Chapter 1: Engelbert Finklestink III, and the Wyrd Caves of the Tamarang Marshes

In the dank, choking fumes of the Tamarang marshes, a halfling trudged onward, stopping only briefly every few minutes to gaze at the odd scar now left on his palm. The scar was growing, he was certain of it now. What had begun as not much more than a mark that you might expect from having been nicked by a pocket knife, was now sprawling its way ever-so-slowly across his right hand, in an erratic and unsettling manner.
 
 
Engelbert winced, and tightened the strip of cloth he had wrapped around his palm as a makeshift bandage, though he felt sure this would do little to stop the spread. The irony was not lost on him that though he was likely the first person to have entered the wyrd caves in eons, he would likely not survive long enough to brag about it.
With a deep sigh, he pressed onward. His tiny frame allowed him to navigate the fetid pools of sludge with relative ease, where larger humanoids might, with the slightest of miss-steps, simply have been consumed by the slime-saturated waters.
 
As he flit about the swamps, he considered the choices that had led him to this moment. His stomach rumbled, and though he had found what he was looking for in the marshes, he had nothing to show for it, and no treasure to trade for something to fill his belly. Though he had reached out and broken off pieces of the vast eldritch crystals with his own, tiny hands, they had turned to dust within moments, but not before the odd crackling energy inside them had seared his palm and left him with the scar.
 
His head began to throb, and with each pulse in his skull, the scar grew. His right arm felt numb now, and the headache was making it hard to see clearly. At the edge of his vision, he could make out a mossy embankment, adorned with a fairy ring of very large toadstools. He decided he would rest there for a moment and gather himself, before making his way out of the marsh to the nearest doctor he could find… or perhaps even a priest. The headache was getting more intense. A wave of nausea came over him, and a cold sweat began to bead on his forehead, sticking the locks of his curly brown fringe together. He sank back against the toadstools, gasping for fresh air, but the swamp could not provide it. Instead, the toadstools began to release their spores after being disturbed. Engelbert wheezed as the cloud of spores smothered him. He choked and spluttered, wafting the spore cloud with his hands. His right hand now looked withered and grey, the eerie, eldritch pattern now sprawling up his arm.
 
Engelbert began to sob. He missed his wife. He missed his son. He missed his little cottage. He missed the better days before the king's men had demanded tithes and taxes from him and the rest of the townsfolk. He put his head between his knees and began to cry. “Why is the world so unkind?” he whispered, his only audience being the fungus that surrounded him. “None of this would have happened if we could all just get along. No kings, no tithes, no wars…”.
His eyelids began to feel heavy, and as he slowly fell into a slumber, his body began to atrophy, now fully consumed by the eldritch markings. The mossy bank upon which he sat began to hum with a strange energy. The toadstools leaned inwards with a deep groan, like a great oak tree succumbing to high winds. They began to twist around Engelbert as if they craved his presence. his body crackling now with a sickly pale-green static. Their mycelium reached out to him and took hold, and they too began to crackle and pulse with the eldritch energy. They were one, now; Engelbert and the toadstools, and from the top of his head, under his curly locks of nutmeg hair, a mushroom began to fruit forth.
 
A soothing, ethereal voice groaned within the swamp. “K...I..N...D….”