Female Hatchling
Name: unnamed
Species: Turmeric Jellycap
Birthday: Monday, May 20, 2019
Owner: WerewolfGuinn
Element: Neutral
Young jellycaps are among the easiest creatures to care for; provide one with a moist, dark environment and an old vegetable, and it will thrive. The mushrooms move slowly and act much like plants most of the time, seldom moving and growing very gradually. Even from a young age, though, they show off their vibrant colors. Turmeric jellycaps are bright orange with the males sporting blue caps, cupric caps are green, and indigo caps range from blue to purple. All grow their mushroom fruits just a few days after hatching, and most individuals also develop the hard buds that eventually exude their famous jelly.
Jellycaps are unusual fungi that have fruiting mushroom bodies throughout their lives. They can grow in any dark, warm environments, but are most well-known from deep caves in the Mountains of Me'chuan. There, they can grow up to a foot in diameter and will even gradually wander across the cave floor with their tentacle-like mycelia. Like other fungi, they're detrivores, feeding primarily on dead, rotting materials from inside the cave. However, the larger individuals often struggle to find sufficient nutrients even with their increased mobility relative to other fungi. When food is scarce, jellycaps will invest their resources to create the gelatinous masses that give them their name. These sticky structures form all over the mushroom and exude a powerful odor intended to attract bats, insects, and other cave-dwellers to the fungi. When the unsuspecting prey try to eat the gelatinous globs, they get stuck and their bodies are enveloped by the hungry fungi.
Sprite art: DarrkestDrow (hatchling) | Description: PKGriffin