Dungeons and Dragons Lore: Fungi of the Underdark 

We had a myconid player character who could feed off of dead bodies to regenerate- we met him in a cyberpunk style prison escape- he tore off his face and flushed it down a drain to discover that the sewers lead to caverns beneath the prison- we escaped in that direction and he distracted a Froghemoth by throwing his limbs into its pond as we ran away- deep below the sewers we found a myconid colony named portobellington surviving off of the leaks in the sewer system It was awesome!

I always imagined the energic base of the underdark ecosystem to be chemical-rich volcanic fumes feed on by chemosynths akin to deep sea ecosystems and/or radiotrophic fungi growing on veins of uranium and plutonium.

Thanks dude. Three ads nicely spaced out is a good temporal price for your excellent content. With how often you upload i think i will become a patron

I am playing a Druid of the Spore and have written down notes from your video for things my fungus focused drow druid would probably be aware of.

Adventuring in the Underdark one of your more curious party members picks up a moss covered rock to find 2:52 staring back at them... ::H. Jon Benjamin's voice:: "...Hey....You gunna gimme back my house or am I just homeless now?"

Dnd national geographic channel I found this informative and useful also gave me some new ideas for my group thanks again AJ.

The phaserous energy answers one complaint I have on underdark ecologists. All too often people act as if “fungi are like plants that need no light.” Ignoring the face that fungi are closer relatives to animals than plants, fungi cannot fill a plant role as they are producers and need food first. The magic explains that, but it leaves me wishing for an explanation better thought out than “it’s magic”.

The Fungus is Among Us. A good title for a module, that is adventure, for you new players. I really like myconids, I use them SPORADICALLY...lol.

So fun to hear about the Underdark from a mycologist!

Please do more ECOLOGY videos AJ!!!! I really felt like I could visualize the underdark while you described all the edible plants and the other fungi!

I have always thought it would be interesting for a fungus to generate a magical darkness as a defense mechanism to any kind of light. (That's when the cave fisher attacks)

I keep coming back to this one. I absolutely love this. Ecology of the Underdark is so well thought out I can't believe it's not real. I would love more ecology series. It's a great idea. I can almost imagine Sir Attenborough being there.

You got it backwards, Brussels Sprouts, those vile things, ARE the Underdark equivalent of lettuce.

I once created a Mushroom. It was two feet tall, with a wide cap. It had an pale orange stem with a bright pink cap that could glow. It's spores were both green and yellow, and they too glowed. It wasn't really a species of mushroom but a mushroom that had been mutated by a fungus loving alchemist. He wanted to know what fungus feel and think so he gave it the ability to animate blobs of Mud. The Mud beneath it would form into an ooze like blob and it would have two glowing tear drop shaped "eyes" that would change color based on it's mood. Basically it just became a companion that eventually learned to form arms and legs and such growing into a large mud elemental/golem thing. But it was all powered by the Alchemically enhanced Mushroom. I called it a Mudshroom. Which is where I kind of refer my RU-vid name. And yes, I took the picture of the mushrooms in my icon

I created a form of mushroom called a Razor-Rim Mushroom; it absorbed nutrients from the ground at its bias of its stalk, and the minerals it could not absorb would be secreted on the rim of the cap, were it would harden into a razorsharp blade like ring as a defense against predators. Sadly for my players, the Razor-Rim was a favorite food of the Rust Monsters, that the local Drow razed for there Plaiting which they used for armor, weapons, and so on. the Drow also used screamers and Razor-Rim Mushrooms to make defensive rings around there towns. the Underdark is my favorite place to set campaigns there is just so much you can do there. Great video.

I just LOVE the Underdark and everything to do with it! It feels so wonderfully weird and Morrowind-like! Wish it got more lore and mechanics, but that's what homebrew is for, I guess!

While playing the Lost Mine of Phandelver, with some very flexible DMing, the adventuring group manages to syphon the magic from the Forge of Spells (which is in a weakened state) and put it into a Demi-plane using a combination of Rope Trick and Channel Divinity. The Forest Gnome Sorcerer then encounters a Myconid colony that's upset it lost it's access to the magic that was bleeding out of the Forge. She then convinces them to travel into the Demi-plane, so that they can continue living off that magic energy. To reward the creativity of the group, and for not being murder-hobos, the Myconids will slowly harness the power of the Forge of Spells to build a mycelium network that the players will be able to use as a kind of fast-travel, using the Fungal Demi-Plane as a hub. The fast-travelling will only work to places the group has been to and opened the Demi-plane portal in.

