The myconid caves breathe in time to an alien rhythm. Mushrooms the size of trees undulate with each inhale. The air feels damp and smells of sweet decay and curiosity. The myconids are not immediately hostile, but they are watching carefully. More than thoughts, emotion swells and blooms here. The air shimmers with spore clouds; they permeate everything.
Myconid Caves
This is the eleventh installment in this all-in-one encounter generator series. I am aiming to give GMs an instant generator to help create complex encounters or adventure ideas. These are for anyone looking for something in a hurry or just looking for fresh ideas to avoid burnout.
Ben Milton’s Knave 2e and Kevin Crawford’s Without Number series are my prime inspirations for these articles. All of these books are brilliant for both worldbuilding and encounter ideas!
How It Works
It’s a simple flow: pick up a d20, d12, d10, d8, d6, and a d4. Roll all of them at once. Then, check below according to each die’s result. If it makes sense, combine results whenever you wish. The tables go from atmosphere (d4 environment, d6 aspects) to scene (d10 features, d20 creatures); lastly, come narrative developments (d8 complications, d12 secrets).
Obviously, feel free to pick and choose results as you like; follow any creative direction that opens up to you. It’s absolutely fine to tweak, rip apart, combine, and split any and all of my ideas: they’re purely a springboard. To create more complex encounters, multiple rolls (or picks) and linking them together should work well.
I want to stress, there’s zero need to link every result into one giant encounter. Do this only where it feels natural. Some encounters will play out better as separate events and that’s fine.
The inspiration for this article is Myconid Caves. The track is available on the MGS store here. Alternatively, it comes as part of the 50 track album Dragon Island (DoSI) which you can find here.
Here is the generator:
Myconid Caves Roll Tables
d4 – The Environment
1. Fertile garden – an air of deep contentment; everything smells like rain and rich earth. Nutrient-rich loam underfoot, botanical bounties everywhere.
2. Rot beneath – something titanic has died. Its decay overwhelms senses; smell in particular is horrifying. Beautiful mushrooms are everywhere, feasting.
3. Spore fog – the air so thick with spores visibility drops and sound seems muffled. Movement feels dreamlike, time hazy. The spores taste of copper.
4. Emergence – the ground shakes with life. All manner of myconids, fungi, and plant-life are breaking through the earth and rock every hour.
d6 – Aspects
1. Network hum – those who can interpret the subsonic vibrations will understand the colony’s mood; it shifts between satisfaction, fear, hunger, and curiosity every few minutes. Outsiders only feel their teeth itch.
2. Seeding memories – the myconids here communicate through cloud spores heavy with complex emotions and histories. Exposure flashes memories through the mind that are not yours.
3. Symbiote gardens – the creatures allowed to live here help form a perfect system. Pale beetles farm fungi; translucent grubs tend the soil. Anything that fails to fulfill a role will disappear, one way or another.
4. Chimney vents – bubbling hot springs create thermal columns carrying spores upwards. The air is fetid, and the myconids are spreading.
5. Ancient giants – massive fruiting bodies stand like enormous stone monuments, some taller than a house. Older than the myconids, their song is at frequencies bones feel.
6. Plague – something fungal has gone wrong. Large animals lie here and there, breathing but unresponsive. No one wants to move them or go near. Sometimes the corpses burst.
d10 – Myconid Caves Features
1. Amphitheater – naturally terraced depression. Myconids gather here at important times to spore-speak. The acoustics are strange; visitors’ heartbeats sound like drums.
2. Corpse gardens – the dead do not get buried here, they’re planted. Tended fungi grow from them. To a myconid, there’s no horror here, only natural cycle. Small plaques list who are currently feeding which garden.
3. Library – thousands of aligned crystals hold spore-memories. Histories, warnings, recipes are all here. Many are truly ancient.
4. Healing pools – Beautiful in an unsettling way. The waters cloud and then become clear, showing distant alien vistas. Many say the hot, sulphurous water can heal; far fewer can agree on how long it actually takes.
5. Dark gardens – deliberately lightless; what grows here is not for eating. The myconids only speak of what lives here in whispers. They believe they can reason with it.
