Mesoxylon

-a gardener on one of the Empire’s spaceships
- when the ship crashed, he was infected by the fungal colony he was cultivating (a side project of his, taken off an alien planet)
- spent several hours drifting through space before another ship found him
- technically dead, but the fungus animates him so convincingly it’s almost impossible to tell (even for him)
-doesn’t actually know what happened during the crash; currently trying to work out he survived
-has a secret garden of alien fungus the colony animating him compels him to grow; otherwise it lets him act independently
-has always been rather shy, and the ship crash/infection made him even more so

-the colony is intelligent, but not very: it’s mostly concerned with propagating, and lets Meso remain himself because it’s intrigued by the fact that the body it’s occupying is moving and thinking on its own
-it is, however, quite interested in Meso’s ability to cooperate with other dragons for things like food and shelter, and is trying to figure out how to do such things itself

M E S O X Y L O N O C C U P A T I O N ╭━━━━━━━━╮ STR █████░░░░░░░ INT ████████░░░░ AGI ██████░░░░░░ MAG ██████░░░░░░ CHA █████░░░░░░░ VIT ████░░░░░░░░ ╰━━━━━━━━╯ M U S I C x | x | x | x x | x | x

╭━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╮ The ship was well stocked: supplies and fuel — enough for a long journey — an expansive hold, large enough for all the projects he could ever hope to cultivate. It was big, and shiny, everything he could ever hope for, and Meso, young and ambitious in spite of his fear, felt the whole world spread before him. It had started as a simple hobby. Meso had found solace in plants, when the world was wide and full of strangeness, and he was just someone, always too shy to take the first step and not certain he even wanted to. The bloom of huol flowers, the tangled leaves of the nuvac fern, seemed so simple to him, so uncomplicatedly beautiful. They would always be there for him, and he for them. And so, when the time came and the stars beckoned him, he took a job as a botanist on a small, run-down spacecraft that looked as though it had been flying longer than he had been alive. It was not fun. But Meso found he had a head for these things, and he came away relatively unscathed, with the unanticipated respect of the crew and a pouch full of rare Dumisan seeds. Two weeks later he set out again — this time with a bigger ship and a better crew. And then another. Sit wisi ipsum nullam vitae et omnis nunc. Felis et rutrum in. Hendrerit ducimus est est. Amet condimentum praesent integer. Nibh sed suspendisse risus. Volutpat eu urna euismod vel gravida tortor atque. Vehicula aliquam interdum hendrerit. Quam metus erat scelerisque. Elit elit justo accumsan. Hac integer in urna varius id tincidunt sed vel iaculis quis ac. Eu sed mauris maecenas pretium tellus platea dignissim commodo lectus est a. bio by author

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╭━━━━━━━━╮ C H A R G E ╰━━━━━━━━╯

Sit wisi ipsum nullam vitae et omnis nunc. Felis et rutrum in. Hendrerit ducimus est est. Amet condimentum praesent integer. Nibh sed suspendisse risus. Volutpat eu urna euismod vel gravida tortor atque. Vehicula aliquam interdum hendrerit. Quam metus erat scelerisque. Elit elit justo accumsan. Hac integer in urna varius id tincidunt sed vel iaculis quis ac. Eu sed mauris maecenas pretium tellus platea dignissim commodo lectus est a.

╭━━━━━━━━╮ A K I R R I ╰━━━━━━━━╯

Sit wisi ipsum nullam vitae et omnis nunc. Felis et rutrum in. Hendrerit ducimus est est. Amet condimentum praesent integer. Nibh sed suspendisse risus. Volutpat eu urna euismod vel gravida tortor atque. Vehicula aliquam interdum hendrerit. Quam metus erat scelerisque. Elit elit justo accumsan. Hac integer in urna varius id tincidunt sed vel iaculis quis ac. Eu sed mauris maecenas pretium tellus platea dignissim commodo lectus est a.

╭━━━━━━━━╮ H I M ╰━━━━━━━━╯

I-I don’t know what I did, but this guy keeps staring at me. I can’t shake this feeling that I’m being… stalked? It’s really… I’m thankful he’s Magi, I don’t know WHAT I’d do if he was here all the time, but I swear, he keeps coming up with excuses to come down and look at me. M-maybe I’m just imagining things? I probably am. It’d be too crazy otherwise. Right?

Mesoxylon’s corner of the gardens is the most orderly. Organized plots with pathways between them, some large enough for an Imperial, some (though not really paths) small enough for a Fae. All fairly standard fare, the sort of thing you’d expect from anywhere with a reasonably experienced gardener. Where this garden really stands out, however, is the plants contained within. Carnivorous Fae-eaters share space with seething magma bushes, confusing revenant-blooms, underwater tideflowers, and countless more. A glass dome contains several varieties of floating plant life native to Wind territories, and an entire corner of the garden is dedicated to cultivating every one of Sornieth’s toxic plants. The space is full of the exotic, the unexpected, and the strange, carefully gathered from every corner of the world for the enjoyment of all.
It’s an ambitious project, and in the glamor of it all it becomes easy to forget that a single corner of the garden remains untended, full of trees and overgrown with bramble. Here, unbeknownst to even Meso, the true wonder grows: a colony of alien mushrooms that can overtake a dragon’s mind or recreate it after death.

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