The Underdark is one of my favorite places and it's where my main man Drizzt is from! Thanks again as always brother.

Currently in a long-running OOTA campaign. We ate the damn fungi.

Insects swarms inside of fungus stalks. How terrifying...

This is great. Please do more underdark stuff!

Thank you so much for this informative video! I’m planning an underdark campaign right now, and I have a tremendous love of fungi in general, so this has been a huge help!

I'm so glad you made this video. Jorphdan's underdark video was way too barebones. Funny you mentioning singing fungus in the video, there's a monster called the campestri which is a fungus that lives in salty swamps that immitates sound and loves to sing. They first popped up in dungeon magazines adventure call old man Katan and the incredible edible dancing mushroom band, then later on in one of the monstrous manuals. And you're right, singing mushrooms are adorable.

Just getting a Drow/Underdark campaign off the ground right now.. Very happy I came across this video, I've been doing my best to find more and more about different species of Underdark fungi, and this was great

My group is heading into what will most likely be the upper regions of the Underdark, or at least my version of it. This video was very helpful and has inspired at least one encounter they will face. Thanks!

I'm suddenly reminded of those hulking mushrooms in Dark Souls.... damn things beat the armor pants out of me.

I'm a bit of a fan of the last of us so I like to use spores that can reanimate dead and dying creatures. Although I like to say that the spore creature isn't necessarily malevolent, the spores aren't replacing the original being they're piggy backing off the nervous and neural networks in order to control the body with stronger willed, more intelligent beings retaining more of their personality and maybe only have urges and desires created by the spores like occasionally desiring to go sit somewhere wet and warm for a few hours or maybe feeling particularly hungry.

For my Out of the Abyss game, I made up a quick reference pamphlet for myself for all the fungi in the book, and a few I made up. I titled it "I Can't Believe It's Not Eating Me! A Sporegasbord to Guide to Underdark Eating."

So Troglodytes would be "smart" to use the nidhog nose plant in food for prisoners to better keep them from escaping?

I have used fungi in a trap recently. Essentially, the trap is triggered which cuts off the normal path of the dungeon and instead opens a secret door into a side cave which the players must now traverse. Within a bony corpse can be seen buried under a pile of mushrooms in startling variety. There is a type of mushroom I invented which is an alice in wonderland style shrink you mushroom puffball. They are dispersed among the fungi. If a creature gets too close they make a dex save to avoid disturbing the mushrooms. If they fail the spores disperse in the area and can potentially shrink someone as per the enlarge reduce spell. Also hidden within the fungi are violet mushrooms. In my session a player was shrunk and the mushrooms proved to be fierce opponents to a party of 6 level 2 PCs.

I should make my Duergar obsessed with shrooms and pouncing on them for fun.

A mushroom with a red-purple cap, that had black(but actually just really dark orange) stripes. The stem had a sort of swirly/spiraly quality to it. It serves as a third of a days ration, and could remove elemental, or extraplaner toxicity(Including things like necrotic energy buildup). They mostly grow in forests near where lots of magic is used. It was crazy dangerous to Dragonborn, and potentially devastating to a Wizard, or Druid. But otherwise largely harmless.

Good timing, I was just looking at finishing a write-up of economics in the Underdark today, with mostly just Mychonids and barbaric races left. I will be sure to add the fungus for a general aspect of life in the Underdark. Awakened Shrieker sounds hilarious, and a must for the Feydark. Totally have a opera hall of sorts with bizarre politics.

