[The Mycology Chronicles]

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Mushroom Cult
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[The Mycology Chronicles]

Postby Mushroom Cult » Tue Jan 24, 2017 1:38 am

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        • Questions of Mycology, Spiritual Vivication, and Exploration in the Wilds of Impiltur
                    • by Callalily
Editor's Note: This bound collection of tales, misadventures, drawings, and nonsense remains ever of questionable content and all the more, it is with our understanding that those of reasonable and sound mind may find the ramblings of an addled witch too much for simple and sweet sentiments. Often at times we will step away from these writings to consider our own observation of the witch as she attempts to understand and join with the wilds of this land so far removed of her home in Rashemen. My time with her was one of joyous occasions but often these times were painted by tragedy and mistakes that would make the girl stronger for all of her misgivings. Although the madness is near palpable for those she deems necessary to associate with, I find the best remedy for that is continued experience. Readers, you have been warned. A final note before you depart within these pages of her journey into Impiltur: The Horned One blesses all who seek to do for themselves and triumph in the face of chaos and stagnation.

Yours and Forever,
Eda Nye

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I. [The Mycology Chronicles] - Pilleus Indigo

Postby Mushroom Cult » Tue Jan 24, 2017 2:18 am

Origin: Unknown
Shape: Ovate
Edible: Yes
Psychoactive: Definitely
Common Name(s): Blue Cap, Dreamer's Fortune, Indigo Harmony
Distinguishing Characteristic: Bright Blue, Cap Approximately the Size of a Halanth Coin, White Stem
Terrain(s): Marshland, Shallow Caves and Caverns, Wetland Forests

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When we first arrived before the city of Sarshel, I had to admit to Asheheart that I had never seen anything like it. Of course we all heard stories of cities of stone and buildings adorned by high towers. These might have also had a great more to deal with the Red Wizards of Thay and for it, my initial reaction was total displeasure. Winter was brandishing all of its might against the people who lived in the city in ways I feared they were incapable of understanding or experiencing. Although I never got to hear of the cause of this winter, the few who would speak with me outside the city gates told me of the agony that their kingdom suffered from with the death of their king and worse yet, that the land itself was locked to some perpetual coldness and blight by a source unknown. Even then, I knew we would be better off remaining in the small town miles away in Outentown. I spared Sarshel interest if only for the small crows that flocked there. I watched the strange sight of women and men hissing at the black birds for the ill-omens they presented. Little did they know the half of what dark things were waiting for them in the week-cycles to come.

Travelling with Edanye otherwise known as the Horned One and the Goat of Many Tales and Faces, has been the most rewarding of all of my experiences. Not that I am against knowing the warrior Asheheart who has joined me "indefinitely" as he claims... but there is something to the stories this goat speaks of that make me feel that I can overcome most anything. He tells me stories of the Ringdwellers who battled the Black Void to no avail. He told me of wars being waged in the shadows of this great Ring of a city even more collosol than that of Sarshel. Edanye tells me that in order to succeed we have to aspire to be more than who we were yesterday while understanding there is a necessary order to both life, death, and matters of the unknown. I'd like to believe that but my world has always been full of what most would think random and as the goat proclaims "chaotic nonsense". Opening oneself to the world around them, even as scary as it may be in coming to a strange and dormant place of deep cold as Sarshel, is bravery in itself. At least, that is what I told myself when I agreed to seek out the spirits hidden away in all of these wilds.

There's a trick, of course. There's always a trick if you remember that things are never all that linear when it comes to speaking with spirits or trees or just gaining the courage to tell your goat that he doesn't actually know everything. That little trick in our case came in the form of the Blue Cap. The Blue Cap is a small mushroom I've discovered in wandering the lands surrounding Outentown and within the shallow caverns usually beset by spiders or massive beetles. (Note: Spiders and Beetles will not converse with you no matter how much you try to consider that they would be excellent mounts for harvesting tall-reaching cave fungi. They will not listen. Don't forget that and make the same mistakes twice!) Anyway, the Blue Cap is known for its dream like properties and can be ground and blended into teas and even salves to be applied directly to the skin with certain oils and fruit juice. I have best experienced eating the cap directly even for its obscenely bitter taste. The stem must be removed prior to consumption as it is even more bitter and tastes dry with dirt and general unpleasantness.

