Plagued Garden

_{Describe a geographic location beneath the surface - what can you find lurking there?}
  It is somewhere north to the Grey Well, in the Main Continent. Perhaps north-east, half way to Rashgeofar, or north-west in the direction of Lauwriin. 
  Would you kindly forgive me for that lack of precision, I hope. Understand it isn't malice. Fact is that your narrator was quite feverish in that occasion. Was not for much that I escaped the nameless island in Grey Well with my life, and a back full of items taken from a, old vault hidden bellow a tower in ruins. My twenty companions of adventure had less luck, only three reached the firm ground outside the Well by my side, and one died hour later. The other two survived another day.
   By the end a pair of six legged panthers cup our way. One of my companions felt on the ground, when we noticed one of the animals in the trees above us. Melin could barely keep his sword pointed to the animal. I wasn't even able to find mine. 
   The felines roared in satisfied anticipation to each other, surrounding us one time. Their posture changed before the round was complete. I was finally with something in my hand, but it was the wrong blade. Looking for my sword I had caught the hunting knife. Not that would have made difference against the two animals, stand still was an effort in itself, doubt I could have connected a worth blow if the enemy was an Earthling turtle, doped. 
    No need to. 
    The larger feline looked at us for what felt like a long time, and smelled the air coming from our direction for a contrasting brief instant. Then the animals jumped as one. Not to attack us, but to put distance between themselves and the purulent wounds covering our skins. 
    The man on the ground didn't moved. Melin laugh a weak laugh,  full of irony.  
     He walked with great difficulty to the nearest tree, leaving the companion we had been caring between us forgotten where he felt. 
      My bones where in pain, and I gave up the attempt of follow him. Sitting myself between the two dying men. We had no water, and only salt meat for food. None of us had been able to keep anything in the stomach in the last four days any way. 
      _This cursed thing didn't work anymore!_ said the rogue Peasant Caste of Rujina. 
       Melin is an alchemist, one of those fortunate fellows born with potential for magic. But who trowed the best of that potential away failing the test to enter Mage Caste. Probably was that the reason why he abandoned the harsh but predictable life as an farmer to walk the word with lawless bands looking for treasures. 
      The collar hanging on his neck had a pendant that gives him the capacity to see the magic inside enchanted items. He was not referring to it, but to a ring in his left hand, the one of copper with a misshaped dark green stone. 
        _What are you talking about? 
        _That's healing magic. Was supposed to keep me healthy if the rumors about the plague was true. 
        _Your plan was to let the rest of us die them? Walk away with the best spoils from each bag, after. All you could carry !? 
        _Yes. 
        I was too tired to feel anger. Why should I, any way? We where not friends, just companions of adventure. No one forced me to join this group, and we all had heard stories about the countless plagues to be found on Grey Well. 
        My last tough was that I would die sitting. People sometimes hope to die standing up, and other kind of individuals want to die lying down in their beds. No one wishes to die sitting. 
        When I woke I was lying on my back, covert by blankets that smelled like peppermint. My arms where covert by linen bands soaked in some yellow goo. I could not feel my body, but could still move it. I had to look my arm to move it, and that is a very odd feeling. However, despite the lack of information about the surroundings I wasn't in fear. 
        That was a sort of tend made of bamboo and hemp. Had no ceiling, but few meters above there was one, of black stone.
        When I dared to try my feet, and walked outside, I found a circular cave with a small waterfall coming from the opposite side. A small river formed on the stone, and moved in spiral creating four lines on the ground before it fall through a hole in the center of this cave. I was three meters above this river, standing next to the entrance of this improvised structure. The sky was visible above the top of the waterfall, about 20 meters above where I was standing. There was no visible way for a healthy man to climb, and healthy I was not. 
        There is a lot of shadows, probably passages behind some. Also slippery spots that would send me easily to a inevitable death at the bottom of that bottomless hole in the center of the cave. 
       A voice came from behind me. I looked and found a tall skinny man wearing a rustic tunic.
       This man was sitting on a bamboo chair. There was a pipe on table by his side, and a book on his right hand.                   He spoke again. 
        I could not understand his words, but recognized the language: 
       _Non, non, je parle pas français. Desole! 
       _You are not from Earth them?_ the old man asked, using Merchant Language . "Probably the ugliest human being I ever saw" I thought to myself. He was.    
         _I am Earthling, yes. Do not speak French however, except for the words I just used. Why you... _I as going to ask, when I saw my clothes on a flat rock between us. My pendant next to it. 
         It is a reproduction of a certain famous tower, I never visited the original. The pendant was a gift. I was wearing it by chance the night I was caught by the Vortex, and kept as a treasure ever since. Is my only physical evidence that my home planet is not some sort of dream, my only piece of old life on Earth. 
        _ Did this mistake saved my life? _I asked. 
        _Perhaps. I have not spoken my mother's language since my old sister died, fourteen years ago. Give or take a couple of years. On the other hand, I have not been able to practice medicine since they sent me away from the Mushroom City bellow us. That must have been almost a decade ago. 
         That was hard to believe. Doctors, of any kind and quality, are rare and precious commodity among the lawless bands. 
          _I was travelling with two men...
          _I know. Your friends where death when I found you three. The magic potions and amulets they had helped speed up the gorgulho fever: some magic plagues are attracted by healing spells. Probably protected them against a dozen other diseases on the other hand. 
         _They both...? 
         _Yes. Alchemists, if I am not mistaken. But is hard to set apart a dead alchemist from a dead sigrax. 
         I felt the weight of my body and almost fell on the stone. He helped me to a chair. 
         _Am I your prisoner ? _I asked. 
         He was not surprised by the question. Is somewhat traditional to ask that, when you awake unarmed and for all practical purposes defenseless in a strange place. 
          _Guinea pig. I was curious to see if I could postpone your death for a day or two. You have been unconscious for more than a week, delirious. See you standing was a glad surprise! I had no idea that I am that competent as doctor !! 
          _I can go them? 
          _By all means. I am satisfied to see how long I postponed your dead. There is little point in keep doing it. 
           _You mean I am dying? 
           _Magical plagues either kill people or make them harder to kill. And the kind ones are in the first group, those who catch diseases of the second type envy those who die easily. You are lucky, you will not survive another day without my salves. Nor another week even with it.
            I was too weak to doubt, or argue. So the ugly man helped me back to bed, and I slept. 
           His name was Felipe. He had little memory of Paris, his home city. When he was 7 years old his family was travelling to a house in countryside when the Vortex devoured the family car with all them inside. 
            I tough that was a odd tale, considering that private automobiles stopped being common on Earth more than one hundred years ago and my doctor looked about 60 years old.  
           Unless magic was involved. 
            _You are a healer sigrax. 
            _No, not a healer. I am a sigrax, but I follow a different Magical Way. One far less common Way, almost extinct in our days. Ages ago it was taught in Mage Universities of important cities. During the time they call "Imperial Age" the most powerful nation of this world had the capital destroyed by spells from my magical Way. And that was not the most amazing feat achieved by our spells. 
             _I never got the chance to study Sharitarn History. Since that is not a essential tool to survive among lawless bands in the wilds.
              _Good thing that survive is no longer a issue for you. 
              I tough he could be a necromancer. Maybe he expected me to ask for his service, to beg for a transformation in undead that would save my existence. That is death, and yet is not. 
              Since he said no when I asked if I was his prisoner, and never said I was his slave, would be inconsistent for him to make me a high undead without my request. I was not sure if I was ready to risk not die, the perspective of continue existing as an unnatural abomination was scary to me. Undeads are no longer humans, or members of their original species, they are something else. 
               I was not sure I was ready to make that decision. Neither was I ready to die for good. 
              So instead I asked him about his past. Who was this people that taught him magic, and where was this place from where he was banished.                  "Perhaps a hundred meters bellow us, there is the top a an large cave protected by powerful magic..." he said. 

