Leeds Moss
It was growing on something in the tunnels beneath the Leeds estate when Mary Leeds found it. She never identified the creature it was attached to, and the journals offer no further description of the tunnels or their contents beyond what was necessary for her work. The moss was a tool. She treated it as such.
Leeds Moss is a parasitic organism that bonds with living and dead tissue, facilitating biological modifications that psionic fleshcrafting alone cannot achieve. In the hands of Mother Leeds, it served as the primary catalyst for the creation of the thirteen Leeds Cryptids, applied in quantities ranging from thirteen percent of available stock for minor procedures to the entire supply for the most intensive transformations. The moss enables grafting of foreign tissue, structural bone modification, organ creation, and exoskeletal hardening. How it accomplishes these feats is not understood. That it accomplishes them is documented in meticulous, if disturbing, detail.
During the modification of the second son, a Retrograde named Samuel, the moss mutated. Exposure to the sustained radiation of his body produced a variant that Mary dubbed Blood Moss, which grows more readily on blood than on inert tissue. She used the mutated strain for all subsequent procedures.
The moss can be hardened into a form of biological armor, as demonstrated during the creation of Mantis Boy's exoskeleton. It can be cultivated and its growth directed through careful management. It requires biological material to sustain itself and shows no particular loyalty to whose flesh it consumes. After Mother Leeds' disappearance, the moss flooded the living quarters of the estate. The transcriber John Bastille lists this detail among the possible explanations for her fate, noting that a substance indifferent to the identity of its host would not distinguish between its cultivator and any other source of tissue.
The question Bastille leaves unanswered, and the one that should concern anyone aware of the moss's existence, is whether the tunnels beneath the Leeds estate are its only habitat. Mary did not create the moss. She found it. Whatever it was growing on before she arrived is still down there, or was, and the tunnels have not been fully explored by anyone who reported back.
Leeds Moss is a parasitic organism that bonds with living and dead tissue, facilitating biological modifications that psionic fleshcrafting alone cannot achieve. In the hands of Mother Leeds, it served as the primary catalyst for the creation of the thirteen Leeds Cryptids, applied in quantities ranging from thirteen percent of available stock for minor procedures to the entire supply for the most intensive transformations. The moss enables grafting of foreign tissue, structural bone modification, organ creation, and exoskeletal hardening. How it accomplishes these feats is not understood. That it accomplishes them is documented in meticulous, if disturbing, detail.
During the modification of the second son, a Retrograde named Samuel, the moss mutated. Exposure to the sustained radiation of his body produced a variant that Mary dubbed Blood Moss, which grows more readily on blood than on inert tissue. She used the mutated strain for all subsequent procedures.
The moss can be hardened into a form of biological armor, as demonstrated during the creation of Mantis Boy's exoskeleton. It can be cultivated and its growth directed through careful management. It requires biological material to sustain itself and shows no particular loyalty to whose flesh it consumes. After Mother Leeds' disappearance, the moss flooded the living quarters of the estate. The transcriber John Bastille lists this detail among the possible explanations for her fate, noting that a substance indifferent to the identity of its host would not distinguish between its cultivator and any other source of tissue.
The question Bastille leaves unanswered, and the one that should concern anyone aware of the moss's existence, is whether the tunnels beneath the Leeds estate are its only habitat. Mary did not create the moss. She found it. Whatever it was growing on before she arrived is still down there, or was, and the tunnels have not been fully explored by anyone who reported back.
