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Old 03-23-2021, 02:55 PM   #11
Black Leviathan
 
Join Date: Sep 2018
Default Re: [Magic] Underground mushroom farming enabled by Purify Earth

My assumption based on the spell description would be that it removes fungus or even sprouting seeds from the soil, but it could be used to prep soil for planting. You could Purify earth, spread mushroom starters, then periodically go back and cast Essential Earth to power the growth.
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Old 03-24-2021, 12:36 AM   #12
Inky
 
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Default Re: [Magic] Underground mushroom farming enabled by Purify Earth

The glitch there is that, as other posters have mentioned, fungi *don't* actually live off nutrients in the soil in the same way that true plants do. They feed off dead plant and animal matter in the soil, as if they were eating it. (From that perspective, it makes more sense that in some ways their chemical composition is more like animal tissue than plant tissue - their metabolism is more like animals' than plants'. In some respects, fungi are plants made of animal.) That's why they don't need light - the dead plant and animal matter is their fuel supply, providing energy.

Purify Earth and Essential Earth are supposed to provide all the nutrients that ordinary plants need, but would they also provide organic matter suitable for fuel for fungi? I don't know. They might, they might not. It's a quite different problem from feeding a true plant, and if the wizard who invented the spell hadn't had mushroom-growing in mind, it might well not include that.

(From that point of view, Tyneras's suggestion of Create Fuel (wood) is more elegant than I thought it was at first. That is what you're using it for!)
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Old 03-24-2021, 04:46 AM   #13
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Default Re: [Magic] Underground mushroom farming enabled by Purify Earth

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Originally Posted by Michael Thayne View Post
A possible solution is the Purify Earth spell, which among other things, "remedies any deficiencies in the soil’s composition."
If Purify Earth can selectively sterilize soil to remove all microorganisms and impurities from soil, except for the ones you want, it would be a massive aid to starting mushroom cultures and keeping delicate mycelium from getting overrun by pathogens.

Even if it doesn't allow selective sterilization, it's still a great way to make masses of sterile high quality growth media for whatever it is you're trying to grow.

Mushrooms are just the fruiting bodies of a fungus; most of the fungal structure - the mycelium - is buried in the ground (or whatever it's growing in), sometimes extending for yards or even miles from the above-ground bits you can see.

Cultured mushrooms are grown on a variety of media, ranging from solid wood, to sawdust, to brown rice, to manure. The common theme is that the growth media has to be absolutely sterile for the mycelium culture to get a head start against competing organisms.

Whether it's plants or fungi, a farmer mage will be using Shape Earth, Stone to Earth, and Purify Earth on a regular basis. For your average Underdark mushroom farmer the drill goes like this:

1) Stone to Earth to turn rock into soil. Use Shape Earth to move it where you want it.

2) Put your newly created and moved soil into airtight containers covered with something soft but airtight, like wax or self-healing plastic. (Or, maybe just a variation of Shape Air which provides an airtight seal.)

3) Cast Purify Earth on the sealed containers to guarantee a sterile culture and to manipulate the growth media as desired for the species of fungus you're starting.

By default, this should include whatever organic matter the fungus needs to grow, since complete fertilizer for autotrophic plants also includes large amounts of organic material (e.g., carbon from manure, peat, or leaf mulch, as well as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and other fertilizer nutrients derived from the magical equivalent of blood or seed meal if you want to be an Certified Organic Earth Mage). It can also include various species of complementary soil fungi (e.g., mycorrhizae) and and bacteria (e.g., nitrogen fixing bacteria).

4) Inoculate the sealed jars with pure mycelium culture using spells (Create Plant or fungal equivalent) or just a sterilized syringe or lancet and culture purified by boring mundane means.

5) Cast Plant Growth or the fungal equivalent to speed mycelium growth (1 month of growth should be enough to get most varieties of mushrooms from a few cells of innoculant to a well-developed culture which is well on its way to fruiting).

6) Cast some combination of Plant Growth, Blossom, and/or Bless Plants, or the fungal equivalents, to make mushrooms develop from the mycelium.

