Copying their inal shape and color for now, Mordecai started his forest with the mushrooms that had a sialk and cap. Or rather, that showed above ground that way, all mushrooms were merely the ‘fruit’ of the actual fungus. They wouldirely behave that way when he was done, but the main body would always be below the ground.

  The very tallest ones were thin with narrow, pointy caps, while each successive tier of shorter mushroom had wider caps and thicker stalks. The very shortest, broadest of these had a clearance of about 10 feet between the ground and the bottom of the cap. Once he had enough for a thick opy, Mordecai switched to the mushrooms with more iing designs.

  Some grew in small, tightly packed clumps, others spread out in brang yers. Over here was a cluster that looked like horns, while another one looked almost like a piece of coral or a brain. And there were so many colors to go with the endless variety of shapes; bright es, vivid reds, and even the occasional delicate blue. It was rather beautiful he had to admit. But he wasn’t done.

  Now that he had a on yer done, he started adding rarer ones. In one area he added some mushrooms that ‘bled’ a crimson fluid out of its cap as well as a beautiful pink-capped mushroom that ‘bled’ a pale yellow fluid from its white stalk. While the first was pletely inedible as the fluid was an anti-coagunt, the sed one was merely bitter, and someoh the right knowledge could tell the difference, and possibly make a on coating to increase the bleeding of cut and pierced foes. Keeping in theme with the forest, they were 1 to 2 feet tall, much rger than their normal variations.

  And that was ohing Mordecai was being very careful of, any mushroom that scaled version of a normal mushroom would have the same properties. So he tinued creating clusters of various normal mushroom varieties until there were only a few types he hadn’t pced. Those were going to be the base for some of his more creative work, and he wahem to be a bit more obvious that they weren’t the same as the normal mushrooms. At least, if you knew what a normal one was supposed to look like.

  But before that, it was time to work in a bit of precaution. While most druids were better with pnts and animals than they were with fungi, some specialized in fungi, and he’d already been served up his reminder about druids. So he drew on the living crystal that they had created for flowers and incorporated it into this level as well. As the theme here was mushrooms, he used the living crystal cept to create new mushrooms. These were tiny buds that liked to le amongst other mushrooms, and their mycelium wove between and iwined with the mycelium of the other mushrooms. Their crystalliure would resist most attempts at trolling them through normal nature magic, while their living aspect resisted elemental trol.

  The top yer of soil was almost a veneer, more than a foot down and one would find a thick matting of mycelium, and this structure wove its way even deeper, to the crystalline sheathing he and Kazue had started iing into all of the dungeon’s outer structure.

  Now it was time to have fun. He’d o give everything a less lethal mode, but he was going to start with the deadly version to make the design feel right. Puff balls were a good start, these he enhao make their spores mgressive and faster to grow, making exposure dangerous and inhation worse. Then he added variety, imbuing some with a stronger version of a stink horn's odor. While not particurly dangerous, direct exposure be overwhelming and leave one sied ag as they tried to recover. It left people vulnerable while making hat might draw unwatention. He also made sure that these spores, but not the puffball itself, were sticky and lumio visibly mark the victim as well.

  Now, the stinkhorns brought up another idea. Many varieties had ing which was used to spread their st. They didn’t act like traps, but they looked like they could be actual s. So he was going to make some that were. The first step was to alter the secretion to be a subtle, attractive st that would lure people closer even if they didn’t realize they were smelling it. And instead of having the ing just grow, it stayed rolled up until something was close enough ter it, not unlike a puffball’s explosive a. The ing was coated in the sweet-sted secretion, which was also sticky, acidid tained a digestive ehe bination was desigo entangle prey and keep it trapped while it was dissolved, and in such tration the sweet st proved to also be a soporific, dulling the mind and potentially sending the prey to sleep.

