Codex: Megacap

My loose ideas for a fiction partially inspired by the style of Metroid Prime Hunters and the old Ben 10 series, but more mature and intended for teenagers and adults.

Megacap is the colloquial term for a species of highly evolved, slightly sentient mushroom that make their home on the planet Auburn-12 in the Milky Way galaxy, a perpetual damp, mildly cold climate with massive arboreal forests covering the surface of the planet

A curious species, these mushroom stand, on average, 5 feet tall from the stem to the cap, with the cap usually about 8 feet wide. This cap has a frilly appearance on the top, and a massive bowl-like divet before the edges the cap which contains acid. Massive and sturdy roots grow from the base of the mushroom, The coloration of the species is a whitish green.

The hallmark of this species is it's remarkable adaptations for survival, the Megacap reproduces by spreading millions of spores from under the cap, which can grow on suitably nutritious soil. However, these every single one of these spores contains a consciousness of sorts due to microfibers composing the spore, essentially acting as a camera of sorts that are extremely sensitive and transmit information on heat and humidity to the source Megacap. These also contain similar properties to cordycepts, in that if they land on insects or end up breathed in by larger animals and fauna, they hijack the host's nervous system on behalf of the Megacap, transmitting all of the sensory information that the entity in question normally experiences back to the source Megacap, and influencing the host based on commands from the plant, often to spread the spores far and wide, bring resources to the Cap, (in the case of insects and other small organisms dissolve themselves at the acid vat at the top of the cap), or scope out nutritious locations.

This is all done so that the Megacap has a surplus of nutrients, once this is achieved, the Megacap will call a larger host to it's location and uproot itself, getting carried to a more nutrient rich location where spores are likely to grow in the immediate location and placing down another set of roots, this is highly resource intensive, so it only scopes out damp, resourceful locations to do this.

The influence of these spores can be resisted by organisms with a highly advanced nervous system, such as humans, however, they tend to induce a incredibly addicting high to facilitate mental takeover.

The second most aspect of these species is their evolved intelligence and the presence of a network of
a highly evolved capillaries and similar fibrous structures within the top of the stem just underneath the cap, these seem to function as a brain, storing memory and transmitting commands and information to and from its spores and hosts, as well as a network of muscle like nodes and fibres throughout the stem which can be used to sway the cap.

As a last resort, in the case of predation, the highly corrosive acid at the top of the cap can be flung at the offending organism. This acid is extremely dangerous and can melt through skin, muscle, and bone.

Megacap have an average lifespan of approximately 25 to 40 years.

~The Archivist