Spore-Lung

At a glance: Mycelial Spore Host area-denial unit · anchors, inflates, and coughs corrosive spore-fog that hides and softens a lane · not a Choir repeater; sever it and the cloud keeps drifting feral · counter is airflow, fire, and starvation · appears in Deadlane / Scourge-Survivors / Rothulk.

The first sign is not a roar. It is the floor breathing.

A Spore-Lung is what the Scourge grows when it does not need another claw yet. It needs a room made worse. It needs a lane made blind. It needs defenders coughing through ash while the real wave crosses the distance. The Lung crawls until it finds a choke, bolts itself down with wet root-hooks, and begins to inhale through every corpse, crack, and drain around it. Then it coughs the ground full of green.

It is not a Chorister. It is not a Cantor. A Spore-Lung carries no Choir node and does not make the horde smarter. The fog it makes is physical: spores, acid mist, host-seed grit, and mycelial dust thick enough to taste through a mask. While a nearby repeater is singing, connected Scourge use that cover with perfect timing. Cut the repeater and the local swarm goes feral like CANON says it should, but the fog remains. Blind bodies are still bodies. Acid still eats metal. Need does not stop just because nobody is thinking clearly.

That is why line crews hate it more than louder things. A Swarm-Spitter announces itself with a shot. A Render gives you the courtesy of charging. A Spore-Lung turns the fight into bad air and waits for you to spend the mistake. Wardens call it a softener. The Pyre call it a confession: every breath inside a breach belongs to the parasite unless you burn it first.

Behaviour

• Crawl, anchor, bloom. Moves slowly on root-hooks until it reaches a chokepoint, corpse pile, vent shaft, or breach-room corner. Once anchored, it inflates and mostly stops moving; forcing it to relocate collapses the bloom and buys time.
• Vents spore-fog, not signal. The cloud blocks sight, corrodes exposed metal and flesh, and seeds the ground with blind host matter. It does not extend the Choir by itself. A nearby Chorister, Cantor, or other relay is still required for coordinated Scourge behaviour.
• Makes connected waves feel crueler. While the Choir is intact, units inside the fog pre-aim exits, herd defenders into bad angles, and time pushes to the Lung’s cough cycle. Kill the relay and that coordination breaks; the cloud becomes a dumb hazard instead of a smart one.
• Feeds on available host matter. It thickens fastest around fresh dead, old gristle, and damp breach growth. Fire, cautery, sealed drains, and corpse denial starve it. This is the starvation prong of CANON section 6 made small and ugly.
• Direct attack: pressure cough. When threatened, the Lung compresses both sacs and blasts a short cone of acid mist that staggers close targets and coats the ground in a slick patch.
• Death can bloom wrong. Popping the sacs carelessly vents one last cloud. Burning the intake crown or rupturing the root-heart first cauterizes the bloom and leaves only ash.

Gameplay Read

• A medium area-denial target, not a duelist and not a relay. The player should read it as “this room or lane is about to become expensive to stand in.”
• Telegraph: the Lung stops, digs in, ribs spread, and both sacs draw tight before the cough. The fog pools low first, then climbs. There is a clear window to kill it before the bloom fills the space.
• Counter-play is environmental as much as ballistic: open airflow, burn corpse piles, shoot intake sacs before full pressure, or force it to uproot by breaking the anchor.
• Differentiation: unlike Swarm-Spitter, it does not aim a projectile; unlike Gristle-Vat, it does not feed the front long-term; unlike Chorister, it does not coordinate anything. It makes terrain hostile long enough for other Scourge to matter more.

Visual Motifs

• A squat Mycelial Spore Host grown into twin lung-sacs: two swollen bellows of translucent host membrane strapped in black chitin ribs and stolen bone.
• A wet intake crown on top, like a ring of open throats, pulling ash and corpse-dust inward before each cough. This is the weak point and the clearest “shoot here” answer.
• Root-hooks punched into the floor, vents, bodies, and broken machines, reading as intake lines rather than communication lines.
• Toxic-green spore slurry glowing inside the sacs, brightest at full pressure. The color is parasite matter, not clean energy.
• Rupture seams weeping acid mist; fungal fibers and raw tendon tying the bellows to a low dragging body underneath.

Sprite Brief

• Views: front, side, back.
• Silhouette must read as low, anchored, and double-lunged: two inflated sacs above root-hooks, instantly distinct from the tall relay-mast Chorister and the swollen stomach-body Gristle-Vat.
• Bloom state: sacs stretched tight, intake crown open, fog spilling low around the base.
• Cauterized death state: crown burned shut, sacs collapsed inward, roots blackened so the kill reads as clean denial instead of a burst.
• Must stay readable in Deadlane’s high camera and Scourge-Survivors / Rothulk close or side framing.

Art Master

• Status: v02 candidate master attached for review. Strong anchored double-lung read; runtime set still needs bloom and cauterized-death variants.
• Art master index: Scourge Foe Art Masters

Prompt Seed

Scourge medium area-denial creature, mycelial spore host grown into twin swollen lung-sacs of translucent host membrane strapped in black chitin ribs and stolen bone, wet intake crown of open throats on top as the weak point, root-hooks punched into floor bodies and broken machines, toxic-green spore slurry glowing inside the sacs, low anchored dragging body underneath, acid mist and spore-fog venting from rupture seams, blood and rust and gunmetal, DOOM-like heavy shadows, no neon.

Appears In

• Deadlane - a lane softener that blooms inside a chokepoint before the main wave arrives; Wardens decide whether to spend tower fire on the Lung now or fight the push through bad air later.
• Scourge-Survivors - a breach-room pressure unit in Perdition; the lone Pyre Purger has to burn the bloom or fight blind while the swarm uses the fog.
• Rothulk - living ventilation hazards inside the hulk’s organs; breaking anchors changes airflow, clears a platform route, and starves the Lung before it can fill the chamber again.