The Immortal Naturalist's Guide to Cryptic Creatures: Wandering Ivy

This post is part of the Immortal Naturalist's Guide series. The explanation for that series can be found in this post.

    Wandering Ivy is one of the more well-known residents of the Platinum Valley, at least to the kobolds who live there. Descriptions of her, however, are unknown outside of the Kobold Lands and tend towards the outlandish. By all accounts, Wandering Ivy is a friendly creature, about the size of a large dog, who spends her time wandering the woods in search of her favorite food, mushrooms. Ivy seems to be completely immune to any poisons in the mushrooms, so she is able to munch on whatever fungus she finds. Without a permanent home, Ivy spends her days walking up and down the Platinum Valley, always wandering. Despite having been wandering for a long time, Wandering Ivy seems to get tangled up in the undergrowth and vines quite often. Rather than get herself free, Ivy will simply wait until someone comes along and sees her, at which point she will reveal her ability to speak so she can ask for help. Whoever helps Wandering Ivy is then granted a single wish in exchange for their kindness.

    Long ago, Wandering Ivy was cursed for eating mushrooms from the basket of a powerful mage. She can never go more than a month without getting tangled up in vines and bushes, requiring the help of a kind stranger to get free. After being freed, Ivy must grant her hero a wish, although Wandering Ivy has no control over how the wish is granted. Frequently, this results in unfortunate consequences for the wisher, as part of the curse seems to be to twist the words of wishes to have less than ideal results. The only way to avoid this is to either leave Ivy trapped, or to ask for something very simple that cannot be twisted easily. While she is quite friendly and nice to talk to, Wandering Ivy can be driven off with the sound of metal scraping on slate. This sound seems to be more than just unpleasant for the creature, causing her actual physical injuries after more than a few seconds of exposure.

    Ivy is an expert at finding mushrooms, though, and there is no reason to want to drive her off. Instead, I recommend doing what I did, which was strike a deal with her where she will lead me to high quality and rare mushrooms in exchange for half of the mushrooms gathered. Having a person around to to free her if she get stuck on the journey is quite useful, and Ivy is happy to trade half of the fungus found for this service. I was able to find many mushrooms that have powerful magical effects this way, as well as many that tasted good and which I was able to sell for large amounts of money. While I do not really think of Wandering Ivy as a good friend, she and I certainly make a lucrative team. I would recommend that anyone with an interest in mushrooms and fungi find Wandering Ivy and go foraging with her, even if she is difficult to get along with.