Effugia: The Bolligo

This nasty little creature is called a Bolligo. It may take a while, but this thing can travel great distances through space by clinging to meteors, asteroids, ship hulls/wreckage and other space debris in the form of dry, dormant fungal dust. It’s got plenty of time on its tentacles, though, because it can live for thousands of years and is harder to kill than Steven Seagal.

Upon finding a source of moisture, it will reconstitute itself into the slimy, betentacled mushroom-like creature I’ve so crudely sketched and presented here.

Besides the eyeballs protruding from its head in every direction, enabling its unique 4D vision, thousands of tiny “mouths” cover the creature’s entire surface. These draw moisture from the air and any water-containing objects in its vicinity—including humans, which it finds particularly tasty.

What can you expect if you encounter one? Well, first comes the itch—far more severe than the one you get from poison ivy. That’s your skin drying out.

You’ll be unable to resist scratching as your epidermis splits like a bratwurst casing over an open flame. Eventually, you’ll turn into human jerky, and you’d think that would be bad enough, but it’s not through with you just yet.

What else could it possibly want from you? Why, your bone marrow, of course.

Your chances of a one-on-one encounter with a bolligo are slim to nil, however. Sure, you might run across one on the wreckage of a ship adrift in space, but how often do you explore spaceship wreckage? Probably not often.

One might hitch a ride on a ship you’re traveling aboard. Since most spaceports screen for them nowadays, though, they’ll likely catch it before it reforms. Of course, you’ll be out of a ship, because intercolonial law demands the immediate destruction of any such contaminated vessel.

Why? Let’s say one of these bad boys hitches a ride on a ship or meteorite headed your planet’s way. As soon as it hits the atmosphere, it will reconstitute itself, and then it will reproduce. The bolligo that spring from its spores will then reproduce as well, and so on and so on, until you’ve got a planet full of these little moisture vampires. Don’t worry, though, they won’t stay long—just until everything’s dead and desiccated.

Despite all of this, Bolligo are extremely rare, so most folks have no cause for alarm.

Unfortunately for a few unfortunate souls trespassing on a Kadallian mining facility in the Strigo asteroid belt, this was not the case. They very much had cause for alarm, and since they’re dead and no longer able to warn others, that task now falls upon me.

Learn more very soon in Exitium, the upcoming third book of the Kryuss Trilogy.

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