Shroomheads

Dumpster Divers

Whether it’s Shrooms, Acid, or whatever other psychedelic, Psilocybinia has influence over it. It’s the reason that people who go on a Trip often end up with a different view of the world, especially if they’ve never previously learned about “empathy”. Psilocybinia was fairly directly responsible for the hippie movement, only to have law enforcement use its recreational drugs as an excuse to stamp it out.

The world has become dog eat dog, with humans climbing over each other to get on top of their fellow man. But this is not what we were made for. We are the music makers; we are the dreamers of dreams. We were made to help each other, enjoy our communities, and pursue creative outlets to enrich each other’s lives. It’s community and creation that gives life meaning. Spreading Psychedelics spreads Psilocybinia influence, especially magic mushrooms, and a dose of them reminds people they are part of a larger picture, that there’s more to life than clocking in and out with blinders on. This puts Shroomheads directly in opposition to the War on Drugs. The War on Drugs aims to stomp on that creative spark, to destroy community. The Blue Blight uses the War on Drugs to curb Psilocybinia’s influence.

Shroomheads recognize that some drugs, such as crack and heroin, are damaging to humanity. But they remember before the War on Drugs, before the CIA started sending crack into inner cities to fund their endless shadow wars. Shroomheads want to steer humanity back towards psychedelics, even Cannabis, back to substances that help relieve the stress of the modern world while also opening up people’s creativity and empathy. Instead of drugs that are cripplingly addictive and lead them down a dark hole of selfishness and isolation. Where the Blue Blight wants them.

  • Supporting artist communes and artistic endeavors
  • Finding a favor to radical artist and inspiring them
  • Convincing selfish people to try hallucinogens
  • Supporting and protecting communities of hallucinogen enthusiasts, such as remaining hippie groups
  • Disrupting the War on Drugs

Psilocybinia has influence over all psychedelics, but communing with Psilocybinia requires a special magic mushroom, Psilocybinia Exotica. It can’t be identified by normal humans, normally only encountered by chance, but Sporebound can recognize it glows purple. Consuming Psilocybinia Exotica allows one to commune with Psilocybinia (or potentially be recruited), and gives a glimpse of the Undergrowth. If you’re Sporebound, you can even use it to go there.

When people remember the neon 80s someday, it’s the Shroomheads they’ll be thinking of. Leather jackets splattered with bioluminescent fungus. Torn band T-Shirts - The Clash, The Ramones, and some too cool for you to have heard of - under vests with fungal anarchy symbols scrawled in pink paint. Their hair is an explosion of color, with rainbow mohawks, mullets, or a spectrum of bleached dreads. Their combat boots stomp to the beat while caked in mud, and their guitar case might hold a guitar, but might easily be full of molotovs and crowbars too. They paint their faces not to hide, but to be seen. To say: Live Louder. It’s better to burn out, than fade away.

Shroomheads can be recognized from their glowing purple eyes by other Sporebound and Consumed Blighted.

Phoenix was an early love child of the hippie movement, and grew up around their parents using psychedelics and other drugs in their community. As the War on Drugs ramped up, their parents repeatedly got in trouble with the law, and Phoenix ended up on their own. They fell in with a crowd of punks and Anarchists, preparing for a world without an oppressive government, or maybe one oppressive enough that the people noticed. One day one of those Anarchists gave them the right Mushroom to try.

Backup: Punks 2, Anarchists 4
Skills: Brawl 4, Stealth 2, Inconspicuous 2, Firearms 3, Intimidate 3

Quinn is a techie for a finance company, who had a fairly libertarian “Reagonomics” lean. One day when out with the usual finance bros trying to score coke and whatever else, their dealer offered Magic Mushrooms for a steal. Quinn went home and tried them, and as part of their trip discovered incredible things like “other people also having feelings” and “maybe it’s OK to share sometimes”. It gave Quinn an entirely different view on the world, while they still tried hard to fit in with their finance bro friends and cushy job, they also fell into the more crusty Phreaker and computer hacker circles. Quinn continued to explore psychedelics with that crowd, until they discovered the right Mushroom, and were recruited by Psilocybinia.

Backup: Hackers 4, Finance Bros 1

Skills: Electronics 3, Computers 4, Inconspicuous 4, Firearms 2, Persuasion 2

The Dreamcaps don’t believe that the Undergrowth are an overlay on the real world, a place between our physical world and where the Mycos live, a representation of their influence over the physical world. They believe the Undergrowth are the collective Dream of the Mycos, the true battlefront between them, and the physical world is mostly important because of the influence it places on the Undergrowth (along with the minor fact that the Sporebound have to live there). They believe the final battle is in the Undergrowth, and that once the Blight is beaten, the Undergrowth should be the true home of the Sporebound (somehow).

At the moderate end, Dreamcaps are on the front lines of the fight in the Undergrowth. They are among the best scouts, the best warriors of that front. They often lead the vanguard into the Undergrowth to defeat Blighted creatures there as the flank on a Consumed Blighted in the real world, denying them monsters to summon to their defense.

