sabinati wrote:it'd be nice to have fungiculture as a separate industry from horticulture/gardening. maybe different growing mediums in combination with the different locations could produce different mushroom types? irl mushrooms can grow in hay, humus, wood choppings, drilled logs, and probably some other places i don't recall, the point being that different ones do better in different mediums.
Very much so. I took a mycology course in university. Pine Mushrooms (endemic to west coast NA and asia, although cousin varieties) grow on rotting logs. Button mushrooms grow on manure (Only from asia though). The Psilocibin (the hallucinogenic one) grows on rotting grass, or moist hay I'd presume. These are native to the east coast of canada and probably some of the northern united states. Button mushrooms are non-native, but grow on manure. Wood rotters, Manure rotters, vegetation rotters. You won't typically see "meat rotters" because bacteria are faster growing. Mushrooms are better at decomposition, but slower to grow. So they tend to break down harder materials like plant cellulose, while bacteria gobble up the nutrient rich meats. This is also why fungal diseases are much less frequent than bacterial ones, they're slow growing compared to our immune system.
Anyway, I whole-heartedly agree that there's plenty of depth available to create a sub section of agriculture based off this. Three base materials (humus, hay, wood chips), and three different locations (inside, outside, mine) to play with. Futhermore I'd absolutely love to see a mushroom based curse/hex that causes a mushroom to grow ontop of the pilgrims head, knocking their hat into their inventory or onto the cursor when it grows. Picking the shroom off would fund numen to the cursing witch, but another shroom would grow back eventually unless the curse/hex was removed.
Personally I would wear it as the height of Pilgrim fashion. And naturally some mushrooms would be poisonous and of no apparent use to any pilgrim without a cauldron and a broom *coughs*.
It's been neat to see the evolution of a game. Salem has come so far, and still has far to go. Although frustrating, I think it's been an experience worth the effort.