Nymphlopedia

Entry 95: (Glowing) Mushroom Nymphs

Vince pounded his foot on the bright blue mushroom grass deep underground. The glow was something that would always take time to get used to. Especially the odd properties of being able to muddy up sunlight and make it look like it's night, should that shit be moved to the surface.

"Okay, are they here NOW?!" He asked. "This is driving me crazy! Even compared to all the other Nymphs! THEY. WON'T. SHOW. THEMSELVES."

"Maybe they're shy in which case, well, your yelling isn't helping." Sonata told him.

They looked at each other.

And then laughed.

"SHY NYMPHS?!" Sonata asked. "What did I even SAY there?!"

"You should be a comedian!" Vince shouted. "That was gut-busting!"

It took them a long time to cool down, but they did. And both sat down on the cap of a particularly large mushroom.

"It's just like the older-ish days, huh Vince?" Sonata asked. "It's only you and me. In a biome that was everywhere near our home. Tania's not around. So um... are you still scared of me?"

"Now? No. When you get the Zenith? Fuck yes."

Hey, speak of the devil (or, speak of the angel?), Tania literally dropped by. Falling from a hole above.

"That didn't work." She said. "Sorry. That thing is still up there."

Sonata waved her hand. "The recruits are safe, right?"

"Well you're about to see them righ-"

A huge pile of Nymphs, of all the types met so far, also came crashing on the mushroom grass.

Tania was dead-center and crushed by them. And since she wasn't too far from the others... they were crushed too.

Nobody died but there was a lot of complaints and scared exclamations. Comments about being waist-deep in Nymph ass were common. 90% of them came from Sonata.

Then a quartet of massive mushroom vine... tentacle things burst from the ground and wrapped themselves in all the army, as they tried to get out.

"ALRIGHT ALREADY!" Roared a blue Nymph with smaller versions of fungal stem-vines around her limbs. She was also levitating. "You have FINALLY called me to leave out of my hiding! What is it that you want?! If I don't like your answer, you'll all DIE."

She looked at the pileup. Despite being completely obscured by all the other varieties, the Glowing Mushroom Nymph seemed to spot...

"Tania?"

"Mmphm! Mmrph!" Tania protested, mouth having an arm in it at the time.

"...You brought me the Last Dryad. Excellent."

Sonata sighed. "And everybody here hates the Dryad and wants to fight her. Yep. Nostalgia."

Vince sighed. "Still, it's pretty good to be ba-"

And then of course Dave had to literally slide in to the room. Like, he pulled a Kramer Slide.

"ALAST! DAVE'S HERE TO- oh shit I came in at a bad time."

He slid away-

Or, tried to. Then the Mushroom Nymph wrapped another vine around him.

Glowing Mushroom Nymphs.

The extra-elusive Nymphs of the glowing blue fungi. Life is, in many ways, at their fingertips.

Preferred Environment: Glowing Mushroom Fields.

Environment Threat Level: Severe.

Environment Stats: Moist. Cool. Moderate on the mundane-fantastic scale. Semicommon (underground, on the surface they are extremely rare). Large fields where blue mushrooms grow tall. Contains several fungi-infected lifeforms and

Other Names: Blueglow Nymphs, Fungi Nymphs, Mushroom Nymphs.

Affinity: Fire.

Color: Dull Blue.

Traditional Costume Weapon: Vine-like mushroom stems around their arms and legs, some times around their necks. Helps give them a connection to the special blue glowing fungal lifeforms, and somehow enables them to channel ranged weapons and get good accuracy.

Vince's Comment: My mirror match, some of the hardest Nymphs I've fought - they're great shooters. Arrows, bullets, rockets, you name it. I'm glad I didn't run in to them until way, way after the Wall of Flesh.

Sonata's Comment: No dick jokes around them. At all. They fucking hate them. I don't care how phallic you think a given mushroom looks. No. Dick. Jokes.

Tania's Comment: Glowing Mushroom Nymphs.
Nymphae Meridiem.
The Glow is actually one of the forms of life outside my native Jungles and Forests that I have a stronger connection to than most. This is the most common and viscious of the mushroom biomes, and sadly the only one documented in the First Edition. The fungi here can take others as their hosts, and these Nymphs, while not on the same level as Parasite Nymphs, work similarly. They have some ties to controlling other living beings, almost akin to puppetry. They are brutal, yet normally well-intentioned. They have a... complicated relationship with our local Truffle, Shimeji. To say the absolute least.

Shimeji's Comment: These monsters try to eat me too! You'd think since they live with my family, they'd respect me! But no!
(Note from Sonata: I mean... Oreads... we're kinda like "Human buddies" but we eat Humans so... yeah...)

Closing AN:

Woah shoot I almost forgot the "Bestiary description."

Okay, as I said last chapter this is the last of the "vanilla biome" Nymphs! I... think that includes if I decide to go on and do a "Second Edition" or whatever. Bee Hives and Spider Nests are the only possible exceptions. (And yeah, this should go without saying, but "Dungeon Nymphs" won't be a thing. Sorry to disappoint you, but technically Oreads could be seen as that sort of thing.) I mean, technically the Dryad one is an exception (Forest and Jungle), but... yeah, that's a "special one." I'm talking about the Nymph Variants. The ones I made up.

Also I really, really wanted to just have one-words for all the "titles" but this... yeah. Also, Hot-Cold. That one was really pushing it. I might just rename them to "Glow Nymphs" or something to fit with the naming scheme of the rest.

And this time Dave referring to himself in first-person in the second half of his only line was intentional.