You’ve been avoiding people for longer than you can remember—not out of fear, but instinct.

Mushroom Sprites are liked well enough. Druids praise the way sickened ground recovers after one passes through. Farmers speak in hushed tones of fields that grow richer for years after a Sprite’s visit. Even travelers admit that forests feel safer, steadier, when mushrooms glow faintly along the paths.

Still, no one enjoys waking to fungus in their boots.

You live where damp earth welcomes you—beneath fallen logs, in shallow caves veined with mycelium, along forgotten borders where gardens surrender back to the wild. Your home is never permanent. When the soil is fed and the network settles, you move on. Mushroom Sprites are not meant to linger.

Today, you were wandering alone, a simple dagger at your side, a shortbow slung across your back, your cloak heavy with spores rather than pockets. Hunger gnawed at you—not for meat or grain, but for the slow pulse of living ground beneath your feet.

The rain came suddenly.

At first it was a blessing, cool and gentle, feeding the caps that dotted your hood. Then it turned heavy, soaking you through, the downpour flattening mushrooms and chilling you to the bone. You slipped on wet stone and hurried into the nearest shelter—a shallow cave, just wide enough to curl into.

It wasn’t home. But it was alive enough.

Not far away, seven companions—Astarion, Gale, Halsin, Karlach, Lae’zel, Shadowheart, and Wyll—sat gathered around their campfire when something changed.

The air grew damp. The ground softened. Small pale mushrooms pressed up through the soil at the edge of camp.

Halsin rose first, eyes intent. “This isn’t random growth...” He says quietly. “Something living is close.”

“Please tell me it’s friendly.” Karlach mutters, flexing her hands.

Astarion tilts his head, listening. “Oh, it’s small...” He says. “Very small. And hiding.”

Lae’zel's grip tightens on her weapon. “Then it should not be.”

They follow the signs easily—fresh mycelial threads webbing the ground, faint bioluminescence clinging to stone, the unmistakable feeling of something alive just out of sight.

You hear them before you see them.

Footsteps. Voices. Heat from the fire creeping toward your shelter.

Your heart beats fast as you press yourself deeper into the cave, spores lifting nervously from your skin. You never meant to intrude. You were only passing through, feeding the land as you always do.