The adult myconids move to gather up the corpses of Sarith (headless) and the infected, also headless drow scout. The scout’s head still exists, while Sarith’s exploded in a cloud of red spores. “We are of the Circle of Hunters,” the myconid explains, “we do not kill, but bring the dead back to the grove where they can serve and then decompose feeding all that grow.” His mental sigh is audible, “Most corpses in the Grove are reanimated to become spore servants, animated to serve for a week or two before they collapse and return to the earth.” His wide crown moves back and forth, “These are infected with these strange spoors. I do not trust them.” The take the corpses and shoves them into cracks in the wall where nothing is growing. “They can rot there and not infect anything,” one says sagely. The party moves out behind them towards Neverlight Grove.
The first half a dozen in the marching order become privy to the melding between three adults, and Stool, who lets them experience his life since his capture by drow some weeks ago. There are words, but most of the conversation is not verbal, and the more receptive of the company see and feel some of what Stool is broadcasting, images, feelings, scenes, conversations all flowing together. The tunnel narrows but the light increases as you reach the entrance to Neverlight Grove.
Upon entering the cavern of the Neverlight Grove, it feels as if you’ve left the horrors of the Underdark behind. You find yourselves in a hidden enchanted place, strangely alien but serenely beautiful. The access tunnel opens above the grove’s main floor, providing the characters a panoramic view of a mushroom forest that covers every surface, including the ceiling, and illuminates the darkness with brilliantly colorful, bioluminescent patterns. Flying things, small, white and fast, circle overheard, and sure do look like birds from a distance. Perhaps they are. Obie thinks he will ask about them later, but he never does.
On the other side of this exotic forest, the cavern narrows into a ravine. In a cavern beyond the ravine, a glimpse of a majestic mushroom tower can be seen, although the poor light and a rising mist makes it impossible to discern its details. A fast moving stream flows through the center of the grove, feeding a large lake, and a small boggy area around a pond. Myconids of all sizes, many colors, and shapes, move about their business, which in many cases, is unrecognizable by the company.
The myconid way of life is simple, contemplative, and cyclical. Myconids work for eight hours farming their fungi fields, scouting for resources, and maintaining their defenses. After their labors, they spend eight hours in telepathic communion with each other in what they call “melding.” They then rest for eight hours before starting the cycle anew. This has been the way for as long as a Sovereign has ruled the grove. The changes being pushed by Sovereign Phylo and his supporters go against millennia of myconid tradition.
Many of the myconids in the grove are more extroverted than might be expected of their normally shy species. Myconid communities normally have only a single sovereign; the largest among them, who stands alone and outside of any circle. Two years ago, Sovereign Basidia arrived in the grove with its two circles, and Sovereign Phylo welcomed the new myconids gladly, grateful for Basidia’s offer to share the burdens of leading all the circles in the grove. The two sovereigns have been close friends ever since, sharing authority and responsibilities with no conflict. Each knows that an individual myconid has only so much time in the cycle of life, and that when both have passed, a single sovereign will take their place after their bodies are returned to nourish the soil. For months things seemed fine, it is only in the past dozen weeks that things seem to be going sideways to Basidia’s supporters.
The circles in Neverlight Grove are divided by specialized function, with each circle performing a specific role in the colony. Seven circles are present in the grove, each containing an average of twenty myconids, the Circle of Hunters, the Circle of Explorers, the Circle of Sowers, the Circle of Builders, the Circle of Growers, plus the recently formed Inner Circle and Circle of Masters created by Sovereign Phylo. Each circle gathers around a circle mound, a pile of rocks and soil upon which mold, lichen, and mushrooms are encouraged to grow. The myconids of a circle gather around their own mound to meld and sleep, generally, but recently the pronouncement from Phylo makes melding outside one’s circle seem wrong. The circles meanings turn out to not always be straightforward to outsiders. The hunters do not hunt living creatures, instead they search for corpses that be either be reanimated as spoor servants, or as fertilizer to feed new life, usually both.
Stool is living his best life showing his friends around his home, and introducing to other sprouts, and his very good friend, a taller young myconid out of the sprout stage (teenager). Rumpadump is about average drow height, green, and his hands are just forming. He seems in awe of sprout for being taken as slave and making it back home with a bunch of upper world types. A tall, towering myconid with a large blue cap strides purposefully forward and Stool excitedly tells them, “Sovereign Basidia approaches!!”
Sovereign Basidia sounds immensely pleased with the group, “Young Stool, it is good to see you, welcome home.” He pats the sprout affectionately, “Be welcome in Neverlight Grove, strangers.” He bows, “It is a miracle that Stool managed to find a group that not only protected him, but brought him home. By spore and stalk I thank you!!” He bows again, even lower. “Some drow came to the grove two days ago,” the sovereign says in his even tones, “they were watching the entrance.” He points towards a fertilizer mound below. Two fungus covered drow zombies are shuffling around, led my a myconid who directs them. “We can animate their corpses for perhaps a week of service before we return their bodies to the earth. They are known as spore servants, and they have no real mind of their own, but can follow simple tasks.”
