The Rhizoma
The Rhizoma is an ancient generation ship originally commissioned to transport 5,000 settlers in cryo-stasis. An unexpected solar flare destroyed the ship’s command and control systems, resulting in the demise of its passengers and leaving the ship as a floating wreck.
Centuries later, the ship was salvaged and sold to the Mycelial Fellowship, who converted it into a mobile nursery and bio-lab and renamed it the Rhizoma. The ship’s intact archives of plant and animal DNA allowed the Fellowship to tailor their greatest creation, the Cassarot Fungus, to interface and take control of common genotypes of flora & fauna used in planetary colonization.
The Rhizoma has been marked for immediate destruction by several planetary governments, while multiple colonies have posted substantial bounties for its capture. Attempts at boarding or capturing the ship have been thwarted by the Fellowship’s use of bio-engineered fungal spores, which are capable of degrading zeoform armor, inducing hallucinations, and even causing respiratory failure.