7) Harvest.

8) Cast Purify Soil to replenish the vital elements in the growth media and repeat steps 5-7 as needed.

For species of mushrooms which require wood to grow, substitute Create Fuel for Stone to Earth to get the species of wood you need, then cast Shape Wood to get it softened, drilled, etc. for inoculation. Cast Remove Contagion to get rid of any pathogens on or in the wood. Then perform Steps 4-7 as needed.

Given a couple of Power Stones and sufficient skill levels to reduce the cost of the Blossom and Plant Growth spells to just 1-2 points per casting, a minimally competent mage could repeat this process dozens of times a day.

Yields of edible mushrooms wouldn't be that huge if you're just affecting 1 square yard of material at a time, but you could quickly make thousands of dollars worth of hallucinogenic or premium edible mushrooms (e.g., peyote, psilocybin, or black truffles).

Get decent ceremonial casting circle together and you can make the process happen on a mass scale, including repeated castings of Plant Growth to make mushrooms grow to ridiculous sizes.

Last edited by Pursuivant; 03-24-2021 at 04:54 AM.
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Old 03-24-2021, 06:36 AM   #14
Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2
 
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Default Re: [Magic] Underground mushroom farming enabled by Purify Earth

Underground dwellers also need water, and would put communities near underground rivers. Those river would carry sediments and nutrients from above the ground and the riverbeds would be rich in nutrients, just like above ground. Those would be the most probable source of mushroom-growing soil.

From there the use of Essential Earth would triple the soil's fertility. Purify Earth would be a good precaution, but not strictly necessary.
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Old 03-24-2021, 06:48 PM   #15
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Default Re: [Magic] Underground mushroom farming enabled by Purify Earth

If it helps here is write up I did on Dwarven Agriculture.

http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...&postcount=205
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Old 03-25-2021, 01:18 AM   #16
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Default Re: [Magic] Underground mushroom farming enabled by Purify Earth

I would think that you should get quite a bit of "organic matter" for the fungi to live off of via the waste products of the city (well, the people who live in the city). In fact, their waste management systems might be built specifically to transport their waste to where the fungi are grown; the fungi would actually act as part of their waste treatment system.



Also, with Light spells, the Dwarves aren't limited to grown-in-the-dark mushrooms; they could grow normal plants as well, as long as the Continual Light spells are maintained. Or Continual Sunlight.
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Old 03-25-2021, 01:28 AM   #17
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Default Re: [Magic] Underground mushroom farming enabled by Purify Earth

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Originally Posted by StevenH View Post
I would think that you should get quite a bit of "organic matter" for the fungi to live off of via the waste products of the city (well, the people who live in the city).
Relative to the amount you actually need, you don't get much.
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Old 03-25-2021, 09:29 AM   #18
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Default Re: [Magic] Underground mushroom farming enabled by Purify Earth

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Originally Posted by thrash View Post
Dead adventurers (and much of their gear) count as biomass. Maybe the whole "dungeon" thing is an evolutionary adaptation by underground fungus to bring in more nutrients. The underground dwelling sapient species are symbionts, increasing the nutrient supply in return for harvesting part of the results.
Fungi extract useless minerals like gold silver and copper from their surroundings, aggregate them into chunks and expel them in places dangerous to greedy bipeds. Those bipeds that die fertilize the mushroom field, those that collect the useless metal also carry out spores, which then go on to colonize other caves.

I love it!
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Old 03-25-2021, 09:39 AM   #19
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Default Re: [Magic] Underground mushroom farming enabled by Purify Earth

It really only needs to look like treasure. So maybe the fungi manufacture fool's gold.
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Old 03-25-2021, 12:20 PM   #20
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Default Re: [Magic] Underground mushroom farming enabled by Purify Earth

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Originally Posted by Anders View Post
It really only needs to look like treasure. So maybe the fungi manufacture fool's gold.
Making the potential relationship benefits one way only means the fungi in question get doused with Alchemist's Fire and/or the adventurers go away and don't come back.
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