Once eaten, the Blue Cap will allow the mind to open and wander. Colors will become more vivid when experienced during the night hours but no true strain on vision has been found. As of now, I have taken the Blue Cap with me before sleeping under the trees here. Even in this frozen place, the trees whisper as spirits might of things to come. But you must remember, unlike the river and storm, the spirits of trees speak very, very, very slowly. The Blue Cap can make better sense when eaten and the witch (or anyone, really - I think trees are great listeners even if you are not Wychlaran) may open their mind to listen to trees like the ones found in this land. I promised myself I would keep an open mind in understanding that spirits are not so loud as they are in Rashemen where they are felt and known most everywhere. But for my first, anxious arrival outside of Outentown and across the beautiful statue of Bhalla, I have found myself listening in my dreams to the trees surrounding the cultivated land of farmers and traders. They speak slowly but with a pang of anxiety that I have felt since my arrival here.

Time will tell if continued consumption of the Blue Cap (which also produces a erogenous effect on the surface of one's skin - definitely something to forewarn my new friends of should they decide to accept these samples in the event they are somewhere ... compromising) lends to any secondary effects. For now, I have found no addictive properties or issues of the gut. If anything, they are even better after a rich meal like the one Asheheart insisted on in the strange tavern in Outentown. A restful and open mind is one I will maintain for my efforts to come. With it, I might dare hope that the land continues to speak with this same quiet, pleading vigor. I hope I am strong enough to answer. I believe I am getting there.


The pages along this first entry are preceded by many drawings of ritual wards, sigils, and scribbles of names, locations, and writings of a life in Rashemen during the witch's training as an ethran. These pages seem muddied by their stained ink, suggesting both ruin and dampness made dry in time. The last page before Callalily chose to begin this log details the night before her escape from Rashemen to the wilds of Impiltur where she met first The Horned One, Edanye, and after that, the barbarian warrior of the Galena Mountains named Asheheart. They speak of heartache in her departure, the words scribbled over and over in an almost frantic manner with many pages anxiously blacked out. One word remains on the back of the final page as if announcing the end of the prologue in the nineteen year old girl's life before her arrival -

"DATVRA"

It is circled countless times, scribbled out, and then emerged again as a single entity on a page of blackness. It is a footnote and reminder of where she came from in Rashemen as a fledgling witch. Even more, it is a testament of defiance in the name of survival; one that the witch has bled for over and over and over again.

That was then. This is now. And the next chapter has begun.
Last edited by Mushroom Cult on Tue Jan 24, 2017 3:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

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II. [The Mycology Chronicles] - Necrosia Gigantea

Postby Mushroom Cult » Tue Jan 24, 2017 2:35 am

Origin: Unknown; Theorizing the Depths of the Nine Hells; Possibly a Natural Punishment to Mankind
Shape: Round
Edible: No
Psychoactive: No
Common Name(s): Black Rot Puff, Corpse Puff, Deadmen's Breath
Distinguishing Characteristic: Round, Sickly and Skin-like White Surface, Bulbous, Black Stems
Terrain(s): Deep Caverns, Barrows, and Underground Rivers

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The witch was not present for what occurred weeks later in Sarshel. She knew of their temple, the names of their gods, and that people who lived there were suffering terrible hunger and hardship from the death-grip of unnatural, wintery blight. In the hours of that evening, she would howl and scream in the dark with no relief as that calamity surged through the city. The sick, metallic taste of blood overfilled her mouth over and over again and the weight of the relinquishing souls being ripped like parchment paper weighed on the witch's mind and heart. While she slept through the arrival of the demonic horror held within the temple in Sarshel, it came to her instead by unrelenting torments in the worst of her nightmares. The thin Ethereal veil between the physical world and that of what the witch only knew to be a realm of telthor, or spirits, and their gods was ripped asunder. Callalily did not witness the demon or Ser Merney Valroc bathed in its blood when he and the others of the city proved victorious against this evil.

Instead, she felt the entire lands sigh with uneasy relief. And when her nightmares went still and quiet, the girl wept for lost souls she could never meet or know. Callalily would meet this man, Ser Merney Valroc. His armor was still painted deep black and red from the slain beast and at once, her heart grew still and her blood went cold. A great, black pendulum danced over his head. In time, Ser Merney Valroc would meet a fate of his own design or worse - one born of rage and wrath left by the impression of the demon slain by his hand. Yet though she would try her best in meeting this man, knowing him only briefly, she wished him well and would aid him and others met in the south of Filur, battling both orcs and harpies in defense of the land.

