In the deep forests of Dominaria there’s new growth. A forgotten species feels change before anyone—or anything—else. Before the humans and elves, goblins or giants. Before the trees and birds. Spores strewn across every plane are the first to sense what’s coming. Already some gather in a skyship to form an agent. It’ll be called Slimefoot and become part of the crew. Live as the humans, angels, vampires, and Planeswalkers do. Travel with them, explore, and learn.

On the other planes there are stirrings. Something is coming. Some great change. There’s a dragon at the center of it. But when isn’t there a dragon at the heart of change? I’ve seen them, big and ugly—usually—and so full of themselves. It’s hard to decide what’s more appalling, their hubris or fire. We spores know better than to think we’re all there is. We’re only a piece of the greater whole.

They call me a sporecrown. It sounds important in the simple languages of the bipedal species. It’s the word ‘crown’ they get hung up on. But this thallid is no more special than an individual spore. Only a collection of spores and every spore a collection itself. Gathered memories, tastes, ideas, and experiences. If studied at Tolaria West the scholars might conclude that a sporecrown is like a human brain, and they would be as right as wrong. They would say “It’s like a brain and rest are like limbs, a toe or ear, not quite as vital.” But that’s where they’d be wrong. It’s all vital. It’s all the same thing, just a different view.

Instead of thinking of a sporecrown as a brain, consider it a museum. A museum without a collection of art, displays, and exhibits is nothing more than an empty building. A sporecrown is a home for spores. With a sporecrown the fungi are stronger.

This one wanders the forests of Dominaria tending new growth. It lifts the cap of a mushroom, sprinkles nourishment near the stem, and moves on. A saproling wanders up to the me, jumps on my back, moves to my shoulder. Soon there’s a trail of saprolings following me. They double in size in my presence, glad to be nurtured.

Today I’m a sporecrown—tomorrow? Maybe a man, maybe cosmic dust, maybe a mushroom in a pan being cooked for dinner. Where I am changes, but what I am does not. Oh, how often the two get confused. It’s something I find amusing.