  His rap mushrooms were more dire their attack, but didn’t e with a lure. Instead, they grew in spread-out groupings, tightly packed clusters at the tip of foot-long stalks that could hide among other mushrooms. They had a basic motion senser, and the groups were always all the same anism. When movement happened close enough ter three or more stalks at the same time, every triggered stalk’s tip exploded with tethered, razor-sharp darts, whose edges were hardened by living crystal. The darts were coated with a paralytieurotoxin, and when they hit home would i even more. The outer coating ehat even a gng blow to the flesh would at least deliver some of the toxins and hopefully slow the prey down enough to get caught.

  The tethers were simple strands, desigo act like harpoon lines and give the toxin time to take effect. There were no digestive enzymes here, the goal was simply to down the prey a depose in pce, enrig the soil. The tethers dropped off the stalks about 10 minutes after the darts were fired, the prey was either disabled or free by then, and the stalks could start regeing a new set of darts.

  Mordecai moved on to creating his final active hazard. He created a ype of mushroom tree to popute the forest, about 12 feet tall and with a wide, thin cap whose underside glowed with a soft violet light. Most of them were perfectly safe, and the light promoted quicker healing for most creatures, but a small pertage of them were a look-alike species, differentiated from a distanly by a subtle ge in the color of its light.

  This light created a soothing effect, but it was desigo slow and distract creatures rather than promote healing. This left them more vulnerable when tendrils unfurled from the cap to sh about, ing around anything unfortunate enough to be hit by them. The tendrils didn’t stop whipping about when they caught something, the violent motion shaking its prey hard enough to potentially snap necks, limbs, or spines, depending on ortion of a creature had been grabbed. The violent motion sted for about a minute before the tendrils came to a stop. It took about 20 more minutes for them to retrato the gills of the cap, carrying any prey into the mushroom’s flesh where it could be properly digested.

  With the hazards finished, and one of them giving off light, it seemed like a good time to work on more lighting. There e of mushroom that grew out from vertical surfaces, dipping down and curving up before f its cap. This made it look a bit like a wall-mouern, and Mordecai ran with that idea. The first variants he spawned he waterfalls and the springs near surfaces that let them hang out over the water. After making sure they were adjusted to only want very wet or humid enviros, he gave them lumines a variety e, red, and goldish yellow colors, then made them prolific spore producers, with the splowing in the same colors. The spores were about rally buoyant to water, with a bit of variation to ehe glowing spores spread out to different levels ireams. The visual effect was somewhere between that of water refleg fire and the molten glow of va. It did not pliment the violet glow ing from some of the mushroom trees at all.

  The spores would also get brought to the edge of the water, deposited by various ripples and spshes, making it hard to see exactly where the edge of the water was. This wasn’t helped by the spores finding o grow more of the little ntern mushrooms, leaving all the waterways a fusing haze. The spores and mushrooms were all perfectly harmless and reasonably nutritious, so the streams could be used as a water source without w about poison at least.

  And for a third light source, Mordecai used the same style of ntern mushrooms but made these ones not like humidity as much, and also adverse to direct violet illumination from the mushroom trees that glowed. These glowed a sickly greenish color, and could grow on almost aical surface but did not like growing in high tration. This left their glow diffuse and unreliable as a light source.

  None of these three colors worked well together and were never in enough tration to bine evenly inthly white illumination. The waterways were the only sistent illumination avaible naturally, but that would also leave one’s outline visible against the glowing water. The other choice was to make one’s way through the patchy light and shadow of the forest.

  Of course, one could produe’s own light source of a proper white and easily wash out the effects of these other colors, but such glow would also be quite noticeable to anyone close enough. Most of the time there would at least not be a direct line of sight to make a light source visible to aoo far away.

  Overall it was rather disorienting for most types of vision and forced adventurers into making trade-off decisions about light and visibility as they prepared to test the dangers of the level.

  Once he was satisfied that the enviro was well set, it was time to start modifying some inhabitants, and he had quite a few ideas he was eager to try out. There were some serpentine variants of draic body shapes he had pns for.

  Zagaroth