Ultimately, though she had in these weeks befriended the elder druid and servant of the Lion, Nobanion, in Elhokar Ravenmane and the dark Huntress Kara in her stalk. Yet Callalily could not elude from these mentors answers to the darkness awaiting Ser Merney Valroc. In time, she would know it better to only ask questions of the darkness dwelling by the hearts of men in whisper and prayer for their unlikely redemption.


The friendliness of the people I have met here is a strange and welcoming change from my homeland. I am terrible with people almost always but here I feel I can speak my mind and even if they do generate the same odd looks or say strange things. I do not look so strange to them as these people have such beautiful variations and strangeness to them as well as our warriors in Rashemen. We are vibrant and bright and I feel even in enduring the horrors of what have happened in Sarshel, they will survive. The Horned One has warned me against visiting the city of Sarshel since my last walk there. I have never heard or felt so many lost souls in one place and I fear that no matter what insight I might give to those of the temple, they would not listen. They do not know how the wychlaran may feel what is unseen or unheard in the depths of the land. It is not my place to argue - not yet. These are the affairs of city-dwellers but I would make it known that I weep for them as I would my own kin. Community is livelihood and life. And all life, even the downtrodden or in the cruelty of man, ought be considered sacred when seeking to live in harmony over discord and violence.

Being kept to Filur by request of the elder druid, Elhokar, is more than welcoming. Garrick's tavern is a strange enough establishment. It is there I had the opportunity to share my insight of the local fauna with a strange and unconventionally beautiful man. Admittedly, I was in my cups so my first impression to this man was no doubt that of a trickster or worse. There is no harm to a good mood, right? He introduced himself in such a way that I nearly expected he might sparkle if the lanterns touched his face. In truth, if he were to ever read these logs he would at least ask me to remind those who take stock in these records that I might be exaggerating. His name is Thaelandriel Ni'tessine, Enstarred of Our Lady of Silver and an Augur of the Temple of Silver Stars. Above all else, this means he is as kindred to the night as I have been since my childhood, finding no rest during day hours and much preferring to dance and run by moonlight. I was happy for meeting Thaelandriel and gave him two blue caps mentioned from my first record that his dreams would be even more colorful. Although he seemed reluctant at first, he ultimately accepted.

Thaelandriel, Asheheart, Elhokar, and I along with the ever-present although often distant gaze of The Horned One, would travel together in the surrounding plains. It was here in our exploration of the deeper caverns that cut into the earth that I was fortunate enough to happen upon a new type of mushroom I had never seen before. Much to my absolute dismay for all the good spirits and drunken adventuring and admiring the half-elf wielding the enormous scythe with impossible good-looks when he is beset by brooding, I have discovered Necrosia Gigantea. These enormous, ugly, balls resemble the same culvita gigantea that are beyond delicious when lightly buttered or dipped to oil in large slices. But unfortunately, they are not so sweet and meaty. Instead, they are globular, full of lung-choking spores that smell of rotting flesh, and are easily toppled over by wayward and clumsy adventurers.

In addition to smelling terrible, they secrete black fluids at the base when extracted that stain the hands and smell of pungent bogs and bird-plucked carrion. Worse, if not washed of the skin, the black stains secreted by the bulbous mushroom will begin to induce incessant itching and redness of the skin that if scratched too severely could bring about terrible infection if left untreated. For how nice of a time I am having in Filur, I am regretting all the more that these bulbous mushrooms are found most everywhere we have hunted and wandered. Yet I remain ever hopeful to recover the giant puffball mushrooms instead - a delicious treat to not go wasted.

For all of the filth and muck found by this discovery, I am grateful for my travels with others. Even this most disgusting discovery is one that lends to a deeper understanding of the lands. With our continued weeks of remaining near the plains and outside of Filur, the elder druid Elhokar Ravenmane has granted me an honor no ethran has been given before. The Lion has invited me to serve as guardian and protector of a small glade in the plains surrounded by towering, black stones overrun with beautiful vines and flowers. It is a place that I will come to make my home and in Asheheart's promise to serve as my guardian, he too will come to know it. As I finish this writing, I can stare up and see the branches of the great, elder willow tree that stretches over the land. His old roots go deep, even to the waters below and beyond the streams surrounding the glade. I hear the deep, low voice of my ward and know I was right - I am exactly where I need to be.
Last edited by Mushroom Cult on Tue Jan 24, 2017 4:16 am, edited 4 times in total.

