The Listener’s Hallucination
Filed under: Mirecourt Flora | Hallucinogenic Fungi | Memory-Responsive Plants
Contributor: FDG Field Mycologist No. 2
Last updated: May 2025
Overview
Low to the earth and easily overlooked, Croakcap Mushrooms are among the Mirecourt’s most quietly dangerous plants. Though small, these fungi are emotionally reactive, feeding not on rot alone but on the grief of passersby.
Named for their resemblance to the humped back of a crouching toad, Croakcaps are harvested and used by fae creatures—most notably the Wyrmling of the Mudmouth—to inscribe living messages into mud, water, or flesh.
For humans, contact is not always lethal. But it is almost always intimate, and frequently unwelcome.
Appearance
- Cap: Rounded, warty texture like amphibian skin. Mottled brown and olive, often faintly iridescent at the rim.
- Glow: Emits a dim greenish or violet halo after dusk. Not visible under artificial light—only moonlight or complete natural darkness.
- Stalk: Short and thick, speckled with black veining. Occasionally leaks a viscous, clear fluid when cut.
- Cluster Pattern: Grows in triangular or spiral groupings, often forming glyph-like arrangements if seen from above.
Common sites of growth include:
- beside weeping willow roots
- old stepping stones sunk in mud
- the base of mossy grave markers
- beneath beds in homes where grief lingers
Fae Realm Use
The Wyrmling of the Mudmouth is most associated with Croakcap Mushrooms. It uses the slime of the crushed cap as a writing ink, its glowing rim reacting to nearby thoughts, inscribing warnings or guilt directly into surfaces.
Messages written this way often:
- fade as they are understood
- resist translation
- reappear when disbelieved
Some emissaries of Lady Wyr carry dried Croakcaps as components in rituals involving truth extraction, name-recovery, or dream-mapping.
Effect on Earthly Humans
Ingestion or skin contact with Croakcap slime triggers a unique kind of hallucination:
- The affected individual sees and hears someone they have lost—a dead loved one, a vanished friend, or a forgotten version of themselves.
- The hallucination is interactive, emotionally vivid, and often comforting at first.
- However, the hallucination:
- Knows things it should not (e.g., what the person dreamed last night, or facts the person forgot)
- May accuse, confess, or reveal secrets left buried
- Follows the person into reflective surfaces for several hours after fading
In some rare cases, individuals have reported that the hallucination returns nightly, even long after contact with the fungus.
Folklore and Signs
- Mourner’s Footprint:
If you find a trail of tiny mushrooms shaped like toad backs following a single barefoot track, someone nearby has been chosen to receive a Croakcap message. - Last Conversation Syndrome:
Known locally: when someone talks aloud in a marsh and hears a perfect reply before they finish their sentence, Croakcaps are listening. - Cure of Confession:
It is said that if you find a Croakcap circle and confess a painful truth into its center, you will be left alone.
But if you lie—it will send someone to speak with you.
Handling and Harvesting
- Avoid cutting directly—Croakcaps secrete memory-reactive enzymes that can cause emotional bleed.
- Use wooden tweezers or harvest by lifting entire clumps with moss and all.
- Store in containers lined with mirror foil or silvered bark.
- Do not allow spores to touch writing paper—glyphs may appear in the margins without your consent.
Summary for Field Operatives
| Trait | Detail |
|---|---|
| Threat Level | Low physical, moderate to high emotional/mental disruption |
| Signs of Presence | Toad-shaped mushrooms in glyph patterns, unexplained responses to private speech, greenish fungal glow in grief-heavy spaces |
| Containment Risk | High in domestic areas. Spores propagate through emotional proximity. |
| Engagement Advice | Avoid emotional conversation near known growth sites. Never ingest. If hallucination occurs, engage politely, do not argue, and seek saltwater immersion to sever link.** |
Quote from Field Report #199:
“It was my father. Same voice. Same cardigan. He asked me why I let him die without calling. He knew what I was doing now, though. He told me not to go to the house on Lantern Reach.
I’m still not sure if I’m going. But I’ve heard him in the mirrors three times since.”
—Operative W., Mirecourt Periphery
Faylinn Defence Group 