Boletus

Boletus was founded by Myconids tasked with spreading vegetation across a region devastated in the Hoof Front (9245 GE - 9262 GE). There work began around Ghak, once the capital of Orcus's Bal-Kriav holdings. Masters of subterranean forestry, they created the Andurja Fungal, a subterranean forest that expanded northward, with Boletus moving along at the head of a underworld jungle as thick as any on the surface.

In 1501 HE, Boletus slowed to its present spot. It stopped at the Demons Ladder, a point where the territories of two rival city-states touched, a deep and wide canyon extending upwards for hundreds of feet and downwards ten times that. It was then the western border of Neben-Skerah and the eastern border of Zoethall. Faced by numbers, and seasoned troops, Boletus was no match. They were pacifists. Their neighbors took advantage of this, extorting and cajoling, forcing their merchants to sell their foodstuffs on the cheap; masters at subterranean farming, Boletus's was and still is the breadbasket of the populations for a hundred miles in all directions.

While they were being treated unequally, Boletus created a team to look for ways to solve their problem. They could not retreat or go elsewhere, they were then bound to, or at least they thought they were, to Covenant orders they were tasked with, which in the simplest of terms, they were to spread the Andurja Fungal from south to north until they reach a sea.

In 1698 HE, Boletus chemists created a drug they codenamed EQ13-Mycel, better known today as Boletus Chain. This drug was given to worms in their food, where it remained inert until a warm-blooded creature consumed the worm. After determining that it was highly addictive, the worms were dosed and sold to the two city-states they had been boot-licking for the past two centuries. It wasn't long before Boletus became important, supplier of a worm that now tasted extraordinary good, and one quenching an addiction. After getting their neighbors to treat them somewhat fairly, Boletus turned to those above. Merchants spread the dosed worms to what would become known as Lir'frod, the Worm Field, creating addicts in the empires of old, and city-states of today.

During the time of the Galirkrad Empire (1301 HE - 1725 HE), Boletus supplied the drugged worms, while Galirkrad supplied the security of the Worm Field and the transport of worms to the area's markets. From Boletus, thousands of feet below, they control the flow of worms, sending them on their way only as long as they are paid a share of the earnings. Groups were formed to oversee this, and protection rackets and schemes were hatched by those looking for a piece of the action. The region's notoriously bad criminal underworld began with Boletus's practice of drugging worms. They created a lot of addicts, a lot of commerce, and a lot of crime. The people of Boletus were corrupted by all this, creating crime bosses no better than those of the crime-ridden states around them.