Flora & Forage of the Murmuring Depths

The Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar support a varied subterranean ecology shaped by water, living root systems, fungal networks, cultivated caverns, mineral conditions, and the settlements that have developed among them.

This article covers the established biological materials of the Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar specifically. It is not a universal catalogue for every subterranean region of Eldareth, and the Hollow Dark lies outside its scope.

A material is listed only once even when it occurs through several cavern systems. Forage Frequency describes how likely a wild material is to be encountered within suitable habitat. Cultivated or otherwise managed resources use Availability where ordinary foraging would be misleading.

The Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Exceptional classifications describe overall catalogue availability. A material with restricted habitat can still be locally common where the conditions it requires are present.

Herbs, Fungi & Botanical Materials

The table below provides a quick reference for the established tracked botanical materials of the Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar.

Common

Ashmoss

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar
Forage Frequency: Common
Tracked Quantity: 1 portion
Value: 1 gp
Material Type: Reagent
Properties: Absorbent

Short Description: Ashmoss is a dense pale-grey moss that forms thick cushions across damp, mineral-rich stone. Its tightly layered growth can hold a considerable amount of liquid without immediately breaking apart.

Wild: Ashmoss favors humid caverns, seepage channels, sheltered stone, drainage areas, and places where mineral-rich water regularly passes over rock. It is especially dependable along damp travel routes and around maintained waterworks.

Stored: Harvested mats are cleaned and partially dried. Material intended for medicinal or alchemical work is kept free of grit and mineral debris.

Direct Use: None.

Common Crafting Uses: Wound dressings, compresses, liquid carriers, filtration, sample collection, drying preparations, and absorbent packing.

When appropriate to a Recipe or Formula, one portion provides 1 gp of Ingredient Credit.

Uncommon

Bittercrown

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar, particularly lower agricultural basins and Threzkathar-held regions
Availability: Uncommon in specialist cultivation
Tracked Quantity: 1 portion
Value: 4 gp
Material Type: Reagent
Properties: Antitoxic

Short Description: Bittercrown is a low subterranean plant with broad waxy leaves surrounding a swollen lower stem. The useful crown contains intensely bitter compounds valued in antitoxin preparation and controlled venom processing.

Cultivated: Bittercrown is grown in prepared mineral-rich soils along stable irrigation systems. It is particularly associated with Threzkathar medicine and toxicology in the lower agricultural basins.

Recovery: Mature crowns are cut once their useful compounds have fully developed. A healthy cultivated plant can normally be harvested without a check when access is permitted.

Stored: Harvested crowns are split and dried or reduced into bitter shavings. Properly dried material keeps well when protected from damp.

Direct Use: None. Raw Bittercrown is not an antidote, and eating it untreated commonly causes nausea.

Common Crafting Uses: Antitoxins, venom-neutralizing preparations, controlled venom processing, medical compounds involving toxic secretions, and Formulae requiring an Antitoxic Reagent.

When appropriate to a Recipe or Formula, one portion provides 4 gp of Ingredient Credit.

Chalklace

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar, especially mineral-rich seepages, mine drainage, mineral springs, and comparable wet stone
Forage Frequency: Uncommon within suitable mineral-seep habitat
Tracked Quantity: 1 portion
Value: 4 gp
Material Type: Reagent
Properties: Stabilizing

Short Description: Chalklace is a pale crust-forming fungal-microbial symbiosis that spreads in fine interlocking ridges across mineral-stained stone. Mature colonies resemble chalk dust worked into branching lace.

Wild: Chalklace favors stone repeatedly exposed to mineral-rich water. Colonies occur around slow seepage, mineral springs, salt-bearing wet stone, mine drainage, and similar environments where dissolved minerals accumulate gradually.

Stored: Harvested Chalklace is dried thoroughly and kept as brittle flakes or coarse powder. Material intended for specialist craft is cleaned of excess stone and unrelated mineral debris.

Direct Use: None.

Common Crafting Uses: Mineral suspensions, specialist glazes, resin curing, ceramic preparations, crystal and mineral processing, and mixtures where fine material must remain evenly distributed as a binder sets.

When appropriate to a Recipe or Formula, one portion provides 4 gp of Ingredient Credit.