At the more extreme end, though, there are Dreamcaps that believe the physical world isn’t real at all. That it is merely a manifestation of the Dream, a nightmare humans are trapped in as pawns. That true freedom comes from abandoning the physical world altogether. The Undergrowth in the real world, and where they are truly alive. Because of their human bodies, they must enter the simulation, what the rest of us think is the real world.

Their critics point out these Dreamcaps are on a fast track to becoming Hilum, since dedicating themselves to the Undergrowth means abandoning their anchors to humanity and community. They deal with the Dreamcaps for their essential usefulness, but consider them a gravity well that slowly pulls Sporebound to their deaths – the deaths of their human selves, at least.

The Dreamcaps are punk hackers, but they’re hacking computers, phone systems, and reality. They rollerblade through the city like living hallucinations, with denim jackets frayed and scrawled in neon paint and glitchy mushroom sigils. Their hair is a tangle of bright dyes and electrical tape. Their clothes are layered like bad dreams, with shredded t-shirts, fishnet sleeves, and holographic patches, all stitched together with fungus and cat 1 twisted pairs of copper cable. They have one eye on the “real” world, one eye on the Undergrowth, and all eyes on them.

The Dreamer has abandoned the physical world entirely; its home is the Dream. The Dreamer claims to have become part of the dream of the Mycos itself. The Dreamer can communicate with the Dreamcaps in their dreams, calling them to spend more time in the Undergrowth. To build defenses there. To start to make their home there. To be like the Dreamer. Some Dreamcaps, close to the edge of becoming a Hilum, claim The Dreamer shows them visions of the dream of the Mycos, and calls them to join that dream.

The Trip Sitters believe that the root of all evil, the root of The Blight’s power, is selfishness, and that the remedy for selfishness is profound empathy. They seek to find the selfish, and show them that empathy.

At the most moderate end, Trip Sitters often have their hands in the drug trade, and keep an ear out for selfish, powerful hedonists looking for their Next Great Trip. The Trip Sitters offer to provide it for them, and lead them through that trip to compassion.

Slightly more extreme are Trip Sitters who find those selfish, powerful people, who need to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, and help them accidentally put those shoes on. Setting up elaborate scenarios that turn the boss into the grunt worker, the landlord into a homeless man, the cop into a criminal on the run, to show them how it feels. To get them to see the other side, and have empathy for it. They create morality plays for an audience that is also the primary actor.

At the most extreme end are the Trip Sitters who play The Most Dangerous Game of all: using Psilocybinia Exotica to convert Controlled Blighted.

Psilocybinia Exotica, of course, will only redeem a Blighted who is at least open to being redeemed – they cannot be forced or tricked into it. Additionally, Controlled do not know they are Blighted, do not know what the Mycos or the Sporebound are, but do subconsciously know that Sporebound are bad news, and are extremely leery of them. A resourceful Trip Sitter is able to get through these roadblocks, and gain a Controlled’s trust. Get them to agree to a psychedelic experience, where the Trip Sitter will be with them every step of the way.

Experienced Trip Sitters are surprisingly good at redeeming Controlled on those trips. And when they go well, they go very very well, often gaining the Sporebound a powerful ally, if not a new Sporebound themselves. And when they go poorly, they unleash an extremely powerful enemy onto the Sporebound. A new Consumed is born from the Blighted, another incarnation of Chartarum. If the Trip Sitter survives escaping them, they now have to elicit help from their exasperated Colony to clean up the mess they’ve made.

Despite their incredibly lethal hobby, the Trip Sitters actually float through Sporebound gatherings like wander wellness gurus from another world, or new age psychedelic witches, wearing flowing robes and loose clothing in soft pastel hues. Flowy silk scarves, necklaces of beads and crystals, wood carved rings in the shapes of mushrooms. Their voices are calm, empathetic, always seeking your feelings and worries. Every conversation is an invitation to be heard, to heal your psychic scars, to find your new path. Everyone is redeemable, including the still human Controlled Blighted. Your soul is a garden in need of tending, and there’s plenty of sage and mushrooms in their bag to go around.

Unlike other Blooms, there is no Hilum at the center of the Trip Sitters luring them down – only their own ambition, and the thrill of the chase. There are two destinies at the bottom of the spiral for Trip Sitters instead. Most likely, death when they try to redeem the wrong Consumed. The other possibility is corruption by The Blight itself. Convincing Controlled requires staring into the abyss, and eventually, the abyss stares back.

(Game Note: Even the most extreme Trip Sitters never attempt to give someone hallucinogens without their consent. In game, any known instance of that happening has gone extremely badly for anyone who has tried it. Out of game, it’s permissible to give Psilocybinia Exotica to an unwilling Controlled Blighted, but pointless unless you want to instantly have a tremendously hard fight for now reason. Otherwise, it’s not allowed, ever.)