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
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
As a Sporeborn, you have these special traits.
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.
Source: Sporebound