Knotreed

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar
Forage Frequency: Uncommon within suitable wet-cavern habitat
Tracked Quantity: 1 bundle
Value: 4 gp
Material Type: Fiber
Properties: Binding

Short Description: Knotreed is a pale rush-like plant growing in dense clumps along permanent subterranean waterways. Its long narrow leaves contain tough fibers that remain flexible and retain knots unusually well after repeated soaking and drying.

Wild: Knotreed favors shallow margins, damp sediment, irrigation channels, lake edges, and stream banks. Fishing communities, agricultural settlements, and route maintainers also establish Knotreed beds along managed waterways.

Stored: Mature leaves and stems are dried before the inner fibers are separated. Prepared fibers store well as loose bundles, twisted cord, or unfinished line when protected from rot and prolonged saturation.

Direct Use: None.

Common Crafting Uses: Fishing nets, wet rope, bridge lashings, climbing lines, livestock tack, barge fittings, reinforced stitching, woven containers, and other constructions requiring dependable Fiber in damp environments.

When appropriate to a Recipe or Formula, one bundle provides 4 gp of Ingredient Credit.

Palecomb

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar
Forage Frequency: Uncommon
Tracked Quantity: 1 portion
Value: 2 gp
Material Type: Reagent
Properties: Medicinal

Short Description: Palecomb is a cream-grey shelf fungus distinguished by the dense honeycombed structure beneath its cap. Its inner tissues contain compounds widely used in Thal'Ruun wound care and medicinal preparations.

Wild: Palecomb favors cool humid caverns with abundant organic material, particularly areas containing decaying roots, fungal beds, accumulated debris, and stable moisture. Useful colonies are also maintained around some settlements.

Stored: Mature caps are sliced and dried carefully. Poor storage can encourage secondary fungal growth that ruins the useful tissue.

Direct Use: None.

Common Crafting Uses: Medicinal washes, salves, wound preparations, treatments for irritated tissue, common fungal infections, and other preparations requiring a Medicinal Reagent.

When appropriate to a Recipe or Formula, one portion provides 2 gp of Ingredient Credit.

Rare

Gleamfoil

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar, living Great Tree rootlands around Thalradir and the deep roots of Ashal'ardor
Forage Frequency: Common within suitable living Great Tree rootlands
Tracked Quantity: 1 bundle
Value: 8 gp
Material Type: Reagent
Properties: Retentive

Short Description: Gleamfoil is a low-growing perennial found only within the living rootlands of Great Trees. Its dark blue-green leaflets are crossed by fine translucent veins carrying a faint version of the light present within the surrounding roots.

Around Thalradir, those veins commonly glow emerald-silver. Around Ashal'ardor, they tend toward pale silver or blue-white.

Wild: Gleamfoil grows in soil pockets, organic debris, moist crevices, and sheltered ground among living Great Tree roots. It depends upon the stable environment created by those root systems and does not establish permanent populations throughout ordinary Murmuring Depths.

Stored: Fresh bundles remain luminous for several hours. Once the light fades, properly dried material remains useful for crafting but does not naturally recharge away from a living Great Tree rootland.

Direct Use: A freshly harvested bundle sheds Dim Light in a 10-foot radius for 8 hours.

The light provides no additional magical detection or revealing effect.

Common Crafting Uses: Luminous pigments, route markings, magical inks, ritual markings, specialist signage, inscribed Components, and Formulae requiring a material capable of retaining and slowly releasing a minor magical charge.

When appropriate to a Recipe or Formula, one bundle provides 8 gp of Ingredient Credit.

Foods & Edible Forage

The following tracked foods represent significant quantities used for subsistence, agriculture, cooking, or trade.

Common

Breadroot

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar
Availability: Commonly cultivated in suitable agricultural caverns
Tracked Quantity: 1 portion
Value: 2 sp
Material Type: Food
Properties: None

Short Description: Breadroot is a hardy subterranean crop grown for its heavy starch-rich tubers. A short crown of pale green-grey leaves grows above the soil while most of the edible mass develops below ground.

Cultivated: Breadroot favors damp, loose soil and prepared agricultural beds. It tolerates poorer growing conditions than Cave Barley and is valued for dependable yields and good storage life.

Stored: Mature tubers keep well in cool dry storage and can also be sliced and dried into meal.

Direct Use: One properly prepared portion provides approximately one day's food for a Small or Medium creature.

Common Crafting Uses: Boiled or roasted roots, mash, soups, dried meal, dumplings, fermented foods, and preserved travel provisions.

