Salt Hollows flora – Faylinn Defence Group

The Memory That Spores
Filed under: Salt Hollows Flora | Dream-Responsive Fungi | Respiratory Hazards
Contributor: FDG Field Archivist No. 5
Last updated: May 2025

Overview

Gravetide Mycelium is a web-like, fungal growth that colonises sunken wood, drowned bones, and derelict grave-offerings at the edge of the Salt Hollows. Though dormant by appearance, it becomes active when in proximity to repressed memory or shame-laced grief.

The fungus thrives on unspoken remembrance. Its spores enter the body quietly, wait until sleep, and then leak the past out through dreams—or, in more advanced stages, breath itself.

It does not rot the flesh.
It rots the boundary between what was forgotten… and what insists on being remembered.

Appearance

Structure: Filamentous white-grey webs, laced with pale green veins
Texture: Damp, feather-light, and clingy; disintegrates when pulled but regrows within hours
Glow: Bioluminescent when memories are actively recalled nearby
Common Hosts:
- Sunken warships
- Coral-buried ribcages
- Flooded graveyards
- Stone statues with missing names

Behaviour and Abilities

Dream-Triggered Spore Release

When a spore-host (human or fae) falls into REM sleep, the mycelium activates.
Spores use the lungs and throat to exhale memory fragments, manifesting as:
- Spoken names of the dead
- Sudden sobbing
- Whispered confessions, often in forgotten languages
Subjects may dream as the dead, or as versions of themselves from suppressed pasts

Emotional Resonance Sensitivity

The mycelium brightens or darkens based on:
- Nearby trauma
- Regret-laced thoughts
- Psychic repression
The more intense the unspoken emotion, the faster it spreads. Several dive suits have been permanently contaminated after family deaths were mentioned underwater.

Memory Echo Seeding

Exposure often results in the growth of emotional memory “echoes”:
- False recollections of having lived someone else’s final hours
- Repeating phrases never learned
- Guilt for acts not committed

Folklore and Signs

“The Fungal Confessional”

Some trench-faith sects sleep among the mycelium to “unburden the drowned within.” They believe spores do not harm the body—only purge that which memory no longer wishes to carry. FDG considers this practice dangerously destabilising.

The Ship That Sobbed

An 18th-century brig recovered from the Channel Trench emitted cries during salvage operations. Divers reported hearing children calling for their mothers. Hull analysis revealed deep Gravetide infestation—now sealed in Black Vault containment.

The Grave That Glowed

In a submerged monastery garden, FDG operatives discovered graves glowing pale green beneath waterlogged stone. Speaking aloud the names carved there caused operatives to cough words they did not know—and fall into coma-like sleep.

Effect on Earth and Human Minds

Mild Exposure

Vivid dreams involving strangers’ regrets
Emotional volatility
A persistent fungal taste or scent in the back of the throat
Whispers in sleep: often accurate reconstructions of real past events

Prolonged Exposure

Respiratory memory displacement (waking speech influenced by unconscious memory leakage)
Sleep-talking full events not experienced by the speaker
Emotional possession: subject feels they are someone else while recalling their own past
Dream leakage affecting nearby sleepers (cross-personality REM bleed)
In rare cases: permanent voice alteration due to the “voice of the mycelium” joining the host

Summary for Field Operatives

Trait	Detail
Threat Level	Low immediate physical threat. High psychological and respiratory memory hazard.
Signs of Presence	Glowing grave-pools. Fungal webbing on bones or ship beams. Dreamers speaking unknown names.
Containment Risk	High. Spores may remain dormant in lungs for weeks. Emotional triggers can activate contamination post-mission.
Engagement Advice	Use sealed breathing apparatus when diving in known infestation zones. Do not speak aloud names of the dead. After exposure, isolate for 48 hours and record all dreams. If your voice begins to change, or you speak memories that are not your own—report to containment for fungal resonance extraction.

“He said my brother’s name. The one he never knew.
Then he told me what I said at the funeral—word for word.
He’s never met me before. He cried afterward and asked me what my brother looked like.
I couldn’t answer. I was too busy trying to breathe.”
—Transcript, FDG Quarantine Interview #44-B, Subject S. Patel