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III. [The Mycology Chronicles] Noctis Vernum

Postby Mushroom Cult » Tue Jan 24, 2017 2:39 am

Origin: Unknown
Shape: Tear-Drop
Edible: Yes
Psychoactive: Mild - Pain Relief and General Numbness
Common Name(s): Violet Drop, Flower Tears, Joybell Mushroom
Distinguishing Characteristic: Small and always varying degrees of purple, the deeper the color the more potent the psychoactive effects, short and thin stem, pure white underside
Terrain(s): Riverbanks, Streams, Temperate Forests

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[Editor's Note]: Three entries are destroyed. Pages of logging and experimental exploration have been destroyed. While it is my intention to preserve these records, the pages have otherwise been destroyed by fault of my ward and her errant tendency to destroy her written words when imbibing in any number of these unusual substances. Even more, the following is what remains after a heinous and heretical relic was relieved of the witch. While I could argue that her choice was made in reason and loyalty, I personally have never trusted that Lady Scion. But those are yesterday's woes and we are now so very far from Impiltur. But what follows are the raw and natural telling of Callalily under the influence of a second dose of what she affectionately calls 'violet drops' and while beset by spirits of hunger and carnage. I have left the document untouched from her original words but would caution you, dear reader, to understand the depths of depravity I hope even today to spare the girl from suffering. Do not continue to read if you are weak of heart and spirit. Do not continue to read if you are easily sickened by the evils mortals may do. I intended to guide her hand in these writings but not even I would have dared enter the depths of her mind while beset by a horror shaped two-fold.

The Dark Promise

Known to Thaelandriel and a few other companions of the witch, The Amulet of Dark Promise was a relic uncovered within a plagued tomb outside the city of Sarshel by request of investigation by the Lady Scion. The amulet was recovered in a hall of carnage where a solitary once-humanoid had cannibalized and tore apart his fellow man with a terrible and voracious hunger. Bound with the task of keeping this relic secure and safe, Callalily did not fear influence of the amulet with her ward in place. Yet for how many horrible memories of her past she managed to avoid in creature-comforts and new friendship in Impiltur, she would never imagine the sort of audience that might be interested in watching her suffer and hunger. Mistakes were made.


I remember visiting Hag's Crest the evening before with Svarozic and Asheheart. We remained long until the great moon had risen over the horizon. I could have stayed for any number of hours behind to listen to the whispers of what remained from the mystical crone's impression on the land. Although the Hag who once called the cove by the sea home was long since destroyed, her rituals and whispers in the dark beside the turning side left what I can only describe as echos of time and routine. How many times had she walked these same sands? How many songs did she sing in hatred and envy for the beautiful sirens that drifted by shaped as sea elves? I could not begin to guess but I knew I might be able to hear and understand more clearly if I could return alone and leave my companions just before daylight.

The following morning, I remember feeling hungry even after eating the last of the bread and venison jerky. I ate and ate until realizing I was dipping into much of the day's rations. And so I decided instead, frantically, to return to the shore and take my mind from the deep gnawing in my stomach. Collecting myself, I took a second violet drop. This purple, innocuous mushroom is known for painting the mind with vivid colors and altering perceptions. I knew that two would at least ready me for sleep beside the large tree before Hag's Crest and open my mind to dream vividly and understand the depths of what spirits yet lingered behind the sea hag's departure.

The last I remember that might approach normalcy was watching the morning sunlight bleeding through the branches of the reaching, great tree overhead. The canopy's branches seemed to stretch to reach the horizon and beyond. At one point or another, I began to dream while lulled by the quiet beats of unheard drums. It must have been the rushing of my blood as this little, violet mushroom began to set my nerves on fire. What I believed first to be leaves falling from overhead, landing like tiny, emerald dancers at my open palm were beginning to leave scarlet impressions. They were melting like flakes of black ash into a solitary pool of terrible sanguine.