Cave Barley

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar
Availability: Commonly cultivated in suitable agricultural caverns
Tracked Quantity: 1 portion
Value: 2 sp
Material Type: Food
Properties: None

Short Description: Cave Barley is the common trade name for a pale subterranean grain cultivated in soil-rich caverns. Its low stalks produce compact heads of hard grain that can be milled, boiled, or malted.

Cultivated: Cave Barley requires prepared soil, dependable moisture, stable temperatures, and careful maintenance. It is associated primarily with established agricultural settlements.

Stored: Once dried, the grain stores much like conventional cereal crops.

Direct Use: One properly prepared portion provides approximately one day's food for a Small or Medium creature.

Common Crafting Uses: Porridge, flour, flatbreads, malt, beer, spirits, animal feed, and fermented foods.

Rufflebark

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar
Forage Frequency: Common
Tracked Quantity: 1 portion
Value: 2 sp
Material Type: Food
Properties: None

Short Description: Rufflebark is a tough shelf fungus growing in overlapping irregular folds. Its coarse outer rind resembles weathered bark, while its dense inner flesh becomes considerably more palatable after cooking.

Wild: Rufflebark grows on old fungal growth, dead roots, decaying organic material, damp cavern walls, and other surfaces where a steady supply of organic matter is available.

Stored: Rufflebark can be cut into strips and dried. Properly dried material keeps reasonably well when protected from moisture.

Direct Use: One properly prepared portion provides approximately half a day's food for a Small or Medium creature.

Common Crafting Uses: Roasted strips, stews, broths, dried travel food, and preserved fungal mixtures.

Slatecap

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar
Forage Frequency: Common in suitable habitat
Tracked Quantity: 1 portion
Value: 2 sp
Material Type: Food
Properties: None

Short Description: Slatecap is a broad heavy-capped subterranean fungus with a matte slate-blue to blue-grey upper surface and dense pale flesh. It is unpalatable raw but dries well and can be milled into a pale fungal meal.

Wild: Slatecap occurs naturally in damp caverns rich in decaying organic matter. Much of the Slatecap eaten in established settlements comes from deliberately maintained beds.

Stored: Mature caps are normally sliced and dried before storage. Dried Slatecap keeps well and can be milled as required.

Direct Use: One properly prepared portion provides approximately one day's food for a Small or Medium creature.

Common Crafting Uses: Fungal meal, flatbreads, dumplings, porridge, travel cakes, thickening agents, and other staple foods.

Rare

Cavern Truffle

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar
Forage Frequency: Rare
Tracked Quantity: 1 portion
Value: 3 gp
Material Type: Food
Properties: None

Short Description: Cavern Truffles are dense subterranean fruiting bodies prized for their strongly savory flesh. Their rough outer skin ranges from dark brown to clay-grey, while the interior is pale grey to cream.

Wild: Cavern Truffles develop beneath stable soils rich in root fragments, established fungal networks, accumulated organic material, and long-undisturbed biological layers. Productive patches remain difficult to identify even within suitable caverns.

Stored: Fresh truffles keep only briefly without treatment. They are normally brushed clean rather than washed and may be dried, preserved, or incorporated into oils and pastes.

Direct Use: Cavern Truffles are edible, but one portion is too small and rich to count as a meaningful amount of daily food.

Common Crafting Uses: Fermented sauces, rich broths, Cave Barley dishes, fatty meats, eggs, fish, invertebrate dishes, preserved pastes, infused oils, and other high-quality cooking.

Named Non-Tracked Herbs, Fungi & Botanical Resources

The resources in this section are established parts of subterranean agriculture, craft, infrastructure, or settlement life but do not use the Special Material system. They have no standardized Tracked Quantity, Ingredient Credit, Property, or Affinity.

Briarfelt

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar, particularly beneath the Bleakthorn Wilds
Status: Named non-tracked regional tannin growth

Short Description: Briarfelt is a dark mat-forming thalloid growth found where tannin-rich water seeps downward through roots, decaying woodland, abandoned orchard soils, and other organic material. Its dense surface ranges from dark brown and russet to nearly black when saturated.

Wild: Briarfelt is strongly associated with upper subterranean systems beneath the Bleakthorn Wilds, where altered drainage and accumulated woody material have created tannin-heavy seepages.