Basidia leads the group ups to the north eastern side of the cavern, the highest point. “Please be comfortable and take nourishment,” he offers as adult myconids arrive with trays of food and drink. There is an amazing variety, and there is quite a bit that is cooked. Inside the cloud of telepathic spores, the company sits and talks to Basidia, answering questions about the trip here, and telling them of the Grove. “Please make your camp here,” he points to a nice spot overlooking the cavern.
“To thank you for rescuing Stool and bringing him home, it would be our honor to brew for you something special that might please you.” The myconid offers a variety of potions, and soon everyone has made a choice, and orders are given. For an Crab elixir of Earth Elemental Magic, Vorkath a potion of Haste, Obie a potion of Invulnerability, and both Baern & Tammuz choose potions of Fly. “It will take two days to make them,” he and then he takes his leave, as all over the cavern, myconids move towards their place of melding, and become one. Looking out across the cavern you have to smile at the color and light. Life in the darkness. After so long in the dark, it is truly liberating to the surface dwellers in the group.
A nearby stream provides fresh water, “Please avoid the stream and the lake,” Basidia advised, “there are things in the water that will eat you. The water is safe to drink, but getting it can be risky.” Packs are refilled and water skins topped off. The view is magnificent. Watches are set but the night passes by quietly and without incident. In the morning, Stool and Basidia return, and continue the tour.
Basidia leads the group the eastern end of the cavern where the walls narrow. Through them lies the gigantic mushroom, Yggmorgus. You have no clear reference to judge the towering mushroom’s size at this distance. Thousands of smaller fungi cling to the main stalk, which itself splits into several lesser stalks, each long enough with a cap big enough to be the top of a great tower. The cavern floor surrounding the stalk is covered by a carpet of fungi. An eerie luminescence pours through slitted windows carved into the trunk, with the same cacophony of atonal music heard earlier echoing within. A stench of rot and decay wraps around you, seemingly threatening to penetrate your flesh and pervade your soul. No one wants to enter the chamber. “It has grown very rapidly of late,” Basidia looking at Yggmorgus woefully, remarks after a pause. “I fear some corruption is at work.” At the base of the tower, what looked like a small hill explodes in a cloud of spores.
The spores drift down over scores of deformed creatures that suddenly begin to dance wildly around the base of the giant fungal tower. The revelers are a motley collection of humanoids and various other creatures, all sporting tumors, cankers, and putrid patches of flesh all over their bodies. They are joined by dancing fungi vaguely shaped and twisted into forms resembling humanoids. Almost everyone in the group who looks at Yggmorgus feels that there is something very wrong with it. When Basidia leads them away, everyone is relieved. Once the huge mushroom is out of sight, the relief returns to be in a lighted space of color and, so far, no danger.
A myconid, nearly as large as Basidia approaches with a retinue of myconids. “Sovereign Phylo,” he nods, “these are the upworlders who brought young Stool home.” Phylo nods to the group, “It is good of you to rescue the young sprout.” He turns to his myconid group, “I have my work to attend to,” he says, and they all leave, returning to Yggmorgus. “I get the same feeling from him that I got from the giant mushroom,” Baern says to nods from the others. He creeps everyone out. Not long after, Basidia leaves as well, to tend to his duties. Stool and Rumpadump stay with the group until the melding time comes, and they return to their circle.
Dinner is eaten, and watchers are set. During Baern & Eldeth’s watch, three adult myconids exit the cavern of Yggmorgus, and move passed the company, headed downwards into the Grove. No other myconids are out, except for guards, and the pair watch the trio closely. They seem to be tending to fungi as the slowly descend, often stopping for as long as an hour. It is hard to say if this behavior is typical or not, they have seen a lot of strange things in Neverlight Grove. As they pass below, Baern notes patches of red on their caps that remind him of Sarith. They do not wake anyone, but tell the next watch, Crab and Buppido.
The myconids slowly make it down to the first path that leads upwards, and back towards the company’s camping spot. Crab, being very perceptive, sees that they myconids are not actually doing anything when they bend over and seem to be working at something. They don’t touch anything, and nothing seems affected by them. A pantomime of some kind? Spore seeding? When Vorkath wakes on the final watch with Werv the goblin, they watch as the myconids continue whatever it is they are doing while moving closer to the group. They are fifty feet away when the group is having breakfast. Tammuz munches on a mushroom and egg sandwich, “I want to try something.”
