborn wakes alone. Threaded through the reborn flesh is a symbiote—a second self, quiet and patient, that shares the body like a guest who has decided to stay. It has no name until you give it one. In the still hours it stirs, offering warnings, appetites, and memories that are not quite yours. Most Sporeborn learn to live as two, a self and a shadow-self in careful conversation. A rare and unlucky few are, over long years, slowly lived by their other (see Chapter 5).

They are drawn to unfinished things—a debt unpaid, a song half-sung, a road not walked to its end—as though continuance left a hook in them. Some Sporeborn wake with their whole life intact and only the cold to show for it; others surface with a stranger's hands and a name they must be told, piecing a self together from spore-song and the kindness of those who knew the one they used to be. No two are continued the same way twice. The living treat them all with a careful reverence that is not quite ease. To sit with a Sporeborn is to sit with someone who has already been where you are most afraid to go, and came back, and will not tell you it was gentle.

Sporeborn Traits

Creature Type. Humanoid. Continuance changed you, but it did not unmake the person you were.

Size. Medium or Small (you choose when you select this species), reflecting the shape of the life you led before the loam took you.

Speed. 30 feet.

Darkvision. You have grown accustomed to the lightless deep. You can see in Dim Light within 60 feet of you as if it were Bright Light, and in Darkness as if it were Dim Light. You discern colors in that Darkness only as shades of gray.

Deathless Flesh. The Weave that continued you still resists the pull of the grave. You have Resistance to Necrotic damage.

The Second Self. Two wills share your body, and neither is easily bent by an outside hand. You have Advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the Charmed condition on yourself.

Lingering Life. You carry fragments of who you were before the dark. When you select this species, you gain proficiency in one skill of your choice, representing a memory that continuance did not take from you.

Deathbloom. As a Bonus Action, you exhale the pale spores of your first death. Each creature of your choice that you can see within 10 feet of you must succeed on a Constitution saving throw (DC equals 8 plus your Proficiency Bonus plus your Constitution modifier) or take Necrotic damage equal to 1d6 plus your Proficiency Bonus and have Disadvantage on the next attack roll it makes before the end of its next turn. On a successful save, a creature takes half as much damage and suffers no Disadvantage. You can use this trait a number of times equal to your Proficiency Bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest.

Glimmerkin

In Lumen Hollow, where a whole cavern-lake burns soft and blue and the raft-markets never truly darken, the smallest folk carry their own light. A Glimmerkin stands no taller than a human child, capped and fine-boned, and glows—gently, from somewhere behind the skin, a lantern lit and kept. In the Lantern Warren they cluster by the thousand, and the Warren at rest looks, from across the water, like a fallen constellation caught among the reeds.

Their glow is not decoration. It is speech. A Glimmerkin can dim to a sullen ember or flare to a warning-white, and among their own kind they hold whole conversations in pulse and color that the Gleaners have never fully learned to read. This makes them the Deep's finest lamp-tenders, messengers, and market-criers; Cassira Vane will tell you the Driftmarket runs on Glimmerkin light and Glimmerkin gossip, in that order, and that she would trust neither Reach without them.

A Glimmerkin lives fast and remembers everything. They pass a single hoarded story down through a whole clutch of cousins, each adding a color to it, until the tale glows brighter than the teller. They are quick, curious, and relentlessly communal—a Glimmerkin alone is a Glimmerkin in mourning, and one who has been long from the Warren will sometimes dim, day by day, until brought back among their own. When one is startled, the whole gathering flickers; when one is threatened, the flare can leave a raider blinking blind while small, deft hands relieve him of his purse. Do not mistake their size for softness. The Warren has outlasted three blights, and by all accounts it did so laughing.

Glimmerkin Traits

Creature Type. Plant. You are, for all your wit and warmth, a fruiting thing of the Weave.

Size. Small.

Speed. 30 feet.

Darkvision. Even the light-born see in the dark of the Deep. You can see in Dim Light within 60 feet of you as if it were Bright Light, and in Darkness as if it were Dim Light. You discern colors in that Darkness only as shades of gray.

Fungal Vigor. The pulp beneath your cap shrugs off toxins that would fell warmer flesh. You have Resistance to Poison damage, and you have Advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the Poisoned condition on yourself.

