Amanita

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**Amanita** was a former Sporeseer of the Celial Sisterhood and a member of the Greenheart Council.

## Description

Amanita was known by many names and titles throughout her life: Mother, Councillor, Sister, and another name that lives only in the memories. Before her death, she was known as Sister Amanita, Councillor of the Greenheart Council and Speaker for Mother Mellean of the Greensgood Sanctum.

Amanita was a controversial figure in the Sisterhood. She joined the order in 1219, at only five years of age, and quickly ascended the ranks of the Sisterhood to become the Sporeseer of the Bellton Sanctum in the Red Hills. However, after the fall of the Sanctum in 1247, she returned to Greensgood, where she served on the Council.

### Appearance

Amanita was a tall, waifish elf with pallid skin and dark green hair.

Having served for twenty years in the underground grove of the Bellton Sanctum, Amanita resembled the primordial cave that was her home. The ends of her hair glowed with bioluminescence, and her eyes were blank panes of light without pupils or irises. Wherever she went, she was surrounded by a small cloud of spores that surrounded her like fireflies.

The memories of her Seerhood were etched onto her body: her hair and face were accented with tiny chanterelles, and it was unclear where the fungal armour she wore ended and where her skin began.

### Personality and Alignment

Like all Sisters, Amanita strove to maintain the Sisterhood's ideal of neutrality.

### Religion

As a Sister of the Celial Sisterhood, Amanita kept no gods and followed only the will of the memories. While the Celial Sisterhood is said to predate most organised religions, some in the Sisterhood compare the First Spore to the Green Mother of the Very Old Ones, some consider the Sisterhood to have Cunning, and some see the Sisterhood as embodying the teachings of the Triadic Path.

## Skills and traits

### Languages

* Common
* Rodenta
* Sylvan
* Ockran

### Armour/Clothing

As a Councillor, Amanita dresses in ornate robes over which she wears light ceremonial armour constructed from the fruiting bodies of different fungi. She can commonly be seen wearing a green gown, over which she wears a sheer green cape that gathers at the neck and trails behind her, shimmering as if threaded with tiny green glow worms.

Her shoulders are covered in pauldrons of moss, dotted with mushrooms that glow with bioluminescent light, and she frequently wears her hair up, accentuated by a frilled headdress resembling splitgill mushrooms.

Unlike other Sisters in the order, Amanita does not wear a veil due to her unprecedented position between Sister and Sporeseer.

### Items

Amanita wields a ceremonial staff of great significance to the Celial Sisterhood known as “Mother’s Heart”.

The staff appears to be constructed of gnarled wood and is marbled with patches of moss and clusters of bioluminescent fungi. Veins of eerie light pulsate through the staff like blood.

## History

### Backstory

The Sister now known as Amanita, was born in Thornblight to a family of wood elf artisans. Beyond vague impressions of light and sound, there are no memories of her mother. She left when Amanita was less than a year old, leaving her father, Tandir, and his sister, Narwen, to raise her alongside her siblings.

The Helean family had lived in Thornblight for generations, working out of a small shop on the city’s south side, where they created luxury glass goods. During the Mage Wars, the family were forced to shift their trade away from the works of etched and enamelled glass that had earned them their name, turning instead towards more practical goods. Her father became known for his sturdy bottles, vials, and other glassware, and her aunt specialised in creating lamps and lanterns that could be seen lining the city streets. Due to his craft, Tandir developed a relationship with the elusive Morozovas and frequently organised large shipments of vials to the isolated Manor.

Amanita and her siblings would frequently accompany Tandir’s caravan as he traded in major cities across Westmarch and the Shadowfen, ensuring their family’s precious goods stayed safe during the rocky journeys.

This is where Amanita’s true history begins.

When she was four years old, her family was travelling up the Roseway to trade in the kingdom’s capital when they were forced to take a detour through the Northern Mountains. As they camped one evening, Amanita – ever a curious and absent-minded child – wandered off into the jungle. The memory of what happened that night remains lost, even from Amanita herself. Her family didn’t find her until morning when she appeared by the family’s caravan, her hair a tangled nest of knots and twigs where tiny mushrooms had taken root.

In the following weeks and months, Amanita withdrew from the family and began to manifest strange abilities. She cared little for joining other children in play and would spend hours making mushrooms sprout in the family’s garden or digging holes as if searching for something she had lost. Then, one day, a halfling glassblower from Nerridum visited the family store, and Amanita, who had never spoken, nor heard Common in her short life, began to converse with the woman in the Common tongue. To her family, such occurrences could not be explained by anything other than magic.

Her father sent for a group of Cunning folk, who confirmed Amanita was indeed touched with primordial magic. However, where she had learned this magic remained a mystery. A mystery to all but the Celial Sister who accompanied the group. She never spoke a word, never even removed her veil, but Amanita watched the Sister with an intense eye and appeared to nod her head as if engaged in conversation.