Weaving his strange time magic, Tammuz casts the eyes of fate on the nearest of the 3 myconids with red patches, and gets a small glimpse of the big event the myconid is expecting the following day. A wedding. Tammuz has trouble taking it all in, and believing what he is seeing. The sovereign Phylo is marrying a . . .Tammuz tries to recall what little he knows of demons. He thinks the bride is Zuggtmoy, the Demon Lord? Lady? of Fungi. All the myconids that sway around them show signs of the red spore patches. Something huge with tentacles and dripping slime looms in the background. The scene is horrifying. Everyone stares at Tammuz as he is clearly distressed taking this all in.
Sovereign Basidia arrives midday, bringing the promised potions, “It is the least we can do. Such kindness deserves reward.” Tammuz tells the story of what he saw through his chronomancy. In the telepathic spore cloud he lets Basidia have everything he felt and saw.
Tammuz then decides to cast eyes of fate again on a passing red spore infected myconid. He sees the end of the wedding this time, when a tear in reality opens revealing abyssal darkness and hordes of demons begin to clamber through the tear. Basidia is stricken at the truth of the visions Tammuz shares.
“How can we leave Neverlight Grove? Yet, we cannot stay. Must not stay. Demon lords?” The normally stoic sovereign sounds half broken. “Come with us,” Baern says, “take as many as you can. We have a ship!” Basidia considers, then shakes his cap, “There would not be room for all. I must figure out a way to get as many to safety as I can.” He looks down at Stool and his calm returns, “That is my task. You have been kind, you have been dutiful, and you share your knowledge. I thank you,” he presses a bag of potions, a healing potion for each (4d4 +4 removes exhaustion), and a single potion of lesser restoration.
They try to get him to flee with them, but Basidia will not be moved, “It is my task to save my people, or die protecting them from demons. I do not wish your kindness of returning a sprout to its home lead to your death at the claws and jaws of demons. Please go, find your way to your home. That is how you can help me.” Removing a small blue mushroom from inside himself, he hands it to Baern, “I believe you worthy, and if you are, the glow will lead you.” He bows low, and then hurries off. Stool follows him, looking back at the group forlornly.
Having said their goodbyes, the company sets out towards the cavern’s exit. The path this way, all downhill, is much faster than their winding path in. With light, a clear path, and no need for stealth, it takes only a few hours to reach the exit. The guards bow and step aside. A few hours after leaving the Grove, Baern notices a slight blue glow from the mushroom, and turning in all directions, it glows brightest facing ahead.
The clanking of chains, mumbled voices and the sharp crack of a whip break the silence, and Tammuz holds up a fist signalling to freeze. Tammuz creeps ahead, his sharp eyes picking out five drow leading a string of goblins slaves in chains. Tammuz slinks back to the party undetected and whispers what he has seen. The company elects to follow behind them, with Tammuz keeping them just in sight.
A scuttling noise draws attention upwards, as three, long, green segmented creatures with long tentacles in front of a maw filled with long, curving teeth. Carrion crawlers move in to attack the group. Tammuz, ahead of the group, and unnoticed pulls his merrow dart gun, and tries to spray a fan of darts, managing to strike the outer two which freeze as the paralyzing venom takes hold. The middle one is luckier, the dark bouncing off armored skin, the upper half the creature leaning down, tentacles extended.
Baern’s voice changes pitch as he sends dissonant whispers into the remaining crawler. The psychic bolt into its mind freaks the creature out and it flees away from Baern, directly towards the drow.
While the drow are engaged, the party moves off to the side, the blue toadstool from Basidia glows more and more brightly, pulling to the left, into a small side passage. The company is eager to leave the drow slavers sight, and follows Baern through a winding tunnel. A blue glow, soft and welcoming begins to illuminate the way.
Cave of the Gods – you enter a cavern suffused with blue light that comes from everywhere, nowhere. Water streams down cascading sheets into pool after pool of glowing blue-white water that shimmers softly even in the still puddles. You are each drawn to a separate pool, and slightly different waters pour over you as you bathe.
The more you use your blessings, the lower the DC to activate them becomes.
Baern: Hearth – when you take a short rest, through song or story you may give yourself, or a person you choose, the benefit of a long rest (once per long rest). DC 15 CHA
Crab: Crab shell – as bonus action gain resistance to all damage for 1 minutes. DC 15 WIS
Tammuz: Intellect – as an action you can increase your intelligence score increases by 6 for 1 minute, you can end the effect early to instantly learn the statblock of a creature you can see within 60 feet of you. DC 15 INT
Vorkath: Sasquatch – once per day use bonus action to change into huge sasquatch for 1 minute. Extra d4 damage to melee attacks. DC15 STR. Opponents roll DC 15 WIS or be frightened for 1 minute.
Obie: Bertie’s Air – You can hold your breath for 10 minutes.