Gau
The verdancy was a death knell for many cultures, but for the gau it was a flourishing - an opportunity to leave the warm, safe darkness of their mycosanctums and explore a new world of rot and growth.
Most gau have flexible limbs and mottled fungal flesh, but the differences between various families are vast. Some gau lack eyes while others have many, some sprout tendrils, others spore-sacs, while yet others are sculpted remarkably close to an elfin visage of humanity lost.
Mycosanctums
Somewhere between a ship, a spawning-ground and a fortress, a mycosanctum is a living construction of protective fungus (sometimes miles across). In the pre-verdant times they were usually located in shadowed marshes and mountain caverns, but much like their inhabitants they’ve gained a lot more mobility since the world-forest came.
Living within a mycosanctum for an extended period as any other bloodline than gau is often a less than pleasant experience. Those that try find their clothes and hair thick with spores, their noses (if they have one) clogged or streaming depending on the chemical breezes of the day, and the food… Well, best not talk about the food.
Yearning Growth
Gau biology is something of a puzzle, even to the most learned scholars and surgeons. While each family has certain traits that are passed on over the generations, an individual gau also seems to change and adapt to fit their environment at an impressive pace. In a world of mutative crezzerin this may not seem unusual on the surface, but it’s the process that makes it unique - an ironbound might build their own body, or a tzelicrae craft their preferred skin, but the fungal form of a gau adapts to what the individual wants it to be, without training or conscious effort.
Questions to Consider
When you incorporate elements of the gau into your character, consider the following questions…
- How many of your family traits show in your form, and how much of you is a response to the yearning growth?
- Did you grow within the confines of a mycosanctum and, if so, what was from the outside world that tugged at you to leave?
- How much kinship do you feel with other gau out on the waves, especially those with vastly different lives to your own?
Alternate Presentations
Gau physiology is already extremely flexible. A gau colony or character could be based not so much around mushrooms but instead mold, or lichen, or even something far less common on the wildsea like seaweed or coral.