Inner Light. A soft radiance burns behind your skin, and you decide when it shows. As a Bonus Action, you can shed Bright Light in a 5-foot radius and Dim Light for an additional 5 feet, or you can extinguish this light. The light is any color you choose.

Cavern-Clinger. Your fine, root-like fingers find purchase where warmer hands would slip. You have a Climb Speed equal to your Speed.

Dazzle. As a Bonus Action, you flare into sudden, blinding brilliance. One creature you can see within 15 feet of you must succeed on a Constitution saving throw (DC equals 8 plus your Proficiency Bonus plus your Constitution modifier) or have the Blinded condition until the end of its next turn. A creature that can't be dazzled by light, such as one that has no sight or is already Blinded, automatically succeeds. Once you use this trait, you can't use it again until you finish a Long Rest.

Myconid

Before the Gleaning, before the first surface-foot ever bruised the Velvetfields, the Myconids were here. They are the elder folk of the Deep, and they wear their age the way the Weave wears the centuries—quietly, and without hurry. A Myconid rises from the loam as a pale stalk crowned in a cap of muted color, and moves through the dark with a stillness that surface-folk find either holy or unnerving, and are usually right on both counts.

Myconids do not speak as you speak. They commune. A drift of rapport spores carries thought from one mind into another, and in the great circles of the Gillforest a hundred Myconids will stand in silent congress that is, to them, the richest conversation in the world. Many take the song—maturing into the Sporesung vocation, tending the Weave and keeping the memory of everything the Deep has ever continued. They forget nothing. This is their glory and, just as surely, their grief.

To a Myconid, a single self is a strange and lonely instrument—most have never in their long lives been truly alone with one mind, and the silence of a surface skull unsettles them the way a shout unsettles you. They measure time in blooms and grudges in generations. A promise made to a Myconid is a promise made to everyone who will ever share its memory, which is why the Sporesung keep their word and why they are so very slow to give it.

A Myconid abroad is a rare thing: a young one sent to learn the surface-tongues, an elder walking a pilgrim-road toward the Heartweave, a lone stalk who left the circle to see what could not be seen from home. They are patient past the point of comfort and slow to anger, but do not mistake that for softness. The Deep has needed defending since the Waking, and it was the Myconids, always, who stayed.

Myconid Traits

Creature Type. Plant. You are a child of the oldest fruiting bodies of the Deep.

Size. Medium.

Speed. 30 feet.

Darkvision. You are the deepest of the Deep's dwellers, and the dark holds no secrets from you. You can see in Dim Light within 120 feet of you as if it were Bright Light, and in Darkness as if it were Dim Light. You discern colors in that Darkness only as shades of gray.

Fungal Body. Poison is the Deep's oldest language, and you were raised speaking it. You have Resistance to Poison damage, and you have Advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the Poisoned condition on yourself.

Rapport Spores. You commune as your elders do. As a Bonus Action, you release a drift of thought-carrying spores. For the next 10 minutes, you can communicate telepathically with any creature within 30 feet of you that can understand a language, and it can answer you in kind while it remains within range. This shared sense fails against Constructs and Undead, and a strong wind disperses the spores before they can gather.

Communion Spores. You share the Weave's oldest gift, which is connection. As a Bonus Action, you release a haze of gentle, remembering spores. Choose any number of creatures within 10 feet of you (you can include yourself). Each chosen creature gains Temporary Hit Points equal to your Proficiency Bonus and has Advantage on the next saving throw it makes before the end of your next turn. You can use this trait a number of times equal to your Proficiency Bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest.

Backgrounds of the Deep

Where you come from below is written in more than memory. The Deep shapes the folk who live in it — the trade they learned, the losses they carried, the first strange thing they bonded to survive — and a background is the shape that shaping left. Each of the six that follow answers the same quiet question a different way: who were you before the spore-song called you to a wider and more dangerous life? Choose one whose story you can already hear yourself telling by a lumewort's light. The mechanics are ordinary 2024 backgrounds; the lives behind them are anything but. Each was written for the Deep, but none is bound to a single class — a Sporesung Acolyte might walk the road as a cleric, a druid, or a paladin sworn to the Weave, and a Marrow Delver serves a rogue, a fighter, or an artificer equally well. Read the six, then read the person you mean to play into whichever fits.