I always love going to the Underdark. My favorite part of it are the Fungus and the Myconids. In fact I have a campaign where there is a large myconid society. I know that's not normal but my story explains why

In Loom of Magus (my AD&D campaign multiverse), the Underdark is infused with not only Underdark magic, but is heavily infused with elemental Earth, Magma, Water, Ooze and Steam... so heavy in nutrients (and energy) available for Underdark ecology... more so than the surface world and far more than both in just under the surface world. Myconids are superior in my Underdark. I have a version of the Yellow Musk and Yellow Musk zombies as a community of former low-level adventurers accepting that they are part of that community for good as their animated corpses. They are virtual mycons and sentient thanks to the efforts of the local myconids. That adventurer, I had a death catch-22. Any death that occurred in their territory, if they role-played well, or any deadly infection of them under the same conditions, would allow the mycons do a ritual that would restore the player to life. They even provided some edible mushrooms in small bags (potions, eat the whole bag or "sip" by eating a single mushroom) for shineys (gold pieces, gems, and other generally accepted trade). A paladin of a good god decided to invade the Underdark. I told him that quest was evil. He gave a really great case of how it would be, according to his beliefs, a good cause. He was right. I allowed it. He and his party died in that quest but it was a really fun mini-campaign that even had player characters opposing the invasion in a non-hate player vs. player 3 dungeon master conflict. I could go on, but you get the idea and we were much younger.

Im going to get 1000 dispel magic scrolls and start a campaign to wipe out the faezrus underdark energy. Scorched Earth, baby!

The Shriekers sound similar to the mandrake myth, only the shriekers' screams are not fatal.

Capital work sir! It's nice to hear an excellent set of examples of what players can expect when encountering hostile vegetation in the underdark. It's good to remember that not all encounters have to be "hack and slash" when dealing with intelligent fungi that have a subtle sophistication like Myconids. Players can learn a great deal about the local environment by learning to read the spores lol.

Another D&D fungi is the brain fungus from spelljammer. It is what mindflayers eat among other species and it supposedly tastes terrible.

One that I made up to supply foraging characters with is something I just called a Hungershroom. They have hard, boney white stems and reddish brown caps that give it the appearance of a drumstick or chunks of meat. They exude a mild fragrance similar to soup stock and the caps have a tender, savory flavor. They are intentionally tasty to encourage their consumption, but are incredibly dangerous to eat raw. The reason for this is because they never satiate the appetite, quite the contrary actually. No more than a few minutes after being ingested they begin to suck the nutrients from the stomachs of whoever ate them, while producing a chemical that causes intense hunger. It's possible for a victim to starve from the effects of a Hungershroom if no other food is present, but more often than not the victim will be overwhelmed by craving and begin to devour anything edible they can get their hands on. If there is no other food available, or the creature that ate them lacks the intelligence or wisdom to control themselves, this may even result in cannibalism or self-mutilation in harsh conditions. After gorging themselves on anything else that looks edible (often ingesting more toxic fungi in the process), they become very bloated and sick, and require clean water and rest to recover and purge whatever toxins they may have consumed. This is how the Hungershroom spreads its spores- if the victim survives, they will be regurgitated elsewhere. And if the victim dies from starvation or is killed by something they tried to eat, the Hungershrooms will dissolve away the insides of the corpse before bursting out of what remains of the stomach and intestines. Denizens of the Underdark would probably know that the proper way to cook it is to boil it with the slime of certain molds or baste it in said slime before roasting. But unfortunately that causes the taste to become somewhat rotten and not very appetizing for surface races.

I made a tree sized mushroom called a shifter shroom, when prey walked underneath it, it would gently shake paralysis spores loose(similar to shifting flower) it you failed the save you would become paralyzed and poisoned, while starting to take d4s of poison damage

Hello! I've only recently found you (thanks Mikie from Legends of Avantris for the name drop) and this video alone has given be a page of notes and at least 3 good encounter ideas!

Yup, Skavens would definitely try to conquer Underdark for themselves. Yes! Yes! Kill! Kill! For the glory of the Horned Rat!

Paul Kidd's "Descent into the Depths of the Earth" did a good job of depicting the Underdark fairly well.

Thinking about making an alternative way to make animated skeletons, but with intelligent fungi. I think something like the flood from halo as a base template mixed with fungi might be a good starting point.

Simply brilliant! Thanks, AJ. 👍🏻

Way to work the word 'mycellial' seamlessly into your commentary.

Tomorrow, my players in Out of the Abyss are rolling for what mushrooms 🍄 they have found so far. These are exciting times!!!

Thank you so much for the Underdark info. This is great!

