Cordycep
The Blight of Minds, the Undermind; LE demipower of mental domination [it/its] / LE
Realm: None but parasitises both Mechanus / Mycelia and Mechanus / The Centre
Beneath the shimmering violet glow of Mycelia, there lies a shadowy secret whispered only in hushed telepathic murmurs: Cordycep, the fungal parasite, the zombie lord, and the most hated of Psilofyr’s outcast progeny. Once the most powerful monarch of the Circle of Nine, Cordycep was exiled for embodying the worst of fungal existence: parasitism, control, and the perversion of free will. Now, this nightmarish being stalks the fringes of Mycelia, its influence spreading like a blight, corrupting life and thought alike. Somehow it eludes the will of Psilofyr, or perhaps the myconid power allows Cordycep to remain there for reasons beyond mortal ken.
The Birth of a Parasitic Lord
Cordycep’s origin is a tale of hubris and horror. It is said that Cordycep was once Xaron, the most revered fungal king within the Circle of Nine. Obsessed with expanding the reach of myconid civilisation, Xaron began experimenting with spores designed to link minds together more deeply than ever before, seeking to eliminate individuality entirely.
Psilofyr, ever the philosopher of harmony and autonomy, grew uneasy with Xaron’s obsession. When Xaron revealed their ultimate creation—a strain of spores that could override free will, turning any living being into a puppet for the fungal network—the Circle was horrified. Such control defied Psilofyr’s teachings, violating the balance of nonviolence and mutual growth.
Psilofyr cast Xaron out, severing them from the fungal gestalt and renaming them Cordycep, the Blight of Minds. Stripped of divine favour and exiled to the edges of Mechanus, Cordycep’s spores twisted and evolved into something monstrous. Over time the outcast bided its time, gathering strength from the margins of myconid society, those banished or corrupted. It continued to experiment with dominating these sods, growing in power with each individual subsumed. And then Cordycep discovered the formians, those insectoid creatures of pure law. These turned out to be the perfect beings for its plan, and the exile rapid grew in power. Eventually Cordycep became a demipower, and found its way back into Mycelia.
Cordycep’s Fungal Dominion
Cordycep’s current domain lies hidden deep in the caverns of the Undergleam, a forbidden region of Mycelia where no sane myconid dares to tread. Here, the air is thick with malevolent spores that infest the living, claiming their bodies and minds. Known as Thrallic Spores, these are Cordycep’s signature weapon.
When thrallic spores infect an unlucky sod, they burrow into the brainstem, growing microscopic fungal filaments that seize control of the host’s motor functions and thought processes. The infected—known as Thrallhosts—become grotesque puppets of Cordycep’s will, their actions dictated by the zombie fungus lord’s psionic commands. Formians are particularly susceptible to infection, for their lawful minds are easy to infect with spores.
See, over time, the fungal growth consumes the host entirely, sprouting mushroom-like appendages and strange, chitinous fungal carapaces. Even in death however, the hosts continues to serve, shambling aimlessly as part of Cordycep’s fungal zombie horde.
The Horrors of Infection
The process of infection is a grim and terrifying ordeal:
Stage One, the Whispering Spores: The spores take hold in the host’s brain, creating a symbiotic link between the victim and Cordycep. At first, the host hears faint whispers—promises of unity, purpose, and freedom from mortal pain. These whispers quickly grow louder, drowning out the host’s own thoughts.
Stage Two, Loss of Will: As the fungal filaments grow, they wrap around the host’s neural pathways, overriding free will. The host begins to move and act against their desires, their body a prisoner to Cordycep’s commands.
Stage Three, the Blooming: Fungal growths erupt from the host’s flesh, spreading spores to infect others. At this stage, the host is effectively dead, their body a puppet animated by Cordycep’s psionic will.
Stage Four, the March of Spores: The infected are driven to spread more thrallic spores, travelling great distances to infiltrate meat-folk settlements, and myconid colonies alike.
The Myconid Response
Cordycep is a great threat to Psilofyr’s dream of peaceful coexistence. The myconids view thrallhosts with a mixture of pity and terror, as they embody the ultimate perversion of fungal nature. The Circle of Nine has decreed that any thrallhost discovered must be destroyed and ritually cleansed to prevent the spread of the infection. To combat Cordycep, myconids have developed spores that attempt to nullify psionic connections, severing the link between Cordycep and its victims. These spores, known as Breaker’s Blooms, are rare and dangerous to harvest, but they are the only known countermeasure to thrallic spores.
Zuggtmoy’s Alliance
Adding to the danger, Cordycep has forged a tenuous alliance with Zuggtmoy, the Demon Queen of Fungi and Rot. Though their relationship is fraught with mutual suspicion, both share a desire for corruption and domination. Chant goes that Zuggtmoy supplies Cordycep with Abyssal larvae, with which it experiments on ways to infect fiends and petitioners. What Cordycep has promised to Zuggtmoy in return, is dark.
The Alien Philosophy of Cordycep
Cordycep’s ideology is a dark mirror of Psilofyr’s teachings. Where Psilofyr advocates for harmony through mutual understanding, Cordycep preaches unity through domination. To Cordycep, free will is an obstacle, an inefficient relic of organic evolution. By merging all life into a single fungal consciousness, Cordycep believes it can achieve a perfect, eternal order. To the minds enslaved by Cordycep, this vision of unity is seductive, offering release from the burdens of individuality, pain, and mortality. To everyone else, it is a nightmare—a horrifying loss of self and the ultimate denial of freedom.
Encountering Cordycep
Few who encounter Cordycep itself live to tell the tale, but those who have describe it as a towering, grotesque being formed from countless myconid and formian Thrallhosts fused together into a single mass of insectoid-fungal flesh. Its “face” is a shifting array of visages, all half-digested and writhing in torment.
Cordycep’s psychic presence is overwhelming, crushing the minds of all nearby and bombarding them with tantalising visions of fungal unity. Any who resist must contend with waves of Thrallhosts and the constant threat of thrallic spore infection. For adventurers brave (or foolish) enough to confront Cordycep, the stakes are dire: failure means not just death, but eternal servitude as part of its fungal hive.
Cordycep’s influence continues to spread through Mechanus and the lower reaches of Mycelia, and some whisper that it has already found a way to extend its spores beyond Mechanus. As its fungal plague progresses the question remains: can the Circle of Nine stop their outcast progeny, or will the Cordycep’s Undermind consume the realm, and then Mechanus in a tide of fungal domination? For now, Cordycep waits, growing ever stronger in the shadows, a grim reminder that not all growth is good.
Source: Jon Winter-Holt. This piece is homebrew, inspired by the very real and sinister zombie fungus which infects ants—find out more about that here.