The blue sky stretching over the sea was a smoke-choked, abyssal nightmare of blackness. The sea was rotting as it ebbed and flowed against the shoreline I sat beside. Great carcasses of half-eaten corpses of humanoid shapes drifted against the sandy shores as a four-eyed raven plucked at the sinewy, battered contents of a small skull yet decorated with hair and a single, bloated eyeball of grey-white. I looked up from the shoreline in front of me and to the tree I rested beside to find not a tree but instead a brutal arrangement of poorly sewn together torsos. Limbs were hacked and arranged to hang in the branches of this charred tree decorated with the dead to resemble outstretched hands. Drop by drop, blood pooled in my cupped hands along with the flaking ash that fell from the black, smog-heaven overhead.

My first thought was the reminder of hunger and how my tongue was so dry. Bringing the pool of ash and acrid, dark blood to my lips I dipped my head toward the sky and extended my tongue in feeling my hands subconsciously pour the sanguine ruin over my extended tongue. Straining with the taste, I felt my body still warming in having forgotten the feverish effects of the mushroom's overdose; I tore the remnants of my clothing away and struggled forward like an agonized newborn to the bloodied sands. I knelt and began to dig amidst great, heaving sobs in bringing bloodied sand to my lips in my hunger that soon fell voracious and agonizing. My guts heaved and growled in hatred as I gifted it with only earthen grit and trickles of sinew fed from the rotting sea. Dropping globs of blood-wet sand from my trembling fingers, I was interrupted from a second handful by the four-eyed crow yet contently gorging itself on the last remnants of the remaining eye.

With that single eye-socket pecked clean and where I expected to see the outreach of its winged form to condemn my staring instead came the dark gold of a woman's arm from a disrupted veil of reality. I stared in my confused nakedness and abhorrent terror at the veil being torn open inch by inch. A sudden eruption of sable black feathers burst from the core of this terrible opening and there emerged the product of all of my nightmares. How many times had she visited me in my dreams and I chose to ignore her lunatic howling? But with this hunger and with this weakness I could not refuse her intrusion anymore than I could question if she had always been nearby in this place. Watching. Waiting.

"Datura, Durthan ... wretch," I hissed through grit teeth in feeling the slow collection of shame budding in my mind to be so naked, so filthy, and so exposed before this elegant tapestry of horror and cruelty disguised as a woman. "... Out, out of this place. You are not welcome here and you were denied once. You have no power over me here anymore than you do in our waking worlds."

The extended, dark gold arm brought forth fingers adorned in claws of black talons not unlike her disguised, raven-counterpart. A flick of her first finger and I was made to stand straight even though I was turning over and over internally with a deep and terrible hunger. Another twist of her first two fingers and I felt my arms forcibly extended. The trail of black and scarlet stain on the earth stepped forward completely from the veil revealing her in her chosen disguise of unimaginable beauty. The black-clad witch, forsaken of the Wychlaran of Rashemen, was decorated in the same transparent linen pulling along the shape of a body belonging to a girl's of my age. Endless rivets of dark, deep black hair hung like curtains beyond the shape of a face I remember wanting to tear open to find bone and flesh to see if this monster held any hope of what might resemble humanity under her many disguises.

Datura did not. And her smiling, vibrant eyes of green were as poisonous as the deep, dark purple of her lips stained over and over from the sampling of any number of night-blooms in preparation for her dark and terrible art. "... My, my. Vesna. What could you possibly know of hunger...? Yet here you are. Screaming to be satiated and fed. How fortunate you chose to collect that dark relic for your new friends. What a bold act - risking yourself to preserve peace and tranquility where you might have let those beautiful men argue for days to come over what to do with the bauble."

Clarity. Even in tasting the metallic flush of blood and the grit of sand in my teeth and covering my bare knees, thighs, and yet grinding in my teeth from my near delirious feasting - I remembered. My ward must have broken. I forged a fetish of our Bhalla made of yew tree twigs and bound the amulet in linen soaked by spring water. I sang the song of rebirth and asked the spirits of the yew tree to keep the evil contained within. This is why she could speak to me, I knew it. This meant that for all of my best efforts, the woman knew exactly where I was courtesy of the dark and terrible relic I protected. I was a beacon in the dark for this hungry, terrible creature. But although I was kept still as she pulled on my strings and made my limbs twitch for her amusement, I found the courage to speak:

"You were denied and denied again and again. Be out of this place, Datura. When I am strong enough, I will return at once and destroy you and everyone you call kin. I will have no words for you and I will not speak of--

