Dumpster Divers

Dumpster Divers

Food mold might seem gross to humans, but it’s a necessary part of life. Decomposition of food, and the dead, is important to the ecosystem. Plus the Penicillium does its part to help humanity, such as through the Penicillin that protects humanity from the Black Death coming back.

Penicillium works to keep that circle. Food should spoil! Bodies should decompose! Penicillium hates twinkies, hates embalming. It wants natural food, natural burials.

The Dumpster Divers, even if they weren't literally homeless picking out of the trash, generally come from poor backgrounds. They want to pay forward the leg up that Penicillium has given them, and help out the people left in the gutter by an uncaring society.

  • Activism against preservatives and artificial ingredients in food
  • Resistance against groups trying to limit homeless ability to access discarded food
  • Support for homeless communities
  • Helping build shanty towns for homeless

Dumpster Divers usually make direct contact with their Mycos … in the Dumpster. They often come from the homeless, or garbage men, collecting old stale food. Dumpster Divers can commune with their Myocs wherever there is a high concentration of decomposition mold, and a full dumpster is a lot easier to find than decomposing bodies.

Dumpster Divers are street survivalists, wearing rugged, cobbled together clothing. They wear stained hoodies, second hand jackets, and donated sweaters – some of them with their brand logos awkwardly covered with marker or paint. In the fall and winter they wear layers of mismatched overcoats and scarves to protect from the city’s chill. Some wear jewelry created from whatever they can find laying around, from bottle cap earrings to necklaces made of soda can tabs, bracelets with grocery store cart keys. Whatever they can reclaim from the dirt and wear as a badge of honor from their streets.

Not all Dumpster Divers are drawn from the homeless. There’s a sizable number drawn from the middle class, or at least a slightly-better-off-than-homeless lower class. And they are trying their best to fit in. They’re wearing thrifted, mismatched clothes, but they’re slightly too clean to pass muster. The oldest worn out boots they found in their walk-in closet still don’t have the same grime on them, and certainly don’t have the tell-tale crushed gel caps in the treads on their soles. Their distressed and torn jeans aren’t quite convincing enough. They’re trying, but when the worn fingerless gloves come off, everyone can see who has the callouses and dirt on their hands, and who doesn’t.

Dumpster Divers can be recognized from their glowing white eyes by other Sporebound and Consumed Blighted.

Ghost was a Vietnam Vet, and saw (and sometimes did) a lot of things he wishes he could forget. He returned home to a country that wasn’t appreciative at all, who wanted to forget he existed. Ignore the burn scars on his arms, the gash on his nose. He never really got the hang of a normal job and fitting into society, so he ended up homeless quick, falling through the wide gaps in the social safety net. Over the years he’s become a bit of a leader in the homeless encampment due to his tough, firm, yet humble nature. He was recruited by Penicillium both for his resentment against a predatory system that chewed him up and spit him out, but also for the same thing that got him into this: being forgotten. Being someone people want to forget.

Backup: Homeless 4, Social Workers 1
Skills: Streetwise 3, Inconspicuous 5, Firearms 3, Stealth 2, Brawl 1

Harper had a tough upbringing, in and out of foster homes, and sometimes on the streets. Now Harper is a social worker, who often deals with the homeless and people down on their luck in the slums. One day Harper was helping a homeless person from the encampment being hassled by cops, as Ghost monitored from close by. When Ghost went to thank them afterwards, Penicillium took the opportunity to recruit Harper to the Sporebound.

Backup: Homeless 3, Criminals 2
Skills: Streetwise 3, Stealth 2, Bureaucracy 4, Investigation 2, Persuasion 2, Firearms 1

Every living thing, every organic thing we make, is borrowing its matter from the earth. It is a crime against nature to deny its return to the soil.

The Corpse Flowers choose to live as ascetics. They avoid worldly possessions, and while many of the Dumpster Divers are drawn from the homeless, Corpse Flowers choose to stay there. They venerate decomposition, Penicillium, to a religious extent.

Dumpster Divers in general would give a bakery grief over pouring bleach on their stale bread when they throw it out. Dumpster Divers would be angry because it denies food for the needy; Corpse Flowers are angry because it denies its natural rot. Dumpster Divers know that Penicillium wants them to preserve decay where they can, and try their best to oblige – perhaps promoting natural burial cemeteries, or pushing for legislation that would allow burial without embalming. The moderate end of the Corpse Flowers starts with a focus on this mission.

