<div class="floatleft">(https://i.imgur.com/SbPCGkL.jpg)</div><strong>Location</strong>: Velkynvelve, the mushroom grove at the cavern floor<br/><strong>Content</strong>:<br/><strong>Tagging</strong>: Diero<br/><hr/><br/>The floor of the cavern was huge, the walls farther than Diero could see with his darkvision. With the underground river nearby, mist churning and dispersing through the chamber encouraged plentiful growth of fungi. It wasn’t cultivated by the drow above as a farm, it was much more wild than that, so for every bluecap Diero found, he saw a dozen other varieties of fungi, their properties unknown to him. Jorlan had not described the bluecaps, but their names were a dead giveaway; These mushrooms were maybe a foot tall at their highest, their whitish-blue stalks bending oddly as if they had avoided an invisible barrier as they grew, their caps a shade of sky blue, wide and thick, and firm enough that one could knock on them and produce a shallow thump. As Diero picked them, he could easily break off the stalks and stack the caps together to conserve space in his basket.<br/><br/>A quaggoth stood near the lift; It was supposed to be minding this half-elf as it worked, but it sat on its rump boredly, and picked knots out of its coarse fur. When Diero found the hand crossbow and stashed it, the quaggoth was more busy paying attention to the claws on its feet, chewing on them like a dog to trim them down. The beast was so distracted that it didn’t notice the giant spiders that were skulking behind it until they began to hiss. Startled, the quaggoth rolled to its side and bared its claws at the pair of arachnid, taller than any dog and much wider, cautiously lurked closer.<br/><br/>Before any fighting broke out, a voice called out from up above, one that halted the eight-legged monstrosities in their tracks, and sent a shiver of terror down the quaggoth’s spine.<strong>”<em>Heel, my children</em>.”</strong>A solitary female figure was floating above them, slowly descending to the ground; In his five days in Velkynvelve, Diero had heard her name perhaps a hundred times, but rarely had he ever seen High Priestess Ilvara herself. She was strikingly beautiful, but she carried an air of menace with her as she gazed down at Diero from behind red eyes. Her feet touched down on stone a mere 10 feet away from Diero; The spiders that had arrived with her skittered forward to flank her at each heel. Her hands found their heads, and pet them affectionately, minding them for a moment while she ignored Diero.<br/><br/>Finally, she looked back to the half-elf, and spoke.<strong>”Kneel.”</strong>She rested her hand on her hip; Diero could see something writhing on her belt. Any confusion about what that might be was erased as Ilvara withdrew the object, and pointed it at him. While his keen thief’s eyes might be drawn to the long crystal that glowed with a light, purple magical energy at the bottom half of the rod she now held, the other half of the rod was a bit more demanding. Five serpents writhed against each other, hissing, spitting and snapping their jaws at Diero.<strong>”Kneel, and thank Lolth for the last five days that you have spent within her providence.”</strong>She wore an arrogant smirk on her lips; Clearly, she enjoyed demonstrating her power and authority.