"Hunger? Why not? Try and deny what you are, try and refuse again, I welcome your efforts. I would have given you the stars to hold in your hands that you might never be alone and the pleasures I would yet deliver to your flesh would leave you to forget the mortal pangs of hunger. Yet still you gnash your teeth and bare your claws like some lesser beast. You are a Daughter of Night-Wolves, no better than the beast-woman feared by the Lion that hungers to know you as I have. And from what I can smell of your skin, even here in this place," she began and in that moment I felt her suddenly before me with that wild, masked visage of feathers and severity staring before me. The obsidian beak of the ornate mask denoting her prowess as a Durthan witch pressed forward, near close enough for it's razor's edge to graze my throat. Her words resumed like the next verse of a song of unrelenting abuse:

"Try as I might to instruct your flesh and ruin your virgin sweetness again and again, I am yet consumed by this round face. In time, I will tell your hamlet of what you are and why you belong to me and my sisters. You will never be welcome back in Rashemen," she whispered, her voice yet ringing in my mind like a harrowing echo as her fingers seized my neck. The other hand had long since descended to grapple my sides and burn and imprint new, dark bruises until the meat of my inner thigh was beset by her nails digging and forcing them apart with what I recall only as a shuddering cry of protest. "... Try as I might to instruct you to what you are intended for. I remind you - Vesna - they will not understand what you are. They will not forgive the secret that died with your mother. You are not theirs because you belong to ours. And how I will teach you again of hunger and desire... but they are tools to torment our lessers. In truth, you will never go wanting."

The finger adorning my face descended to my lips and while every twitching muscle and trembling of my shivering features might demand I sink my teeth and tear the finger from her hand, I could not refuse the sensuality. I hungered to be touched like this again even if she was wrought by affections that demanded lies. And just when I thought some liberty would be granted, Datura withdrew her fingertip even as it played against my lower lip. Drawing terribly close in an embrace of the defiler witch, her dark arms tilted my head to the side as my throat was offered. I could not speak the words to protest her terrible promise anymore than I might remember why I was beginning to wake up.

I would not be granted release of her torment in the waking world just yet. Her long, black tongue extended far beyond that of a human woman's in her tapestry of many lies and many shapes as it drew over my collarbone and I remember a whisper or two of the salted sweetness of my skin. Where there was once delicate kisses like flower petals split and torn open in delirious and savage lust came the flat of her teeth and then the sickening crunch of her canines. She was eating me alive - crunching deliciously and savoring the way my body fell limp in her arms. Datura dug deeper and dragged her gnashing teeth like daggers to pull sinew, muscle, and the meat of my throat open. As I might drift in the agony of my own hunger, the euphoria was broken. I was waking up.

I would not ask Asheheart or Svarozic at what point they had ventured to find me at Hag's Crest or why I had begun to tear into the flesh of my hand with my own teeth. The taste of blood was real as reality came like an unheralded hurricane along with the stomach-twisting sickening realization of my own arousal, damp and unseen against my skirts yet fettered through the inflicted pleasures of my own depravity in having enjoyed something so unforgettably vile. I swallowed the flesh that was torn between my forefinger and thumb to hear the echos of an argument between Svarozic and an armored figure. As the armored figure approached, I realized then it was the Lady Scion. The voice of hunger continued to whisper lowly in incoherent murmurs from my satchel. They were demanding I make a choice and though the Lady Scion offered administration to heal my self-inflicted wounds, I stirred to rationalize the choice.

While I believe the violet drop mushroom had terrible, adverse effects to be spoken of at later times, I knew my ward was shattered by the evil held within this amulet. I know it was not Datura's design for me to accept the amulet and give her precise awareness of my location but I realized at once the weight of my foolishness. Even more, I realized my capacity for enjoying what I could only describe as ecstasy in the throngs of hunger. In surrendering the amulet bestowed on me to keep safe by Thaelandriel and Hjalmar to the Lady Scion, I felt the hunger begin to quiet.

I would have to explain myself to Asheheart and Svarozic. I knew they were staring at me and will continue to stare at me with new eyes. I did not fear their judgement but I feared what discovery was found within me. Influenced by a dark power as I may have been, reminded of the horror of Datura's ravenous cruelty in her hunger to have me at her side, I was more disturbed by the realization that some strange nightmare hunt had been cast. I would not be prey to this dark hunter anymore than I would grant her mercy.