For the more “dedicated” Corpse Flowers, though, that isn’t enough. The Corpse Flowers don’t leave it to slow progress, they take matters into their own hands. By stealing bodies.

Corpse Flowers steal bodies from mortuaries, funeral homes, even morgues. Most commonly, they take bodies directly off the street, before authorities have shown up. They then give these bodies natural burials, often en masse, in attempts to make new Stipes for the Dumpster Divers.

Other Sporebound would argue that, while the push for natural decomposition is a noble one, Corpse Flowers cause way too much static from the authorities with their actions. Even when they do manage to scurry away with a body before it’s found, how many missing persons reports stay open because of their secret burials? How many families never get closure? How many actual murders go uninvestigated because the body disappeared? When Sporebound are on missions, they’re left to wonder: is that Corpse Flower suggesting the violent approach because it’s the right approach, or because they’re hoping to walk out with some untainted bodies?

Corpse Flowers would argue that denying the earth a natural burial is the greatest crime of all. To deny decomposition is to deny their unforgivable debt to nature. If someone is choosing to help the Blight commit that crime, maybe it’s time to collect early.

If the homeless could have a priestly caste, it’s the Corpse Flowers, who appear as deranged street preachers. Their mish mashed clothing is patched with stained funeral linens and strips of grave shroud. Their faces are streaked with ash and chalk, some painting themselves with fungal designs, like tendrils of decay emanating from their sunken eye sockets. They often wear necklaces and jewelry of teeth, small bones, or dried mushrooms. Some even carry actual human bones, ready to beat someone with a moldering femur. They carry handmade cardboard signs that say “Death Feeds Life” or “You Owe Your Flesh to the Ground.” If they were found asleep on the street, a passerby might think they’d died weeks ago, as the smell of decay wafts off of them.

The Mouldering Queen doesn’t wait for death to decompose – or maybe the concept of death no longer matters to a Hilum. She appears to live in the rot, appearing to Corpse Flowers by crawling out of fungal webs in the Sporelands, or digging herself out of gravesites the Corpse Flowers have left. The Corpse Flowers are her debt collectors. Someday they, too, will repay their debt.

“When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich." - Rousseau

The Class Composters are those born of the dregs of society, and pissed that there are dregs of society. Their goal is to find those hoarding wealth and power, and taking them down a peg. Hopefully all the way down.

At the moderate end, Class Composters are aiming to take down the very upper crust of society, many of which are Blighted or complicit with it already. To the Left of that are Class Composters who target all Bourgeoisie, anyone who owns the means of production and exploits others for their labor for profit.

At the extreme end, Class Composters believe that anyone who selfishly hoards their property when people sleep on the street is committing violence against humanity. How dare one separate their land from others, deny the homeless the ability to sleep on their couch, in their garage, in their spare bed?

The Class Composters appear like temporarily embarrassed dons of a mafia crime family. They look like street royalty, forged in the fires of abandoned factories and burned out buildings. Their pinstripe suit jackets are patched together from leather, denim, and plastic sheeting. Their shoulders and lapels are covered with old campaign buttons, socialist regalia, and fungal charms. Faces marked with soot and scars peer out from battered fedoras. They wear a jumble of gold and silver chains, and some of them are probably fake, but you’re not getting close enough to point out which ones. Their tattered jeans are stiff with grime, and they carry whatever they’ve found in old factories as their weapons: crowbars, iron pipes, plumbing wrenches. They are the CEOs of their blocks, making sure everyone is in their place, deciding who is allowed to pan handle where, and always listening. Their appearance and demeanor are a quiet threat towards the well-to-do who walk past them every day. You might live in the city, but when the lights go out, this is their city, and you better remember it.

The Famished Saint is a walking emaciated husk. Yet no food, no sustenance can sustain them – as long as hunger exists in the world, they will feel it. They call to the Class Composters, to make any who withhold food, to feel it too. In their dreams, the Famished Saint shows Class Composters visions of the poor, the sick, the hungry, with hands outreached in anger.