A day later, two Sisters appeared at the family’s door and requested Amanita be brought to the Celial Sanctum in Greensgood to train with the Sisterhood. Amanita’s father was hesitant, knowing tales of the distant and inhuman Sisters. They assured Tandir that such a decision was for Amanita’s own benefit, and after over an hour of argument, he relented and agreed to let Amanita train with the Sisterhood. But only on one condition: she would be allowed to return once a year to Thornblight.

But she never did return. In 1219, at only five years of age, Amanita was initiated into the Sisterhood and sworn to the secrecy of the order. Under the shadow of the Citadel and in the presence of the First Spore, she was given the name “Amanita”.

By the time she was ten, Amanita had already reached the rank of Sister, owing to her seemingly innate connection with the Network: a type of connection that none had seen outside the Sporeseers since the Diminishing began. However, the decision to initiate her into the Sisterhood itself proved controversial, and many rejected the suggestion that a child – one whose own memories had barely taken root – could hold the memories of the Network itself.

Within two years of her appointment, in 1226, amidst the tumult of the Great Strife, the Sisterhood was shaken by the death of one of its few remaining Sporeseers. The death of Mother Erina, Seer of the Bellton Sanctum, was seen as suspicious by many, considering that Erina was far from the oldest Seer in the order and considering the Ironclad Union’s increased mining activity in sites close to the Network. After over five hundred years serving the Sisterhood, Erina was returned to the Network, where her memories would forever lie. But not before she whispered the name of her successor to the Network, a name which spread across Stormbound and sang in the minds of every Sporeling, Sister, and Mother: “Amanita”.

With the uttering of a single word, eons of Sisterhood tradition almost dissolved in an instant. The debate surrounding Amanita re-emerged with a newfound ferocity. Sisters, young and old, railed against Erina’s wishes. If she was appointed, Amanita would have been the youngest Sporeseer in memory and threatened the sanctity of the order and the stability of the Network at a time when the Sisterhood’s power was dwindling by the day.

After weeks of intense debate, quelled only when Mother Mellean of the Greensgood Sanctum interfered and threw the weight of her station behind Amanita, the young elf took root in Bellton Sanctum. At twelve years of age – barely an adolescent in the eyes of mortals and barely a child in the eyes of elves – Amanita became one with the Network. Mosses and fungus covered her skin like armour, her veins became hyphae that reached the continent’s core, and her young mind burned with the knowledge of all that was and all that is.

In a land of industry and iron, few roots survived. Only a few Sisters remained in the Ironclad Union toward the borders of the Empire, but still, they endured. Amanita watched over the Sanctum for twenty years, alone in the darkness but surrounded by the memories of eternity. Over time, she began to resemble the glow worms and fungus of the Sanctum that surrounded her, glowing with luminescent light that gave her an almost spectral appearance.

She had one companion, however, a mining-class construct designated CR E230. They had stumbled upon the Sanctum eighteen years into her time as Sporeseer and became enthralled by the beauty of the grotto. Unaffected by the Sanctum’s spore defences, they lingered for hours in the caves. Then, like clockwork, they returned every week, filling pages with sketches of the Sanctum’s bioluminescent garden and listening for hours as Amanita wove stories from the memories of the past.

Then, as quickly as her Seerhood began. It ended.

In 1247, forces from the Ironclad Union succeeded where none before them had, destroying a branch of the Celium Network and invading the Bellton Sanctum. Amanita attempted to harness the strength of her ancestors but faced with a horde of metal foes and the Sisterhood’s atrophying magic, she could do little to stop the destruction of the Sanctum. Arms pulled the Sister from the earth, blades tore her veins from the Network, and Amanita watched as axes tore down the sacred heart of the Sanctum.

Her body was severed, and her mind was fractured. If not for a construct designated CR E230, who stole Amanita away during the chaos, she likely would have died alongside her home. It was CR E230 that carried her through the mountains to Westbank and returned her to the Sisterhood. She would spend the next three months recovering from her injuries and piecing together her fractured memories of the assault.

Having recovered and returned to the Shadowfen, Amanita now serves on the Greenheart Council, representing Mother Mellean of the Greensgood Sanctum. Having seen firsthand the boldness of the Union and the devastation wrought upon the very body of the Celium Network, Amanita fears for the future of the Sisterhood. On the Council, she advocates for greater protections for the Sisterhood and other remaining magical institutions and renewed caution towards dealing with the Union. But her warnings have gone largely unheeded.

Internally, she faces a struggle against the Sisterhood itself. Sisters are long-lived, and memories are not easily forgotten. Due to the collapse of the Network before the attack on Amanita’s Sanctum, many reject the claim that the Union destroyed the grotto. Some believe Amanita personally led to the downfall of the Bellton Sanctum, and some believe she chose to leave, as young and inexperienced as she was during her appointment as Sporeseer.

All that is certain is that the survival of the Sisterhood stands on a knife edge, and even their memory might soon be forgotten.