Aver Brand
Mercicle
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
GENERAL INFORMATION
Name: Plesen
Designation: Non-sentient
Homeworld: Thral, has spread to the Outer rim and Unknown regions
Language: /
Average Lifespan: Lots
Estimated Population: Inter-Planetary
Description: Yellowish ooze that caught that sweet tune way back in the Cantina and ain’t never been able to stop groovin’ to it.
PHYSICAL INFORMATION
Breathes: Type I through III
Average height of adults: Couple centimeters
Average length of adults: Lots. Can cover whole square meters of surface
Skin color: Shades of green, yellow, and orange
Hair color: /
Distinctions: A bit disgusting, really. They exhibit a heartbeat-like rhythmic pumping. Natural predators avoid them because of the warning color scheme. Sentients are rarely so enlightened, and thus fall into two categories. People who go “Eww, gross!” and hightail in the opposite direction. The other, much smaller sample of the population, instead goes “Oooh, shiny!”, fondles the mold, and dies in excruciating agony several minutes later.
This is the chief reason why the other category is a minority.
Races: /
Strengths:
Bring it on, apocalypse: Come hell or high water, Plesen will persevere. When the nuclear winter wipes out all the fancy sentient organisms, Plesen will persevere. When the heat death of the universe is breathing down everyone’s necks, Plesen will... persevere?
Touch me if you dare: In small doses, the poison of the Plesen is an extremely potent hallucinogen. In only slightly bigger doses, the poison of the Plesen is foul-tasting suicide.
Weaknesses:
Slooooooow: I mean. It’s a mold, what do you want? Though Plesen can move around with its ebb-like locomotion, this is by no means a hunting speed. It will be outrun by anything short of an arthritic snail, and even then, don’t bet on it.
Sunlight: Like most molds and vampires, Plesen fears the sun. On its own, it never grows in areas that are continually in sunlight. If Plesen is exposed to strong light, it will recoil and stop attacking.
Diet: Fungal spores, bacteria, other microbes, and people.
Communication: Hormones & pheromones
Technology level: Negative
Religion/Beliefs: Zilch
General behavior: Not a whole lot, to be honest.
Like with most molds, its life is simple and cyclical, easily divided into three stages.
The vegetative phase is its active phase – that is, when Plesen grooves about, searches for food, and generally looks unpleasantly alive for a microbe.
In unfavorable environmental conditions, Plesen will from a sclerotium. In this stage, the organism is hardened and protected, but inactive. It maintains this form until favorable conditions resume, at which point it becomes a plasmodium again.
When it has gorged enough on the unfortunate fungi and the occasional sentient delicacy, Plesen will enter its reproductive phase. Sporangia will stem from the plasmodium, maturing until they are released to the winds, to disseminate across the world.
A spore can remain dormant for years, waiting for the right conditions. Once these occur, it will germinate and release motile cells, which will eventually fuse into a new plasmodium.
Nature is truly beautiful.
As is only proper for anything that calls Thral home, Plesen is no ordinary mold. It’s bigger. Better. Stronger.
...eviler, perhaps?
Doesn’t matter – Plesen does not care for your petty sentient emotions. It eats. It slee— well, it doesn’t really. It does eat almost all the time, though, and occasionally hibernates. When the time is right, it spews forth its myriad offspring.
Gone with the wind.
It is through this miraculous avenue of reproduction and dissemination that Plesen eventually escaped off-world, much to the terror and delight of the Galaxy at large. It terrifies the children, the urbanites, and people with a general aversion to dangerous poisons.
It delights drug dealers.
At this point, nobody knows who discovered the hallucinogenic properties of Plesen’s poison anymore. Probably because they’re long dead of an overdose. Regardless, rumor of its power has spread, and many cartels and outfits on the fringes of the Outer rim and Unknown regions now attempt to cultivate and harvest the mold for its potent potential.