6. Nursery – soft chambers lined with nutritional slime. Infant myconids grow here. The elderly nurses are fiercely protective, but won’t say why.
7. Rupture – a section of cavern ceiling has collapsed. Sunshine pours in a few hours a day. Myconids do not come here now. Instead, here are strange hybrids: half-fungal, half-plant. Beautiful, but unnerving.
8. Trade post – a neutral chamber for outsiders to come and trade. Merchants are kept at arm’s length. The spore clouds are thinner here; trust is equally scarce.
9. Broken communion – a chamber full of dead myconids, carefully arranged. Perfectly hollowed out—whatever was inside them has recently fled.
10. Disposal – waste flows through these tunnels, slow rivers of compost and decay. Vast ecosystems live in the rot. The smell is alive.
d20 – The Creature(s)
1. Elder scout – returning from expedition. Smells of copper. Fresh scars, nervous looks. Exhausted.
2. Dreamer – eating the wrong fungi by choice. Plagued by visions. Prophesises endlessly. Increasingly alarmed.
3. Mourner – tending dead myconid’s fungal bed. Deliberate, honoured. Talks about the life, not death. Gentle.
4. Warrior – sharpening blades. Broad, dense, smelling of iron and aggression. Wronged, wants revenge. Calm.
5. Gardener collective – four myconids working as one. Speak as a choir, think as one. Looking for clues. Driven.
6. Spore-drunk – stumbling, babbling outsider. Came a few days ago. Less humanoid now. Becoming.
7. Young tender – asking questions. Fascinated by the party. Bold curiosity, often wrong assumptions. Endearing.
8. Miner – hunting mineral seams. Outsider with charred fingertips. Desperate for information. Naive.
9. Corpse-keeper – tending dead beds. Speaks. Very. Slowly. Loves music. Morbid, but kind.
10. Exile – stuttering pleas. Rejected by colony; spore-scent all wrong. Kept distant. Wants understanding. Too keen.
11. Hive-wrecker – whispering corruption. Fungal aberration. Desires colony destruction from within. Fuels hatred. Eloquent.
12. Symbiote merchant – offering wares. Floating cavefish with fungus colony in flesh. Horrifying, but content. Eccentric.
13. Philosopher – lecturing. Barely mobile. Thoughts take time. Incredible memory. Haunted.
14. Spy – fleeing. Sent to investigate the colony. Wears mask that has sealed. Spore-covered. Weakening.
15. Breeder – tending spore “lab”. Responsible for a reproduction program. Explains everything in great detail. Proud.
16. Pilgrim – singing constantly. Came for myconid wisdom. Skin fruiting with tiny mushrooms. In agony and ecstasy.
17. Child of the Dark – savouring new smell. Alien intelligence, voracious appetite for smells. Brutally pragmatic.
18. Fallen guard – sentenced to witness consequences. Betrayed colony. Kept alive. Guilt tangible. Broken.
19. Sage – conversing with myconids. Outsider; can interpret spores no one else understands. Trusted, wise, deceptive.
20. Gardener’s child – playing alone with rocks. Partially human, partially fungal. Accepted by neither. Lonely.
d8 – The Complications for Myconid Caves
1. Spore storm. The hum of thoughts becomes a raging howl. The network is screaming. The colony is under attack and all outsiders come under suspicion.
2. Infection. A non-myconid fungus is invading. The colony must assimilate or purge. They choose purge. Everything—and everyone—in the affected area is now in danger.
3. Fission. Two powerful spore clouds have become incompatible. The colony is splitting into two hostile factions. Civil war is brewing and outsiders may become useful weapons.
4. Calling. An ancient network’s spores, far older than this colony, are coming up through the soil. Young myconids are leaving for the depths. The network is luring them…home?
5. Why has hum gone. Communication spores go mute. Old myconids are deaf. Confusion and panic are spreading fast. The myconids are acting erratically, dangerously.
6. Invader. Something truly massive is burrowing into the cavern system. The colony mobilises but know not what it faces. Warriors go out and never come back. The debate between evacuation or fighting builds quickly.
