Gronk: Created page with "A '''sporemind''' is a form of meshmind created by the bioarcane connection between vast numbers of mycomantic spores. At its most basic a sporemind is a link that allows for the sharing of thoughts between far-distant people, but the term is more typically used to those sporeminds that manage to gain sentience and autonomy from their host organisms, their spores themselves carriers of enough magic to keep together a cohesive entity. Most unleashed spo..."

2026-08-04T01:43:40Z

Created page with "A '''sporemind''' is a form of meshmind created by the bioarcane connection between vast numbers of mycomantic spores. At its most basic a sporemind is a link that allows for the sharing of thoughts between far-distant people, but the term is more typically used to those sporeminds that manage to gain sentience and autonomy from their host organisms, their spores themselves carriers of enough magic to keep together a cohesive entity. Most unleashed spo..."

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A '''sporemind''' is a form of [[meshmind]] created by the bioarcane connection between vast numbers of [[mycomancy|mycomantic]] spores. At its most basic a sporemind is a link that allows for the sharing of thoughts between far-distant people, but the term is more typically used to those sporeminds that manage to gain sentience and autonomy from their host organisms, their spores themselves carriers of enough magic to keep together a cohesive entity.

Most unleashed sporeminds, as these independent meshminds are called, quickly find themselves without sufficient biomass to support themselves and fade away, but others, like [[Sie]], find ways to support themselves indefinitely.

== Creation ==
Sporeminds are created when mycomantic spore networks, cultivated for the purpose of communication, reach a critical mass in which they no longer must rest over the consciousnesses of others but rather gain an intelligence, in a certain manner of speaking, of their own. The birth of a new sporemind is rarely intentional, though they have been known to have been created as purposeful experiments by powerful mycomages or even for nefarious reasons.

== Appearance ==
A sporemind's appearance depends on their medium. Some form what are effectively slime molds on surfaces, others remain airborne in vast clouds, and yet others form a suspension in water or rest as a thin but dry coating covering whatever the wind may blow them towards. None of these variations seem to be intrinsically better than any other, and it is seemingly a matter of choice to the sporemind.

== Behavior ==
As simply a mass of spores, in whatever configuration they may take, sporeminds are not intrinsically able to interact with the material world directly, and so hijack biomass to do so. If they encounter a mind and body that would be useful to them, they incorporate it into themselves, the spores burrowing in deep enough to drive flesh and muscle towards the sporemind's own aims.

Those aims are unusual and invariably obsessive. Fully fledged sporeminds fixate on specific places, phenomena, or especially systems, perhaps studying them or attempting to control them. They may focus on the water- and road-ways of a city, like [[Thunderhead]], or more fundamental aspects of the nature of matter, like the [[Numen]]. Their attentions are directed in ways and manners that only the sporeminds, presumably, understand.

Their aims are so obsessive, in fact, that it causes most sporeminds to burn themselves out. They cannot create biomass, only absorb that of other entities, and so once they have subsumed is useless from damage or decay they are unable to continue. Such slow deterioration is the most common fate of a sporemind, declining until non-being as they focus on their preoccupation. Only a rare few find ways to continued existance.

There has never been any known successful communication between a sporemind and an entity of any other form. They are fundamentally alien consciousnesses to the peoples of the [[Spine]] where all sporeminds have formed, with evidently no shared reference or understanding of the world. They do not communicate either, or if they have, not in a way that has been deciphered.

Sporeminds are rare enough that they almost never meet, but should one make contact with another, a curious process occurs. Nearly immediately they begin to act together, one seeming to either subsume the other, or else perhaps remaining separate but acting in exact accordance - the difference is hard to distinguish, if indeed there is one.

Amongst scholars of mycomancy, it is disputed if sporeminds are sapience. They are conscious in some form, but it is unknown how they perceive themselves in interaction with the broader world, or even if a distinction of that type if meaningful to such an entity.

{{Sporeminds}}

[[Category:Sporeminds]]
[[Category:Magic]]

Sporemind - Revision history