Hey AJ, would the unique presence of faezress in the Faerunian Underdark imply a lack of similar subterranean ecology in other realms? Meaning, if an alternate realm or reality was not affected by Drow and Elven deities to include faezress, would there still be intelligent fungi and other creatures like there are beneath Faerun? In that way, the Faerunian Underdark might be an even more unique place in the cosmos than we originally thought, and could act as a trans-dimensional beacon/food source for magic-feeders and other strange creatures.

I would say the weta leg would be more like crab or lobster then turkey.

Can we get a video on the Far Realms? I need that place explained.

very relaxing

gosh this is gold!!

Thank you for making this video. Absolute greatness! 👍🏽

I really love this video. I can't wait to see more stuff about the strange and alien life of the Underdark.

Had a party that got lost in the underdark. My character was the only one that thought to save up and buy a ring of sustenance before hand . Haha. Was the only who never had to take a constitution check. Cause I never had to eat.

My party had to try and interfere with the theft of a sarcophagus which was hidden beneath the local mages green house. Being a well traveled x adventurerer she had violet fungi of all 3 varieties as well as two carnivorous plants protecting the Location.

Excellent content!

Very useful video, thanks for making it!

In my current D&D game, I have a changeling revived rogue that woke up one morning with the desire to cook a nice meal while we are on our long trek. (One of the revived capabilities is to change one proficiency with tools or skills each day. I just did a random tool and it was cooking utensils) Well, my character did not have a very high survival skill, so foraging was basically picking the first things I saw. This turned out to be a couple types of mushrooms and some herbs to make a delectable mushroom cream soup out of. Then comes the random roll table for what mushrooms I picked. I don't remember the names but the first one to kick in was to be able to see 5 minutes into the future, this effect lasted for one minute. 30s after, the second mushroom came into effect which caused our characters to realize they were just characters being played in a game by other people for 5 minutes. After it's effect ended we forgot what happened for the last 10 minutes. It was really a lot of fun to roleplay our characters breaking the 4th wall lol

You're 115% right AJ that i would love this video. I was really shocked you covered the shrieker mushroom. Great old school creature, one of the most creative creatures in d&d. The pic of a mushroom treant, really great stuff there AJ. Never thought of that one before. Thank you AJ for all your hard work. You should have told everybody about your mushroom video, the ones you made and painted. Its one of my favorite videos. Thanks again AJ and have a great day.

So good. this is really inspiring for map making!

I've done like only two things with mushrooms. The first one was a side quest create Spore bread. The second one was while I was DMing, I introduced a Miconed village that was able to grow fungal weapons and armor.

13:57 the troll sprouts from Ernest scared stupid.

My favorite magic card is “mycoloth” and That’s what drew me to D&d myconids as mushroom are something my family members hate to eat so putting it in games is great for me. This video just gives me some campaign ideas for them so good.

I think my dm watches you, because my party just met an awakened streaker bard. And how we have plans on moving ragooth to our keep.

Yo AJ, this stuff Rocks! Thank you so much for your contributions to the game. You are the dungeon master.👍😎

How hard was it to not geek out over these as a mycologist?

I've used magic mushrooms in my game as a small punishment for someone failing a nature check on scavenged dinner. But this is next level! I cant wait to visit the underdark in my game!

really good video

You just gave me the idea to homebrew a Shrieker variant that's semi-intelligent and somewhat telepathic. Instead of shrieking talks in a loud, annoying voice, like a high and manic Gilbert Godfrey. The intelligence and telepathy is just so it can speak in the language of the person intruding in its space and craft very personal insults (which, in truth, is whatever self-loathing it can pick up from its target's mind). It does not have the multiple orifices on its cap, instead a single toothy "mouth" on its stout stem.

Could you do a video on food of the d&d world? I think it make a great video probable very tiresome to research

Thanks for the vid sir.

