Xanthoria

The book's browned pages have become swollen and wrinkled due to age and exposure to moisture. Crumbling yellow lichen obscures the title on the front cover, rendering it illegible. Harmless spores puff into the air when the book is opened. Standing eight and a half inches tall and five inches wide, it has been catalogued as Xanthoria, titled after the author who is identified inside the work.
Written in Common, Xanthoria begins with a set of scientific essays about symbiotic relationships in nature before deteriorating into confusing ramblings on the merits and similarities of life and death. It describes the author's numerous experiments both natural and unnatural. One of the more thorough studies details the life cycle of a worm-like parasite that infiltrates different species of wasps, taking over their motor functions, while essentially wearing their still-living bodies as a disguise so the parasites can infect other wasps.
Xanthoria was fearful of a surge in undead invading the forest near her home in the Lykortha Expanse, a cave complex. She was seeking a way to stop their spread and preserve what she viewed as the natural order of things. Most of the book discusses healthy symbiotic relationships in nature. The author spent time researching undead in the hope of gaining insight into their actions and ascertaining where they could be coming from. As the author sinks into madness, the writing turns into almost incomprehensible fragments, many alluding to her desire to combine natural life and the undead. The end of the book records several failed attempts by Xanthoria to extend her life through a process similar to becoming a lich. There are various drawings of dissected animals and humanoids alongside musings on the viability of experimenting on fey creatures.
The sketches and margin notes get progressively darker the farther one reads. The terms "Mycorji? Shedaklah?" and "Lady of Lichen" appear several times each. Furthermore, the number 222 appears frequently throughout the latter half of the book devoid of explanation.

Item type

Book / Document