Legend of the Greenpaw Emancipator

For centuries, the shroomkin lived happily in their fungus-infested subterranean caverns. They built an unsophisticated, peaceful society and lived a contented, simple existence with no ambition other than to be passive and comfortable.

One thousand years ago, the Shin’hare were driven underground by the Humans and the Elves , in an effort to exile the aggressive rabbits from the surface world once and for all. After establishing themselves underground, the shin’hare discovered the existence of the shroomkin and enslaved them.

The shroomkin did not resist their bondage, mostly because they did not know how.

The shin’hare unloaded the full weight of their sadistic tendencies upon the shroomkin; overseers use the fungus people as manual laborers until they die from overwork, concubunnies grind shroomkin elders into paste to feed to their litters, warlocks consume shroom-souls in gruesome Blood Magic rituals, and rangers use live shroompins for target practice.

Shroomkin rarely speak (they are capable of speech, but they often forget this fact). They generally communicate through various fungal appendages that they use as a sign language. Shin’hare have been known to amputate these appendages, leaving the shroomkin unable to communicate the way they feel most comfortable.

Out on the Howling Plains, one coyotle has learned of the plight of the shroomkin. This mighty warrior, the Greenpaw Emancipator, has made it his life’s goal to free all shroomkin currently enslaved by the shin’hare.



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Glooo held out the gift at arms-length to admire it. It was a good gift. As good, or better than any gift she’d ever given. It was better than pebble, better than dirt, maybe even better than rock. It was stone, and it was smooth and round. She tucked the gift behind her stalk and waddled her way to Bruuu.

Bruuu pulled gifts from the wall of the tunnel and piled them on a shroombarrow for the fur-fathers. Bent to his task, he didn’t notice Glooo’s approach, giving her time to admire his shroominess; the strength of his stalk, the flurred gills on the underside of his shroom cap, and the wartiness of his volval patches. Bruuu was a hard worker. Even now during the brief rest when the fur fathers relaxed their beatings and Glooo and the other shroomkin gave gifts to each other, Bruuu kept gifting the barrow.

Glooo coughed an interrupting “cooo” that Bruuu either ignored or didn’t notice, continuing with his displacement of rocks, dirts, and chunks of earth. “Cooo”, she tried again, louder this time. Bruuu stopped his work and looked her way. “Cooo” she cooed, looking up at him shroomingly through her fluttering gills. “Cooo”, grunted Bruuu as he turned back to his work.

“Wooo” she wooed.

Bruuu stopped and turned again.

Glooo pulled her hands from behind her back and presented her gift to Bruuu, “Grooo Bruuu, Grooo”.

“Grooo goo”, he grumbled, taking the smooth, beautiful stone and tossing it on the barrow with the others and bending back to work.

Glooo’s heart sank in her stalk. She wished there was a unique gift she could give, something different from the brown all around them. Something full of life that she could share with Bruuu so he would know beyond doubt how she felt about him. She missed her fungal fronds desperately at that moment, felt ghostly stirrings from the nubs on her cap and stalk from where they had sprouted before the fur fathers had sliced them off. Without her stalks, gifting was the only form of communication she had.

Glooo shuffled back to the gift pit to move rocks and look for something special to gift to Bruuu. She passed close to the watching fur father on her way. He growled and made to strike her cap and she cowered, but the blow didn’t come.

The fur father choked out a “kekkkk” and moved his hand to his throat. Someone had gifted him a stick that stuck out from his neck. He put his hands to the stick and slumped to the ground, his eyes closed and a contented look on his face. Glooo looked around and saw several other fur fathers fall, holding tight to sticks that had been gifted to their throats, bellies, and in one case, even an eye socket. Glooo smiled, happy to see the fur fathers contentedly lying about holding their gifts rather than stomping on and yelling at her and her fellow shrooms all day.

Glooo saw a giant fur father step from behind a shroom barrow, a quiver of stick gifts on his back and a bow with which he could deliver them. The giant fur father was a nightmare version of the fur fathers she knew, his two friendly cap fronds trimmed down to points, his mouth distended and filled with sharpened teeth, and the friendly puffball on his bottom replaced by a sinuous snake of a tail. The giant fur father tipped Bruuu’s barrow and climbed on top of the discarded gift pile. “FREEDOM!” he roared.

Bruuu and the shrooms ran the full length of their chains, cowering against the tunnel wall. A group of local fur fathers ran in the tunnel and started shooting gift sticks at the giant full tailed fur father. The giant father’s gifts must have been better because the small fathers would clutch them to their stomachs and throats and lay down with their kin. The giant father was a cranky gift hater that would swat the small father’s gifts from the air and yell “FREEDOM!” over and over again.

Soon the small fathers were all resting with their new gifts. The giant father came to the huddled mass of terrified shrooms. He broke the chains the small fathers had gifted to them and the shrooms cowered, afraid he might strike off their limbs as well.

Somewhere off down a side tunnel, an alarm was raised. The giant father became more agitated, his tail bristling as he yelled, “SHROOMKIN!”.

“Woooooo!” they wailed.

“YOU HAVE BEEN FREED!”, he howled, “I AM YOUR EMANCIPATOR!”

“Wuuub”, wuuubed Wuuub.

“Gluuub”, cried Gluuub.

“Glooo?” asked Glooo.

“You are free,” he roared, “I have broken your shackles! Follow me to the land above!” The giant father lept from the barrow pile and turned to the large tunnel that led upwards.

“Wluuub” said Gluuub as he and the others turned back to their gifts, trying to reattach the broken chains.

“No!” howled the giant father, “You are slaves no longer! I have GIVEN you your freedom”! The other shrooms went about their gifting, but something the giant father said caught Glooo’s attention.

“Grooo?” she asked.

The giant father ran to Glooo and took her hand, pointing up the great tunnel to the small point of light at its end, “Come young shroomkin. The gift of freedom awaits”.

A gift! “Grooo?” she asked.

“Yes!” he affirmed, “The gift of freedom. The gift of the world above. The gift of sunshine and flowers, sweet smells and storm clouds”.

“Grooo!” Glooo yelped, pulling her hand from the giant fathers and turning to her shroom kins. “Grooo”, she said, “Gooo, gooo, Grooo!”

Bruuu took a step towards Glooo and dropped his chains, “G-g-grooo?” he asked.

She nodded her cap, “Grooo.”

“Grooo” Bruuu grunted to the others.

“Grooo!” they yelled as one.

They followed the giant father up the slope to the land above. Soon they spilled into the sun and spread out upon that never before seen carpet of green like spores from an exploding puffball.

Wuuub and Gluuub waddled to a stream and pulled shiny smooth gifts from the water to share with Cooo, who in return gifted spikey cone gifts fallen from a nearby gifting tree.

Glooo found her gift in the center of a patch of green, light and dainty like nothing below, with colors that came from the sun and smells that evoked the uncounted freedoms of the new land.

“A flower”, the giant fur father said, plucking the gift and gifting it to Glooo.

“Flooo”, she repeated.



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Glooo found Bruuu gifting amongst the others. Even in the new world he was a strong gifter who’d already piled many gifts around him.

“Flooo”, Glooo blushed, gifting Bruuu the flower that said so many of the things she needed to say.

“Flooo?” Bruuu asked.

“Flooo” Glooo confirmed.

“Flooo!” Bruuu exclaimed, swallowing the flower, then burping contentedly.