ORIGIN

Legba had travelled around Cetus as he grew--hunting, resting, exploring. He'd come to know the trees of the Groves, the Crags, the strange Divine.

He had, in the end, decided upon creating a home in the Crags. There were other spiders there--huge Deer Spiders lurking under the jutting cliff-stones, ready and willing to spit venom and throw web and otherwise kill him, but Legba had been cautious. He'd been filling the edges of their abodes with fungus, where he could, making it hard for them to get out on 'his' side, and otherwise sitting quietly-camouflaged here or there.

Once his fungal rot had chased off, gradually, the worst of them--who found it was irritating slogging through Inky Caps each time they left their dens--he picked a place for himself. It was on the outskirts, where thick tree roots rose through the mud, where the tall and jagged slabs of stone dipped down into the wet. He picked what amounted to a small and rocky lean-to, with the roots and stone at least providing a damp surface instead of a foot-deep pool of water.

Forefeet brushed over chelicerae as his glowing white eyes looked it all over.

Yes... this would do quite nicely.

"I be makin' you a home, then," he informed the region itself, and set to it: first pulling away the loose sticks and dead clumps of marsh grass where they'd been dragged or blown over the rock.

Then he set about setting up a ring of Inky Cap, so that any would-be attackers might run into something that would at least give them pause.

What sprang up did so slowly, a curtain of black sprouts, and he rubbed his feet together gleefully.

It's a start, he thought, enthusiastically.

He tippy-tapped his way around the ring, thinking. One foot was clacking--his stone--and as he brushed it over the black fungus, an idea struck him.

What about some light-? Dim, but... atmospheric.

"Magic light, hahaha yesss..." he crooned. "For atmosphere." He'd seen the right kind of fungus--nothing brilliantly bright, but those wood-rotting green-glowing shelf fungi. He'd even grown it, once.

He'd just have to find some samples...

He cast out his magic, skittering off into the swamp and peering with both eyes and power.

There were bits of mold lying here and there, fungus along the rotten plants, mushrooms cropping up out of the water--ahh, and there was the wood-rotting shelf fungus.

Theeeere ya are, he thought, and scuttled toward it.

It was the work of a few minutes to pry free a sample or two of the pale fungus. He used feet and curved fangs, and when it was firmly in his grasp, he made his way back to his new den.

This stuff was just a dull and spongy white, but when damp or dark, it glowed phosphorescent green. He began to split it up, to spread it out around the circle's edges, to shake it--hoping the spores would fall. He wasn't quite sure where they were on the fungus, but he hoped it'd be enough.

When he was ready, he stepped out before it all and--like a conductor--raised his two forelimbs high. Magicka sparked again, his dumortierite stone kicking up a bright, eerie blue glow.

"Ahahaha... there ya go," he murmured, watching as they all took root. A few sprang up into shelves of their own, here and there, and he realized at once that they'd need a substrate other than dirt to survive. Once they were growing, he turned, letting the magic drop and sifting through the nearby swamp: looking for rotten bits of wood for his new lights to eat.