Creating a Deep Character

A character of the Mycelial Deep pairs a species from earlier in this chapter with one of the backgrounds below. As in the 2024 rules, a background is your origin: it grants an Origin feat, an ability score increase chosen among three listed abilities, two skill proficiencies, one tool proficiency, and a choice of starting equipment. For the ability increase, either raise one listed score by 2 and another by 1, or raise all three by 1; no score may exceed 20 at character creation.

What sets a Deep background apart is not its crunch but its assumption: that you were made ready, by hardship or by faith, for the day something living asked to share your body and your name. None of these lives require you to bond a symbiote — but each is a doorway to it, and the strain and gift of that bond wait in Chapter 5. Where a background ties you to a named place or person, treat that tie as a starting thread the DM can pull; it is meant to be tugged.

The Origin feat each background grants is yours from first level and follows the 2024 rules for such feats. For starting gear, take the themed option (A) if you want your history to arrive already in your pack, or the flat 50 GP of option (B) if you would rather outfit yourself fresh from a Driftmarket stall; either choice is balanced against the other. A DM running a lower-magic table may replace any grown item in an equipment list with its mundane equivalent without changing a background's value.

Sporesung Acolyte

You took the first steps of the song. Somewhere — in the shepherd-commune of Softloam, perhaps, where Sporefather Umble brews the spore-tea that lets surfacers breathe — an elder circle opened its shared memory to you, and you learned to sit in the long silence and hear the dead still speaking in it. You can read a stranger's grief in the spores they shed. You know which fruiting bodies are shrines and which are only supper, and you have carried a loosed memory cupped in your hands, unread, praying it would not thin to nothing before you reached the one who needed it. You are not yet a full voice of the Sporesung. But the Weave has your scent now, and it is patient.

Ability Scores. Wisdom, Constitution, Intelligence (increase one by 2 and another by 1, or increase all three by 1)

Feat. Magic Initiate (Druid)

Skill Proficiencies. Insight and Medicine

Tool Proficiency. Herbalism Kit

Equipment. Choose A or B: (A) a spore-censer, a sprig of gravebloom kept as a holy focus, a pouch of spore-tea, a robe of woven mycelium, a bound book of continuances, and 8 GP; or (B) 50 GP.

Gleaner Caravaneer

You grew up between the wheels. Your family runs freight out of Lumen Hollow — glow and silk and quieter cargo — and you learned the drifting-roads the hard way, walking beside the spore-cattle with one hand on the wagon and one on a cudgel. You can read a market and a stranger in the same glance, haggle a fair price, and tell an honest guide from a man who will sell you to the fog. Most of all you know the Hollow's law: all roads run through Cassira Vane, and a debt to her is remembered forever, in either direction. You have made the Marrow run and the Bruise-edge run and come back lighter and wiser both times. You are the Deep at human scale — and you like it that way.

Ability Scores. Strength, Constitution, Charisma (increase one by 2 and another by 1, or increase all three by 1)

Feat. Alert

Skill Proficiencies. Persuasion and Perception

Tool Proficiency. Cartographer's Tools

Equipment. Choose A or B: (A) traveler's leathers, a cudgel or grown short blade, a lumewort lamp, a route-ledger stamped at Vane's Landing, a signal-whistle, a coil of climbing-line, and 15 GP; or (B) 50 GP.

Deeproot Initiate

You have stood the line where the Deep bleeds. The Deeproot Circle took you young and taught you the wild crafts of the frontier: how to burn a blight-seed before it roots, how to read a warning-fire's color, how to walk into weeping fog and walk back out. You served the Weeping Front, and you know the eldest and grimmest of the wardens — Warden-Mother Sedge, who has held that line longer than most delvers have been alive — as a hard teacher and a fair one. Where the Sporesung answer the rot with sorrow and song, you were trained to answer it with a firebrand and a steady hand. You have lost outposts. You have mourned the ones who could not be saved, and burned what could not be mourned.

Ability Scores. Strength, Wisdom, Constitution (increase one by 2 and another by 1, or increase all three by 1)

Feat. Tough

Skill Proficiencies. Survival and Nature

Tool Proficiency. Poisoner's Kit

Equipment. Choose A or B: (A) a firebrand of fire-lichen, a warden's grown spear, a moss mantle, a string of bellowscap charms that mark good air, three days of hearthcap rations, and 10 GP; or (B) 50 GP.