Apologies as I know this likely won’t get to you considering the age of the post but I thought you’d like to know the following: I am currently playing a character that is a drow Druid of the spores that was raised by myconids. Due to his 100+ years of being underground amidst all the mushrooms he was able to collect a large amount of information on mushrooms. This video was able to help me expand a large portion of what I already knew since I only had information on about five of the mushroom types. Since the party is going to be going into the under dark soon I believe it’s going to be rather vital Edit; forgot i used voice to text and siri doesnt know what a drow is

Thank you for the biology class it was very educational. As a biologist you must love this type of video 😊😊please have a good day

hm, tasty... i wonder if many fungi migrate to elemental Earth Plane seasonally

A personal story, if I may, because why not? Achievement Hunter is another channel I've been watching here on RU-vid and I have a special fondness for their Skyblock series, which, for the unfamiliar amounts to heavily modded Minecraft that starts on a single tree on a single block of dirt floating in a void. Even as the world is built up around them, the abyss is a constant threat, and falling to the kill plane below results in the spawning of a single block of dirt just above it, and a single grave on top of that. A grave that, mind you, will contain everything that you were carrying at the time of your death, and so reaching the bottom of the world will be a priority if you want any of that stuff back. And it is down here, at the very bottom of the world, through a cycle of, falling, dying, bridge building for the purposes of retrieval, and dying again, that an intricate network of slender pathways has formed, spreading ever outward like the tracks of wood-eating insects, or slender strands of spider-spun filament. Although I'm not sure whether any of the Achievement Hunter crew have ever played DnD, I myself like to refer to this place as the Underdark. It remains a dangerous place, many blocks down, and only reachable by waterfall or rope. Either of these can be fallen off of with a single missed step. Down there, as low as it is possible to go, far, far from the safety of the player-built platforms above, monsters run rampant, spawning en masse in the darkness. Any trip to these slender paths often ends in more death, as the hordes knock players to their doom once again in the abyss below.

I always end up thinking about Hollow Knight wen ever something about the Under Dark is brought up.

Mychonids have a god called the spore lord Edit:okay to be exact a fae creature they worship like a god

Good video

Soooooo here what I am doing. I made the moon Shea isles, well one of them where the Leshey live, actually a netherill ruin! Think of a floating city that was turned upside down and sunk into the ocean to make an island. Now imagine that the city went all the way to the depth of the ocean and punched through into the under dark. 😈😈. Now I can have underdark monsters in the ocean and vice versa. I am also gonna say there are mutations from the phaseris as it has been 1000s of years since the fall of netherill!!! So I can have netherez mermen and woman or a dark elf City at the top of (which is the bottom) the mountain. Maybe a Sahuagin city that trades with dark elf’s. Or a underwater dragon cult that wants to restart the mythal and use it to rise the oceans and destroy all land dwellers. The possibility’s are endless!!!! Just so you know this is all because of your videos and me putting them together!! Thank you AJ!!! Maybe one of my ideas will inspire you as yours have inspired me!

Great ecology video. Every considered doing vids on specific Faerun regions? I.e. The wildlife of Thay, The songbirds of Sembia, Hunting in Wild Thar

I homebrew that the Underdark is another Plane that can be accessed by portals in really deep caves, and it's the same as the Feydark. it was created by Illithids, Aboleths & other spawns of the Far Realm.

Oooh. Is this a prelude to zuggotmoy? The Demon Queen of Fungi? Cause I did play a cultist to her. Fear her sodden wrath

Why couldn't the fungus grapple? Vines do. Loved the vid A.J.

Well on one campaing after dwarven underwhay hig speed chase endet for the enemy broke some of the wheels of their ride and they made replaisments by jusing zurk wood.

15:33 isn't that an Ash Hopper?

7 foolhardy adventurers disliked.

I have a half fiend cleric of zuggtmoy as my character, haven't had a chance to play with fungus yet though

Second. Wow, more than 100 views in ten minutes!?

Awesome information Do you got anything about Belial and Fierna by any chance coming up?

The Underdark is great ;]

Could you give a list of sources. This info is kind of hard to find and would be amazing for world building in underdark-like environs.

To go back to your exotic ecology video, the creatures of the Underdark may be able to eat some of the fungi that surface dwellers may find toxic. Maybe the toxin is what makes it flavorful for these races, or these races intentionally use these fungi when treating unfavored guests to meals to get rid of them

My favorite one is the shriekers

Dang it, someone already made the "fungus among us" joke.

Well the goddess of lust (or maybe envy i forgot) was made of fungus so she sent out spores to take over people making them zombie like (but keeping them alive so they are in eternal suffering)

how do you find a mad Druid? ask a talking Shrieker

Neat