The Mîselid Race

As a race, the Mîselid have grown up in the corners of the Lands of Anár, integrating their needs with the needs of the major races of the land. Despite their long history, their tendency to integrate with other races has left them without a cohesive culture of their own. While they do have traditions among their people, philosophical viewpoints and common set of racial behaviors, they do not have what could be called a civilization.

Culture (top)

The Mîselid believe in integration and symbiosis, and the concepts around this activity form their core belief structure. Whether a Mîselid consciously seeks out symbiosis or rejects the idea for a more parasitic existence, the idea is still central to their minds.

The Mîselid believe in symbiosis, both physically, socially, and culturally. In this, they strive to provide service to other races, finding the myriad of niches not covered by another race's civilization and filling them to the best of their capacity. It's this practice that keeps the race from developing their own independent civilization, as they form no cities, write no literature, or develop their own art. Yet, the are active participants in every other culture, developing common themes of service, common traditions of assistance, and common philosophical motives for doing so.

Certain factions of the Mîselid revile the act of symbiosis and find the subservient nature espoused by the majority of their race as despicable. These Mîselid strive to create their own nation and their own coherent civilization. Unfortunately, these Mîselid tend to prey on the other races, literally digesting them in parasitic fashion.

On higher levels of thought, the Mîselid are quite spiritual, finding their actions weaving positive or negative energy into their physical being. The act of assimilating matter determines one's nature. If matter is assimilated by symbiotic means, rather than by force, then positivity is sponsored and one's being prospers. If, instead, if matter is assimilated by force, it comes with a dose of negativity that is brought into one's physical form. The behaviors and practices that surround the Mîselid's ideas of assimilation are the closest things that the Mîselid's have to a religious belief system.

Society (top)

Despite that the Mîselid race integrates itself into other societies, thereby taking roles and gaining status in those societies, they still maintain ranks among themselves. The most obvious divisions are between the three species, the symbiotic Mîkôrid, the reclusive Sâprid, and the aggressive Nekôrid, and the race views their standing in society in that order, from highest to lowest.

When Mîselid gather – a rare occurrence to be sure – they defer to one another along species lines. After this, relative age comes into play, as the Mîselid respect experience and harbored memories. Given that their physiology allows them to collect experiences from one another and from their hosts, those Mîselid who have the greatest collection are given more respect. This usually comes with age, as the longer a Mîselid has existed, the more experiences he or she has likely collected.

The greatest and oldest of the Mîselid become living libraries of experience and go to ground, becoming the "Elder Mothers" of the race. While the Mîselid don't technically have genders, these vast systems of fungal root systems are sentient and the wisest of the Mîselid. They are also the pinnacle of the Mîselid social structure, as all Mîselid defer to their wills. Despite the great power the "Elder Mothers" have over the Mîselid social structure, they are quite passive in nature, prefer to act as repositories of information, rather than direct agents of change.

Technology (top)

The Mîselid have very little in the way of physical technology of their own, but naturally have access to the technology of the culture in which they are assimilated. While they might naturally have access to the mystical technology of the other cultures, most Mîselid eschew them in favor of their own brand of mystical practices.

The Mîselid have a range of innate esoteric abilities based on their unusual physiology. These abilities range from being strictly chemical, affecting the physical body, to the mystical, entering the arena of the mind and spirit. Exploration of these innate esoteric abilities for a Mîselid is an exploration of their own physiology.

Beyond that, the Mîselid have their own shamans, mages, and necromancers, all of whom explore their essential spirit, developing mystical abilities dovetail in sensibilities to their social pursuits .

Biology (top)

The Mîselid are a fungal race, meaning that their bodies are composed entirely of fungal filaments or mycelium which can be shaped into whatever outward form is appropriate to the culture in which they find themselves (Note, this is not to imply they are shapeshifters, per se, as the act of forming their bodies is set during an individual's life cycle).

When their bodies grow, certain filaments are able to differentiate their thickness and hardness to form the simulation of mammalian skeletal and muscular structures, allowing them to mimic the physical form of the inhabitants of the societies in which they find themselves. Mîselid will always be recognizable as Mîselid, but they have found that having the same general dimensions of their host society eases assimilation into it.

The Mîselid do not simulate organs, however, as their bodies are otherwise entirely composed of fungal filaments intertwined with one another. The have only one true organ, their brain, which is an unusually dense knot of filaments and which houses an individual's core consciousness.

A Mîselid's body represents a typical fungus, requiring cool, dark, and moist places to thrive and animal or plant matter to decompose to feed itself. The filaments can be grown fairly quickly given the right conditions, making a Mîselid able to repair gross damage to itself. As long as the core knot is intact, most Mîselid can regrow themselves given adequate substrate to consume.

The filaments that make up a Mîselid's body are able to collect and store neural pathways from other beings that they assimilate, allowing them to collect experiences from other creatures. In their efforts to achieve symbiosis, these experiences are collected only from the previously deceased and are deemed an act of preservation, rather than a violation. Only the Nekôrid of the Mîselid's society would take experiences from an otherwise viable, living host; the difference of opinion and morality between these camps forms the poles of Mîselid society.