Maybe I know myself better tonight than I have yesterday. I will not be her Vesna anymore than I will be Durthan witch. I am Callalily and my path is for me to write - even if it is awash in pages of ink, flesh, and blood.
Last edited by Mushroom Cult on Mon Feb 13, 2017 1:22 am, edited 4 times in total.

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IV. [The Mycology Chronicles] Prata Neptunium

Postby Mushroom Cult » Mon Feb 13, 2017 1:08 am

Origin: Unknown
Shape: Spiral, Round
Edible: No
Psychoactive: Unknown
Common Name(s): Sea Bulb, Mermaid's Barb
Distinguishing Characteristic: Dark green spiral-shape, ammonia smell, layered in faint blue spore dust, approximately the size of a man's fist, black stem
Terrain(s): Seaside dunes, sandy earth, cliffsides

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One month and a devotion to neglect of duties and recovery in some circles might be called a holiday. For Callalily, it was a testament to avoiding her certainty that her previous delirium went noticed. Datura knew where she was now or perhaps she always did. The monster draped in the sensual flesh of womanly delights cared nothing for the girl's well-being except for the restoration of forcing her to join them. And so Callalily would walk, engaged in speaking with Svarozic of her newly bloomed paranoia. The fellow Rashemi fostered her fears and yet her youthful recklessness came with the decision to not return to Rashemen. The hathran would be still angry and all the more, Datura would no doubt be keenly aware the moment her foot would touch those sacred, untamed lands. Furthermore, she made a promise that could not go ignored to that horribly scarred earth and swampland within The Royal Plains. The girl found her place there once. She could do it again. Even if that primal, necromantic hunger yet sung in her ears in a dizzying reminder to her own lacking humanity.

Neglected pages felt dry and scraped in sea-salt from the journey along the coast in their return. Asheheart and Svarozic did not speak or complain of the misgivings of the anxious witch. Their words were both a boon to her decision to return to the glade and yet each weighed their warnings against her repetitive, reckless behavior. Turning page by page over, Callalily read her last words again and again before bringing her blackened, earth-stained fingers to begin writing anew. A toxic, spiral bulb mushroom of dark blue rested on the tree stump turned writing desk to remind her of the purpose of these logs. The mushroom's potent smell served to keep her awake and focused lest she succumb to dwelling on the sins of the past.


The Mermaid's Barb is a hateful, noxious smelling mushroom and perhaps one of the strangest I have found in making my return along the coastline. The flesh of the bulb is black and oozes any number of skin irritating globs from the dark pustules that form with any pressure to the spiral itself. Worse yet, when not cut or poked at, the horrible spiral is dusted with foul-smelling spores that seem to get everywhere and float atop seawater even when the bulb is submerged. For that reason, I will only be keeping one specimen jarred for further observation of its uses apart from being a heinous blight on an otherwise peaceful stretch of shoreline.

What fascinates me most of this particular mushroom is the shape. It spirals like one of those pretty seashells we collected weeks before and yet its center seems almost infinite and dizzying to stare at for long. Contemplating the cyclical nature of the seasons and how each day follows the same pattern seems as constant as the churning tide bestowed by the Lady Moon hanging over our heads as I write. Ignore them as I might, the spirits of my ancestors - warriors and men that howl with the fury and cunning of the great wolves of twilight we revere, my restlessness bade me to walk alone last evening and contemplate the weight of my actions and the implications of what will be done in our return to this very glade.

Thaelandriel's presence in this glade brought the manifestation of dark vessels clawing with thirst for desecration and destruction. When Elhokar walked these glades, he speaks of the great, elder tree and what might be felt in seeing this corner of the Royal Plains restored. His intentions are as pure as any other's and yet each imprint of boot to mud in this swampy corner I've carved to protect and defend, I am less certain that anyone belongs here. There is no silence in this place but I have never truly known silence. To not hear the incessant whispers of spirits both mystical and wrought in the terrible in-between of the living and dead, I might think myself disconnected or as beheaded as this spiral-bulb in all of its toxic hatred toward whatever poor blighter should pluck it from its sandy home.

