Thar Shaddin

Notes from today's google hangout
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(17:16:14) Sertor Potens: Ages ago, during the Changer's war, a bunch of trolls went underground in a cave full of bigass sentient fungi,

and over the years of breathing ins pores and cohabiting, merged as a race of symbiotic organisms

(17:18:32) Sertor Potens: They need water, and if they dry out they shrivel up and enter hibernation, and if water returns they revive,

kind of like the dinosaur plant (thanks Ree) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana​statica

- people who cut off their water to force them into hibernation and harvest them

- A cult of humans who try to infect themselves to gain regeneration and longer life spans
- Africa: near the Great Scar
- Near the end of the Nile river, where it feeds from the Great Scar Mountains
- Physically like a large gorilla

(Ok, this looks rather promising, so I'll just put in my own ideas about it)

It's possible that these humans harvest them as you say, but then how does the infection take place?
There's always the first route of doing exactly what the trolls did, cultivating some of the fungi in designated locations and choosing family lines that will live, sleep, eat and breed among the fungi. Eventually the fungi offshoots may grow to bond with them like they bonded with the trolls, or it may only bond with some and the rest could get poisoned and die horribly. The second choice means that only one or two family lines bonded while in the first they all did.

But there could be a second route, one in which the troll meat is ingested in large quantities to try and force an infection. Only that this seems less likely to work unless the fungi would bond from inside the troll meat.

Then there is a question of how the fungi affects the humans; does it increase or reduce their lifespan, does it make them less intelligent, does it protect or aid them, do they form a connection with the fungal trolls now that they are linked by the fungi?

Just thought I would chip in since this seems like too good of an idea to less fester, so if anyone's interested in brainstorming feel free to comment. I'll be posting more ideas as they come up.