Common Uses: Tanning hides, brown and red-brown dyes, inks, Hidecap treatment, bitter workshop washes, and ordinary preservation processes involving organic material.

Draftcurl

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar
Status: Named non-tracked environmental indicator growth

Short Description: Draftcurl is a thin ribbed fungal-microbial crust cultivated along ventilation shafts, mines, workshops, storage chambers, and enclosed passages.

Healthy growth forms firm shallow ridges that stand slightly away from the stone. Persistent changes in surrounding air can cause those ridges to soften, curl, flatten, or develop a stronger bitter, earthy, or metallic smell.

Cultivated: Small patches are deliberately maintained where workers want a long-term indication that ordinary ventilation or air conditions have changed.

Common Uses: Monitoring ventilation routes, mine air, workshop fumes, storage chambers, and enclosed infrastructure.

Limitations: Draftcurl reacts over hours or repeated exposure rather than instantly. It does not identify a gas, measure its concentration, or guarantee that the surrounding air is safe.

Drumskin

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar
Status: Named non-tracked membrane fungus

Short Description: Drumskin forms broad thin fungal sheets across sheltered hollows, cavities in large roots, and recessed surfaces within mature fungal environments. Properly cured sheets become thin, tough membranes capable of holding even tension.

Wild and Cultivated: Natural colonies occur wherever suitable moisture, organic material, and protected surfaces remain stable. Some communities deliberately encourage colonies near settlements.

Common Uses: Drums, Rootsong instruments, resonator panels, signaling surfaces, sounding equipment, and other ordinary acoustic craft.

Glowcap

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar
Status: Named non-tracked luminous fungus

Short Description: Glowcap is a bioluminescent fungus found naturally and cultivated in suitable humid caverns. Its mature cap produces a soft cold light.

Wild and Cultivated: Natural colonies grow in damp fungal environments with sufficient organic material. Settlements commonly cultivate Glowcap around paths, homes, farms, work areas, stairways, and garden beds.

Common Uses: Biological illumination, path marking, household light, garden lighting, mundane luminous dyes, and low-light markings.

Glowcap is edible but is not considered a major staple.

Hidecap

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar
Status: Named non-tracked cultivated fungus

Short Description: Hidecap is a tall fungus with a broad leathery cap and an edible inner stalk. Mature caps can be cleaned, stretched, dried, and worked into flexible sheets.

Cultivated: Hidecap is commonly raised around established agricultural settlements where reliable household material is needed.

Common Uses: Wrapping, screens, covers, writing surfaces, garment panels, mantles, aprons, reinforced wraps, pouches, containers, partitions, and other flexible household material.

The inner stalk can also be eaten fresh, dried, or incorporated into ordinary meals.

Siltmoss

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar, primarily maintained waterworks with persistent low-level light
Status: Named non-tracked water-management moss

Short Description: Siltmoss is a low aquatic and semi-aquatic moss forming dense tangled mats across shallow stone frames and water channels. Its branching growth catches grit, silt, loose fungal matter, and other suspended debris as water passes through it.

Cultivated: Siltmoss is grown across perforated stone frames, settling channels, reservoir inlets, irrigation junctions, and other maintained waterworks. It requires a persistent source of low-level light.

Common Uses: Settling suspended grit and organic debris before water reaches reservoirs, irrigation systems, cisterns, or maintained channels.

Limitations: Siltmoss does not remove dissolved poisons, disease, salt, heavy metals, magical contamination, or similar substances. Clear water is not necessarily safe water.

Threadlace

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar
Status: Named non-tracked cultivated textile fungus

Short Description: Threadlace is a cultivated mycelial fungus forming broad mats from thousands of fine pale filaments. It is one of the principal ordinary textile organisms maintained by Thal'Ruun agricultural communities.

Cultivated: Threadlace is grown across prepared beds containing spent fungal substrate, chopped Cave Barley stalks, damaged fungal material, root-crop waste, and other composted organic matter.

Processing: Mature mats are peeled from their substrate, washed, soaked, beaten or combed apart, and dried. The resulting fiber can be spun into thread, woven into cloth, or felted into thicker material.

Common Uses: Kilts, tunics, wraps, shawls, blankets, sacks, household cloth, soft cord, padding, and ceremonial textiles.