Marrow Delver

You make your living among the bones of a god. The Marrow Roads bored through the petrified skeleton of a dead titan, and you were born or apprenticed to the trade of prying pre-Weave relics from its hollows — above all from Charnholt, the bone-city, where whole streets are grown across the ribs and the Hollowed Court pays well and asks nothing you want to answer. You know how bone-fungus creeps, how a vault is trapped, how to shore a tunnel and read the echo of a chamber before you ever light it. You have handled relics that hummed against your palm and lords who had “continued” themselves for centuries. You take their coin. You do not take their invitations to stay. Everything down here that is old enough is also, in some slow way, still listening.

Ability Scores. Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence (increase one by 2 and another by 1, or increase all three by 1)

Feat. Crafter

Skill Proficiencies. History and Investigation

Tool Proficiency. Thieves' Tools

Equipment. Choose A or B: (A) a crowbar, a grown climbing-line, a relic-loupe, chalk and charcoal for marking, a shuttered lantern, a chip of unidentified relic-bone, and 12 GP; or (B) 50 GP.

Blight Survivor

You came out of the Bruise, and not all of you is sure how much came with you. You lived where the rot preaches — where the necrotic fog softens the will and the Pale Chorus speaks with a hundred serene mouths at once, greeting you as a future part of itself. You heard it agree with you in the pauses of your own thoughts. You learned to move quiet through the murk, to read the too-still calm of the taken, to keep a talisman scratched with your own name so you would remember the name was still yours. You got out. The fog did not follow. But you still count your thoughts sometimes, to be certain they are singular — and you still wake listening for a chorus that is glad you are near.

Ability Scores. Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom (increase one by 2 and another by 1, or increase all three by 1)

Feat. Lucky

Skill Proficiencies. Stealth and Perception

Tool Proficiency. Disguise Kit

Equipment. Choose A or B: (A) the clothes you fled in, a bellowscap that warns of Deadair, a name-talisman, a small kit of paints for going unseen, a waterskin of dewcap, and 9 GP; or (B) 50 GP.

Lantern-Warren Raftborn

You were born on the water, under a ceiling of lantern-fungus. The Lantern Warren beneath Lumen Hollow's wharves never dims and never sleeps, and you grew up nimble on its rafts and fluent in its two tongues at once — the quick chittering trade-cant and the flicker of glow, the color-language of the Glimmerkin that runs across the skin faster than speech and cannot, they swear, be lied in. You poled cargo across the Driftmarket, ran gossip that outpaced the couriers, and learned that a raft-warren survives on noise, warmth, and knowing everyone's business before they do. You keep a life the way your Glimmerkin neighbors do: by how brightly it shone. You carry the warren's music with you, and the Deep is a little less lonely wherever you set it playing.

Ability Scores. Dexterity, Charisma, Wisdom (increase one by 2 and another by 1, or increase all three by 1)

Feat. Musician

Skill Proficiencies. Acrobatics and Performance

Tool Proficiency. Musical Instrument of your choice (a shell-drum or reed-pipe is traditional)

Equipment. Choose A or B: (A) a grown float-lantern, a pole-hook, a shell-drum or reed-pipe, motley warren-clothes, a set of bone dice, and 14 GP; or (B) 50 GP.

Names of the Deep

A name below is a small history worn where others can hear it. The Sporesung take a new name when they take the song, and their names are soft, archaic things — a syllable of the Weave, a memory kept as a word. Gleaners hold to the surface habit of a given name and a family name, though the families are Deep-old now and the surnames remember roads, trades, and a sky none of them will ever climb back to see. The Glimmerkin answer to a spoken warren-name and a glow-sign that only their own kind fully read; both are given below, and a glow-sign spoken aloud to an outsider is a small gift of trust. The Sporeborn, twice-lived, often keep the name they died with — or shed it, and choose another to mark the second life. Myconid names tend to a single soft word, sometimes lengthened with a continuance-title an elder has earned; Gleaner families guard their surnames the way surface houses once guarded crests. Roll on a table below, mix a column against another, or simply take the one that sounds like you.

Sporesung & Myconid Names

Gleaner Names (Surface-Descended)

Glimmerkin Warren-Names & Glow-Signs