7. Memory plague. An alien spore has infected the colony. Myconids are experiencing a memory they know is not theirs. It contradicts their known history. Certainty is wrecked, even the elders are questioning everything.
8. Light feeders. An aggressive fungus grows towards any light source, consuming it. Darkness is spreading from one cave to the next. The myconids seem unaware. It’s consuming their perception of reality.
d12 – The Secrets
1. By a half-decomposed body, a sword that makes herbivores nervous. Inscribed with runes the myconids don’t recognise but would be very, very interested in studying.
2. Trapped in a crystal formation, an old map of a Temple of Chaos. Warning runes around the borders.
3. In a circle of mushrooms, a faerie lies. Says they need help getting out; has a spell to teach.
4. In a pile of adventurers’ belongings, a stone tablet. A treaty agreement between two factions; in the myconids’ interest the pact stays unsigned.
5. Preserved in amber, a memory spore. Emotion radiates out: desperate love. A myconid calling to another across the ages.
6. In an oak box, a vial of spore-ink. Writing faintly glows; readers feel emotions present during the moment of writing.
7. In a satchel hanging from a branch, a circlet of fungal threads. Wearer understands myconid communication. Extended exposure risks spore contamination.
8. At the foot of giant mushrooms, a cultivar seed packet. Fungal spores bred for purpose: bioluminescent, medicinal, or edible. High value to gardeners and alchemists.
9. By old fungal beds, a spore-filter mask. Leather half-mask lined with treated fungal membranes. Allows safe breathing of spored or toxic air. Understanding of spores dulled. Degrades after a week.
10. Growing in a cave wall crack, a luminescent lichen. Very slow-growing but can give off low light for a couple of days. Doesn’t seem to attract light-hunting predators like torches.
11. In a mushroom hollow, a fossilized myconid fragment. Could be a magical focus; museums would love it. Druids would kill for it. The myconids want it most of all.
12. At an abandoned campsite, two nutrient paste bricks. Counts as a meal that nourishes for 3 days. Tastes like damp earth but incredibly nutritious. Dissolve for medicinal uses.
Example Encounter for Myconid Caves
Roll Results:
d4: 1 – Fertile garden
d6: 3 – Symbiote gardens
d10: 1 – Amphitheater
d20: 13 – Philosopher
d8: 5 – Why has hum gone
d12: 1 – Sword
My Idea:
The myconid caves breathe in time to an alien rhythm. Mushrooms the size of trees undulate with each inhale. The air feels damp and smells of sweet decay and curiosity. The myconids are not immediately hostile, but they are watching carefully. More than thoughts, emotion swells and blooms here. The air shimmers with spore clouds; they permeate everything.
The party wander through a colony that feels irrepressibly content and happy. Everywhere they look, bountiful harvests are to be had of beautiful though unknown botanics. Notably, everything seems to be in perfect balance with all creatures and plants present working in seemingly perfect harmony.
They will find an old philosopher myconid lecturing in an ancient amphitheater-like chamber. The long pauses make hard listening, but the PCs piece together a history of a nearby old, friendly dwarven settlement. The dwarves wrought great artifacts of magical power and kept away terrible foes of the colony. Unfortunately, the tunnel to the dwarves collapsed and there has been no communication from them for some time now.
Unbeknownst to the colony, a sapient fae plant is invading the caverns. It’s a myconid-killer; its own spores mute its prey’s communication, isolating them, making them vulnerable and easier for consumption. The dwarves used to keep it at bay, but now they have their own problems.
The party may try to find a new route to the dwarves and get the sword in return for reopening the network; alternatively, if the party directly target the plant, the philosopher can give it to the PCs upon successfully saving the myconids.
Using These Tables
Two tips when using these tables:
– Try using awkward results before tossing them away. Often it’s the unexpected combinations that build the most memorable stories.
– Modify the tables as you like. Change them; add to them; mix them up. GMs will know what will work best for their own group.
Lastly, if you’re interested in other generators, here is a list with links for previous entries in this series:
Desert
Simple Cave
Treant Forest
Bazaar
Baroque Noble Party
Old Fort
Temple of the Stars
Ship in Blizzard
Snowing
Forest River
Have a lovely day!
