Woodland Men

Like Super Mutants and a lot of FEV mutates, they don’t age but after 100 years they eventually develop into full fledged trees. A highly hallucinogenic form of the FEV virus is hosted in those little mushrooms, and when a human is infected with it, it comes with a drugged effect and the skin hardens into a weird sort of bark texture. Fingers and toes will fall off, the skin develops into a green-brown color, and the victim becomes heavily lethargic. Early stages of the virus just appear to be dark green colored ghouls, but they are definitely not ghouls. Villages of them live in the bayous of Louisiana and they live fairly isolated, lead by the trees.

While they have a sentience and a clear human intelligence, these mutations just seem to make a person less and less aggressive. That said, these guys generally aren’t dangerous if you keep your distance from their spores, perhaps wearing a protective suit around them does just as well, the lethargic behavior doesn’t seem to wear off fully… Maybe they get high off their own parasites.