Hostile Mold

Most molds are harmless fuzz on damp stone or spoiled food, but a few woolly underground strains turn lethal. Brown mold spreads in cold, dripping caverns and feeds on heat itself; step too close and it leeches the warmth from your blood, chilling flesh to numbness. Worse, fire only feeds it, a careless torch can make a patch swell to many times its size. Russet mold breathes a constant haze of rust-coloured spores that foul the lungs and seed a lingering but curable sickness. Pale yellow mold is the deadliest: jostle it and it bursts into a choking poison cloud. None of these can move or chase; they are creeping hazards of the deep dark, killing the unwary who blunder into reach rather than hunting.