     

 Mushroom City 

 

  The cave has hundreds of kilometers of extension, supported by columns and arches of stone magically shaped, decorated by spirals of glass an metal. In the middle of it there is the ruins of a city that was once in the surface. Back in the days when that city was on Surface it was one of the Largest nations of Imperial Age. Now its tallest magical towers, of Imperial Age design, enter the top of the cave as toothpicks decorating an infinite pudding someone had left upside down. 
   All the cave and the ruins are covert in colorful fungus. Mushrooms with vague humanoid shape walk around or fly through the air on serpentlike stingrays with long whiskers. Rivers falling from the walls and dancing in the stone of this forest of poison fungus produce the only songs one can hear in this ambiance. 
  Except for the voices of a small number of animals, humanoids. Who walk through a small portion of this vast city, near to what was in distant past a Main Market. 
  There is no Mage Tower in this ruins, not in the shape people recognize now on Sharitarn. Because Vurdacnar was cursed and send bellow ground long before Mage's Brotherhood create the famous design for its towers. There is a Mage University here, however. Not active but ready, waiting for mages to reactivate it. 
Between the arch of this University, and the Main Market in ruins live a small community of talking beings. Rottens (generic name used for members of species derived from human on Sharitarn, not from magic but by mere natural mutations over time), doppelgangers, undeads of a dozen different models, talking insects whit bodies of centaurs and heads of flies, intelligent plants of seven different species (none of then ungnuie). And lost in this peculiar crowd a hundred humans, or perhaps two hundred. 
What all those outsiders have in common is the fact that they are sigraxes, followers of a same Magical Way. Pestilence Magic is all but completely forgotten on Sharitarn, perhaps half dozen wild sigraxes carry the knowledge on the surface. 
Here was the main capital of that Magical Way. The Magic University famous for its pestilence mages. Their knowledge is still here, even if there is no more mages. 
The mushroom people was created by accident, by this magic. They have sigraxes, magic users who kept developing the Way for long periods of isolation. Until a time of Xar-Scars set them free from the barriers that isolated their city they could not leave, and only a few archmages and liches would visit. 
Even after that, the mushroom avoided to make their existence know. Travel the world is dangerous for them, and their nature does not craves for adventure or treasures power. 
However, the sigraxes do desire to grow in their magic. Know more, purify the Xar inside themselves. Like any other sigraxes, like any magic users, they crave for more powerful magic. 
Then, about 300 years they begun making contacts with the surface. Accepting students of other species and sharing their secrets, slowly expanding their knowledge of surface. Making friends, welcoming involuntary immigrants, maturing a sense of diplomacy. 
Safe for few exceptions any one who comes close to Mushroom City die horribly from one among a million magic diseases that float in the air. Hundreds of millions of plagues grow in this environment and not one affects the mushrooms or their animals. As for outsiders, only the best plague sigraxes can walk in the tunnels that conduce to the cave and survive long enough to see the exotic beauty of this lost metropolis.   
All inhabitants of Foreigner Sector are sigraxes. Plague sigraxes like  Felipe, the ugly man on the bamboo chair.