Hey everyone! I have a backstory to share, and from 1 (bad) to 10 (best), tell me how good it is in the comments!
BACKSTORY
I didn’t mean to make my home with the fungi. It just… happened. And now that it has, I intend to keep it intact.
Back when my cytonerves first learned how to hold a thought, I became obsessed with Faerûnian fungi. The alchemist — the one who made me — warned me constantly. I ignored him anyway. Nearly half the species I studied were lethal. That only made them more interesting.
I cataloged everything: the spotting, the color gradients, the way poison tries to hide itself as nourishment. I learned which fungi kill you fast, and which let you live long enough to question your life choices.
The revelation came when I found a fungus that did not belong.
It was Feywild in origin — impossible, luminous — and yet its spores had crossed into Faerûn on their own. No summoning. No ritual. It wanted to be here.
That was when it clicked.
I had a home with the fungi. And the fungi had a home with me.
So I packed what I could carry, closed the door of the laboratory that had once been my home, and left it behind for good.
I found the druid camp somewhere between one moss patch and another, recognized them by what they ate — fungi gathered with care, not desperation. Species chosen for what they returned to the soil, not what they took from it.
I asked if I could stay.
They didn’t answer at first. Instead, they offered me food.
I survived it.
That was the first lesson.
Over the days that followed, they taught me druidry the way they practiced it — not with lectures, but by doing. How to listen to soil before stepping. How to tell when decay has become violence. How to guide spores so they feed instead of devour.
They showed me how to let the cycle pass through me instead of letting it grind me down.
When they finally named me, it wasn’t some ceremony. It was after watching me work beside them — tending rot, guarding growth, returning what was taken.
Oo’zosh, they said. Ooze of Spores, that meant. A name for something shaped by rot but devoted to balance.
When it was time for me to leave, they didn’t do farewells. Just trust — trust that I would carry what they taught me into places they couldn’t reach. And as a gift for the chill nights ahead? A set of hide armor, stitched with runes that hum with living growth. Not flashy, not showy — but strong, like the lessons they hammered into me.
I tell you this for one reason only: when your instincts tell you to stay — actually listen.
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Hey everyone! I have a backstory to share, and from 1 (bad) to 10 (best), tell me how good it is in the comments!
BACKSTORY
I didn’t mean to make my home with the fungi.
It just… happened.
And now that it has, I intend to keep it intact.
Back when my cytonerves first learned how to hold a thought, I became obsessed with Faerûnian fungi. The alchemist — the one who made me — warned me constantly. I ignored him anyway. Nearly half the species I studied were lethal. That only made them more interesting.
I cataloged everything: the spotting, the color gradients, the way poison tries to hide itself as nourishment. I learned which fungi kill you fast, and which let you live long enough to question your life choices.
The revelation came when I found a fungus that did not belong.
It was Feywild in origin — impossible, luminous — and yet its spores had crossed into Faerûn on their own. No summoning. No ritual. It wanted to be here.
That was when it clicked.
I had a home with the fungi.
And the fungi had a home with me.
So I packed what I could carry, closed the door of the laboratory that had once been my home, and left it behind for good.
I found the druid camp somewhere between one moss patch and another, recognized them by what they ate — fungi gathered with care, not desperation. Species chosen for what they returned to the soil, not what they took from it.
I asked if I could stay.
They didn’t answer at first. Instead, they offered me food.
I survived it.
That was the first lesson.
Over the days that followed, they taught me druidry the way they practiced it — not with lectures, but by doing. How to listen to soil before stepping. How to tell when decay has become violence. How to guide spores so they feed instead of devour.
They showed me how to let the cycle pass through me instead of letting it grind me down.
When they finally named me, it wasn’t some ceremony. It was after watching me work beside them — tending rot, guarding growth, returning what was taken.
Oo’zosh, they said.
Ooze of Spores, that meant.
A name for something shaped by rot but devoted to balance.
When it was time for me to leave, they didn’t do farewells. Just trust — trust that I would carry what they taught me into places they couldn’t reach. And as a gift for the chill nights ahead? A set of hide armor, stitched with runes that hum with living growth. Not flashy, not showy — but strong, like the lessons they hammered into me.
I tell you this for one reason only:
when your instincts tell you to stay —
actually listen.