MARCH REWARDS 3

HSaibot 

1st: Due a bit of missconception about how non threatening the urban legends of the cuter european faye an american finding herself at the mercy of a gnome due voilating the laws of hospitality and being transformed into a tree/mushroom.

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One must always take caution when traversing through the woods. Though the wooded areas closer to society and the modern civilized world are teeming with wildlife and signs of man's activity, the further you go into the unexplored wilderness, the closer you get to the primeval environments left behind by the first world's inhabitants. Trees grow taller, the brush more dense, and ancient foliage sits undisturbed by the actions of man. Those who travel off the beaten path may come across many strange sights, and if you are lucky, or unlucky as it is for most, you may even come across some of the world's oldest denizens taking part in their various rituals.

Tourists occasionally go in search of the fae in areas where legends persist of the primordial troublemakers. While most never find them, and some find evidence that they once were, others may stumble upon them in the flesh. Though they may sing and dance like children, or speak and greet with a supernatural demeanor, their sense of reality. Their sense of right, wrong, and their sensibilities are far different than our own. What could be seen as a general greeting or average behavior for a human could be seen as a grievous insult to a fae, and what they see as a minor prank or a fun game could be violent and cruel in the eyes of a human. Their ways are incomprehensible to some, and simply strange to others, and some match our own ways.

When dealing with a fae, one should typically do the following.

*Do not accept any food given to you by a fae. But reject the offer with courtesy.

*Do not accept any gift given to you by a fae if it is a gift of importance or if it is considered to be valuable. But reject the offer with courtesy. This can be difficult as the value of some objects can be very confusing.

*Do not give them your name, or provide them with a name, even if they refer to themselves by a name. 

*Do not stand in a fairy ring.

*Do not be rude when dealing with a fae.

*Do not join the fae in merriment or leisure. This includes dancing, smoking, playing, drinking anything other than water, listening to music, or sleeping on a comfortable surface.

*Do not accept affection or romantic advances from the Fae and reject them with kindness and courtesy.

*Knock before entering any structure or entryway, even if it appears abandoned or destroyed. 

*Do not tell a lie that you know to be a lie. Some loopholes can work here, however you often will not know if it did work or not until it's far too late.

On occasion breaking one or two of these rules can be socially acceptable among their kind, however, some are much less forgiving than others, and what may be a hard rule for one type of fae may be offensive to others. They are not catch all rules, but more often than not will protect you.

Here we see a tourist falling victim to several gnomes whom have been slighted by some minor act by her. Wanting to prove her friendliness and join in their games, she began singing and dancing with them. To thank her for her beautiful song, they decided to keep her where she was to keep the song forever, and so they chanted ancient words to twist flesh into other materials. They chanted and sang the world into form, twisting and shaping that before them, singing their will to life and inflicting a horrid curse upon her. Shifting and changing fabric and leather from their prior forms into spongy mushroom material. This is a deforming primeval curse known as "Mukhomor Blight".

Not only utilized by the fae, Mukhomor Blight is a curse learned by many Druids and powerful witches as well as it transforms the target into a hideous red and white capped mushroom of immense stature resembling a malformed humanoid Fly Agaric. While cursed in this form, you can still speak and sing, though you become completely immobile and your body is in constant pain. Often times your mind is wracked with such pain and existential dread that all you can do is moan and scream until you pass out, only to awaken and repeat the process once more. You can also struggle and wiggle, though as time goes on you become less and less capable, living in an endless suspended animation as a mushroom. Rarely is this curse lifted, even by the magics of more powerful spellcasters as curses are blights inflicted upon the very will of a creature and bound to the magic of their existence, and twisted into their souls, so even if the curse is lifted, they may occasionally grow spongy patches along their bodies, feel their flesh shift and bulge with fungal growths, or vomit spores for hours on end as they are still wracked with pain and dread. In deep magic twisted forests, one may find entire fields or forests littered with these mushrooms. Sure signs that a battle against the fae was fought here long ago and that the survivors, as well as the dying, were transformed and left to rot for eternity in the cosmic wilderness prison.

Some who are cursed in this way, lose their minds completely, though the magic interacts with their bodies in a way that allows the minute will of the mushroom to be sparked to life and meld with the creature's consciousness. In such a situation the Mushroom may slowly sprout limbs and become mobile as it shambles through the woods slowly, taking time to plant itself into the ground as it requires rest and sitting, breathing heavily with it's raspy, inhuman lungs. 

These mushroom creatures, known as the Mukhomor, learn to use their flexing fibrous bodies like incredibly powerful muscles, and that they require flesh and blood to survive. They shamble and lurch toward living creatures and use their powerful fists or thick caps to bludgeon the creatures, and then consume them by ingesting the meat and allowing the blood to soak into their bodies. Some will not need to hunt, and will find a dead creature and plant itself on the creature's corpse, slowly devouring nutrients from the decaying form, and occasionally absorbing the creature into it's form. Because of this some Mukhomor are much larger, and possess large, heaving skeletal remains protruding from their bodies. They also attract flies and other creatures attracted to rotten or foul smelling fungi, and as such, some may be given away by the sounds of buzzing insects as they approach. Even worse are those who become bonded with the flies, and the flies empowered by that of the curse, allowed to flourish and become stronger and twisted by the magic. In such situations, they may take residence in the Mukhomor, or around it, and may be controlled and sent out by the creature as a form of ranged attack, with clouds of biting flies and stinging insects swarm creatures, giving the Mukhomor time to approach slowly and begin pummeling the enemy. Some are employed by evil spellcasters whom have cultivated such horrid mushroom things as servants, or even slaves, and by fae whom have transformed their foes into such a shape. They are occasionally created by the other kind of fae known as a Galaga Snaanga. 

Though rare, sightings of mushroom people occasionally come in on Earth, though finding the large, non moving versions is just as rare, however sometimes they are passed off as simply being mushrooms causing people to feel pareidolia. On Urth they are a bit more common....

I've already talked about gnomes before, and how they are known for being able to inflict powerful curses, and this is just one of the examples of such a curse.....