As a Mîselid absorbs the experiences of others, their neural pathways integrate to some extent, affecting the core Mîselid's personality to a degree. Over years of accumulated experience, a single Mîselid can shift personality to a high degree, become a totally different person over time.

The ultimate motive for the collection of these experiences is known only by the "Earth Mothers" who act as vast repositories of these experiences. Whenever a Mîselid passes near to an "Earth Mother" it often stops and deposits the experiences it had collected there, storing them against danger.

Life Cycle (top)

While a Mîselid may simulate the outward appearance of a gender from its host species, it does not actually have a gender. The filaments it can extrude reproduce asexually and require only a suitable substrate as a source of nourishment. Mîselid reproduce by budding, and do so on no particular time table through the year or decade.

When they desire to reproduce, a Mîselid will locate a suitable spot, and will weave the central knot of filaments that will become the new Mîselid's core consciousness. A physical and a mental process, the Mîselid creates the dense ball of filaments and deposit within it a copy of a portion of its own consciousness along with segments of consciousness it has collected over time. These racial and store memories intertwine becoming a new being.

Planting this "seed" takes only a few hours to accomplish, but the fetal Mîselids must then gestate for up to a month, at which point they fully sprout, and become capable of independent action. The young Mîselid's are humanoid in form, taking the outward appearance "encoded" into them by the parent, but are the equivalent of toddlers.

Their consciousness and physical bodies must grow over time in its own fashion. While it's possible to "force grow" a Mîselid to adulthood, it is seen as anathema to do so – even by the Nekôrids. The Mîselid value the collection of experience above even symbiosis, and thus, to rob a new life of that ability would be a heinous act.

The Mîselid grow quickly when compared to mammalian species, moving through childhood in merely 2 years, and adolescence by the time they are 5. At the end of this period, their emotional and intellectual consciousnesses are fully evolved and their filament structures are capable of reproduction themselves.

Adult Mîselid live for an undetermined length of time. Their resilience and ability to regenerate damage that would devastate other beings allows them an elongated life span. However, given their propensity to change personality over time, it's difficult to track a single Mîselid through the ages. At some point in its continued existence, a Mîselid responds to an internal cue and buries itself, becoming an "Earth Mother". No one knows how long the "Earth Mothers" may live.

Attributes (top)

The Mîselid share common attributes based on their physiology as noted in the following list. In some cases, the precise manifestation of these attributes varies with species and some attributes only apply to certain species, but those details are called out below.

Regeneration: Given the appropriate substrate to assimilate, a Mîselid may repair gross physical damage by re-weaving its fungal filaments. This makes Mîselid's difficult to kill.
Serial-Immortality: Even when extremely damaged, a Mîselid may rebuild itself, given time and substrate to assimilate. This process usually occurs after serious physical trauma, which may destroy the memories and experiences a Mîselid stores within its filaments. Thus, there could be personality shift when this process is completed.
Spores: Primarily used in Mîselid reproduction, all of the race are capable of emitting spores. Because of their adaptability, Mîselid have found ways to affect the development of these spores to perform a myriad of effects on the bodies of those coated with them. These effects are generally based on the biochemical alteration of the victim, but can extend into more mystical realms. The manner in which a Mîselid adapts its spores is generally a personal choice, and represents a permanent physical alteration to the Mîselid's spore-producing organs.
Fragility: The Mîkôrid and the Sâprid species are composed completely of fungal fibers formed into semblances of humanoid skeletal and muscular systems. This makes them fragile to bashing type weapons when compared to other races of their shape and mass. The Nekôrid, given the propensity to actually inhabit a member of other races and to keep their skeletons and muscular systems at their physical "core", do not suffer from this disadvantage.

Species (top)

For the Mîselid, their physical state of being often reflects their mental, emotional, and spiritual states. Over time, their physicality tends to reflect their total experiences. Thus, the differentiation into three major species reflects less a difference in physicality than in their takes on existence.

Mîkôrid: The Mîkôrid are the true believers in symbiosis and zealously pursue the goal. In order to fit in, they generally partake only of organic foodstuffs of the civilizations they inhabit, just like any member of the host race would. They take social roles in the same fashion, emulating the professions of the host race, albeit with their own slants on the activity. The Mîkôrid are what most other races think of when they think of Mîselid, as this species has the most social interaction with them.
Sâprid: The Sâprid are less well-known, but are also believers in symbiosis. They partake of organic matter that other races have little interest in preserving, including biological waste or the dead. In this fashion, they perform a vital service to other races, but one which earns them a certain negative reputation. This social liability leaves the Sâprid being less socialized than the Mîkôrid, but that usually seems to suit them.
Nekôrid: The Nekôrid are the least socialized of the Mîselid race owing to their propensity to aggressively take over living hosts and feeding off their organic matter. They use these hosts as physical cores, weaving their filaments over the bodies of the host so completely that most never realize they are puppeting a body inside them. Indeed, if this were common knowledge, most races would kill the Nekôrid out of hand. The Mîkôrid and the Sâprid are both aware of this practice, and thus, they shun and oppose the Nekôrid.

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