Timbercap

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar
Status: Named non-tracked structural fungus

Short Description: Timbercap is a massive cultivated fungus grown for its dense structural tissues. Mature stalks can be cut, cured, pressed, and shaped into a lightweight material capable of filling many roles normally associated with timber.

Cultivated: Large Timbercap beds require substantial space, organic substrate, moisture, and time, making them most common around established settlements with dedicated agricultural or craft caverns.

Common Uses: Boards, beams, containers, shelving, insulation, partitions, furnishings, carts, storage structures, work surfaces, and ordinary construction.

Wickstalk

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar
Status: Named non-tracked fuel fungus

Short Description: Wickstalk is a fibrous fungus whose mature tissues contain naturally combustible oils. Once dried, sections burn steadily enough to serve as crude torches, firestarters, and household fuel.

Wild and Cultivated: Wickstalk grows in organic-rich fungal environments and is deliberately maintained around many settlements.

Common Uses: Torches, tinder, firestarting, hearth fuel, workshop heating, and other ordinary solid-fuel applications.

The softer inner tissue is technically edible but is not generally valued as food.

Named Non-Tracked Foods & Culinary Biological Resources

These resources are important to subterranean cuisine, subsistence, fermentation, agriculture, or household use but are not individually tracked through the Special Material system.

Barrelstalk

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar
Status: Named non-tracked subsistence fungus

Short Description: Barrelstalk is a large thick-walled fungus whose mature stalk develops a hollow central chamber containing clear water. The surrounding flesh is also edible, though coarse.

Wild and Cultivated: Barrelstalk occurs naturally in suitable damp caverns and is also cultivated around routes, farms, livestock enclosures, and settlements where biological water storage is useful.

A healthy Barrelstalk growing in uncontaminated conditions normally contains drinkable water, though the organism does not purify contaminated surroundings.

Common Uses: Drinking water, emergency route supplies, coarse food, and supplemental water storage.

Crockbarm

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar
Status: Named non-tracked fermentation culture

Short Description: Crockbarm is the common name for maintained mixed cultures of yeasts, fungi, and related microorganisms used in subterranean baking, brewing, and food fermentation.

Cultivated: Crockbarm is maintained rather than foraged. Households, brewers, bakers, kitchens, and food processors keep active cultures in covered crocks and transfer small amounts into fresh substrate as required.

Common Uses: Slatecap breads, Cave Barley beer, fermented fungal foods, sour grain dishes, sauces, vegetable preparations, fish fermentation, pickling, and other preserved foods.

Pepper Lichen

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar
Status: Named non-tracked culinary growth

Short Description: Pepper Lichen is an orange-red subterranean lichen-like symbiosis with a sharp warming flavor when dried and ground. It is strongly associated with warm stone, mineral-rich seepage, and geothermally active caverns.

Wild: Colonies grow slowly across suitable rock. Gatherers normally remove narrow strips rather than clearing entire patches.

Common Uses: Spice blends, fungal stews, sauces, pickled foods, fermented pastes, brewing, and strongly flavored spirits.

Stone Ribbon

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar, within suitable nutrient-rich underground waterways
Status: Named non-tracked edible aquatic growth

Short Description: Stone Ribbon is a broad ribbon-forming thalloid organism that anchors itself to submerged rock in streams, rivers, and lake margins. Its flexible blades are usually dark olive, grey-green, muted brown, or nearly black.

Wild and Managed: Stone Ribbon grows where suitable water chemistry, nutrients, and local biological conditions support established beds. Some fishing communities encourage useful growth along managed waterways.

Common Uses: Young growth can be blanched or cooked. Mature material can be dried, fermented, added to fish dishes, or used as animal feed.

Stonekernel

Regions: Murmuring Depths beneath Vel'Nathar
Status: Named non-tracked oil crop

Short Description: Stonekernel is a low subterranean plant producing tight clusters of hard grey-shelled seeds around a swollen basal crown. Cracking the shell reveals a pale soft kernel rich in oil.

Cultivated: Stonekernel is grown in prepared agricultural beds with dependable moisture and healthy fungal soil associations.

Mature seeds are dried, cracked, ground, and pressed. The first pressing produces the best food-grade oil, while later pressings are more commonly used for household or workshop purposes.

Common Uses: Cooking oil, lamp oil, soapmaking, salve bases, Hidecap dressing, textile conditioning, workshop lubrication, and ordinary protective coatings.