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Hello friends!
It's finally that moment of the month: all the sculpts are ready, all of them have been tested, many have already been painted, and the video trailer is finally done!
We invite you to watch the trailer for the upcoming collection: The Fungal Court!
I've wanted to make a set of fungal creatures and myconoids for quite a long time.
I still remember playing Shadows of Amn as a kid, descending into the depths of the sewers and encountering huge bipedal fungi casting Confusion on my party and hitting incredibly hard. They were a real nightmare! Those are the kinds of encounters that stay with you, and for years I wanted to create fungal creatures of my own to populate the undergrowth of the Forest of Arba.
The Fungal Warriors of the Court have bodies protected by thick, fleshy fungal growths, often covered with smaller mushrooms and hanging spore sacs. They wield weapons formed from hardened mycelium and live in symbiosis with gigantic ants, red in our version, or whatever color you decide to paint them :)
They embody the natural cycle of decay and rebirth, recycling what dies within the forest and fiercely defending the hidden territories where their colonies grow.
With those large circular fungal caps, I thought one of the named characters would be especially interesting if he resembled an impossibly tall wandering knight armed with a Zweihander. Vaguely reminiscent of Don Quixote and with noble attitudes, Sir Lepioth quickly became one of my favorite characters of the month to design and sculpt.
I imagine him wandering the borders of the Court, following what he believes to be the customs of honorable knights: spotting another fighter from afar, offering a solemn bow, and then approaching to begin a deadly duel.
The Fungal Court cannot communicate with humans in any recognizable way, so nobody truly knows what Lepioth believes. He seems to have pieced together his idea of knighthood from abandoned books, weapons, armor and the remains of knights lost in Arba, and apparently decided that he had understood the whole thing perfectly.
Especially when creating a completely new species, I like to start from the basics: a warrior hero and a caster are usually a great foundation.
Sparassus is a psionic druid and master of Oozes.
The community has asked for slimes and oozes many times, and this felt like the perfect opportunity to finally give you a couple of them as extras included with the hero, while also making them canonical creatures within Mundus. I hope you enjoy them!
Within the Fungal Court ecosystem, Oozes play a very important role. They are cultivated as symbiotic organisms capable of dissolving dead creatures, carrion and other organic matter, breaking it down into nutrients that can then be absorbed by the surrounding fungal colonies. Of course, when enemies enter their territory, those same digestive properties become extremely useful in battle.
When I was scratching my head trying to decide what the cavalry should be this month, Ani (@Anima on Discord) suggested giant ants.
I thought it was a fantastic idea, and I'm really happy I had the chance to sculpt something inspired by her suggestion. I hope you like them!
Useful both as monsters for RPG encounters and as beasts or mounts for wargames, the Giant Ants are a great addition to our growing creature collection. As always, the saddles are compatible with practically everything in our catalog, and the ants are provided both with and without saddles ;)
I also hope you enjoy Amanita, the Fungal Dryad, and the colossal Bolethar, Fungal Titan.
Bolethar in particular was a real challenge in ZBrush. He took several days of sculpting and caused more than a few headaches during post production, especially while decimating and exporting the final STL files without losing all those tiny details. ZBrush crashed dozens of times before I finally managed to tame the beast :)
I can't wait to see what you create with the Fungal Court when the collection arrives during the first days of November, generally around November 2.
Cheers!
Andrea
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