For that, I welcome the horror to come. I welcome Datura's descent in these lands. Let me be tested again. Let me suffer the curses of dark gods and let me know their machinations that I may destroy their every intention to defile and debase the lands I protect. My wrath in being named sweet pawn over staunch guardian will be met now with defiance to these horrors seeking to decide my fate for me. As intoxicating and sweet as the lips of that monstrous woman's were, I will be as this terrible mermaid-named mushroom. I will be that vitriolic poison that smears and stains her lips and succulent tongue until it blackens, swells, and rots away in necrotic misery. And though I sound like a slave to vengeance, I am infinitely patient. I can wait. I can wait forever if I need to because I am surrounded by the trees I have learned to love and the tainted land I have made my purpose to cleanse and heal.

Let me run with these same wolves composed of starlight and ancestral might on the nights to come. Let me devour their strength and make it mine to make these proclamations true and be just as vicious and just as poisonous as the gifts the earth as this horrible, sea-touched mushroom. To be Witch of these Lands and of this Glade is a purpose I can lose all of myself in and yet I remain grateful for the Remaining Few who seek to grant me what humanity I need in order to resist shedding my flesh and succumbing to the wild howling in my heart. Though they are Few, we walk this spiraling path together even when we are long apart. I ask of each of them --

Svarozic, please keep me wise. Let me have your direction and patience even when I hope to commune with the horrors we have been raised again and again to treat with reverence and apprehension. Let me be guided by this wisdom and gracious certainty that we will defend together against whatever may come. Your purpose is yours, dear friend. But I write this now in the event I perish terribly in my naive desperation for communion with both spirit and earth alike to remind you that I do listen. I can understand and know you mean well even if we should disagree and argue incessantly. I would not admire and value your opinions if you did not challenge me to consider my actions with care versus my incessant, reckless need to lose my timid meekness.

Asheheart, please keep me kind. Remind me that men and women are gentle and fragile things and ultimately they are more simple than beasts, wise trees, and spirits. They seek to be happy even if they become foolishly misguided in believing happiness may be found in coin and indulgence. Let me be considerate of civilizations that continue to expand rather than treat them with revulsion and hate. Let men grow peacefully with the natural world but stand with me if they should despoil the lands you and I now call 'home'. For you, we are stronger together and woe to those that would meet our blades in our joined purpose as guardians.

Thaelandriel, please keep me graceful. Wherever you have gone and wherever you may go, please know that I did not forget our shared words under the light of your Lady Moon when I demanded your presence even when you saw my horrible truths. Let me walk with you in mind and know that the great, crescent smile overhead in the night hours inspires not only my heart but all of those who might shine in hours where most sleep. We are strange, misplaced night-children who find their dance not by the light of day but in the restless evenings where our imaginations might flourish in dark places, not unlike every night flower you might call your favorite for that season.

Elhokar, please keep me strong. Mighty Lion and protector of the Royal Plains, though we are long without words which ought be remedied within the coming days, if you should ever read this know even now in my return to the glade you brought me to, your strength inspires me. I cannot be the matron to these lands at your side as you have desired but know in me you have a companion that seeks to defend with all the fervor you possess still would unite our purpose.

Kara, please keep me clever. Wolf huntress, you dark, terrible, and beautiful wild-thing. Yours is a vigilance that may transform from beast to man with the same guile and effortless talent in ways I dream to know. But you are clever and you are skilled as a huntress beyond what measure might be understood by civilized men. I know you dance in between both savagery and hunger that I have only tasted on the very tip of my tongue but let us still speak together as wolves do, let me be as ruthless as you are in my hunt for those who would seek to enact harm my lands and my kin.

There are others I have come to know in this place and more I will likely call friend. But I know I am walking a slow and expanding spiral, a cyclical pattern of kinship that I would never know in Rashemen even among the Witches. I can take comfort in knowing I am never truly alone and that silence is a luxury reserved for those who cannot hear the unheard or see the unseen. And though I should wish to be as poisonous and hateful as this mushroom, embittered to the life of a hermetic crone in these woods, I cannot refuse the gifts given to me by these people who have remained long enough to think of me even when I walk elsewhere.

Again, I am where I need to be. I cannot retreat - not when my war wages here and my heart is bound to these tall trees.

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Mushroom Cult
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Re: [The Mycology Chronicles]

Postby Mushroom Cult » Sun Mar 12, 2017 4:55 pm

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