Living Environments: Residence, Food, Communication, and other Daily Necessities
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Living Quarters
Food
- Staple Foods
- The Larder
- Hunting
- Miscellaneous
Daily Necessities
- Clothes and fabric
- Laundry
- Hygiene
Communication
LIVING QUARTERS
The 'main' residential area is found in Centralia - either gentle slopes or massive crystals lead residents up its sides, where long walkways are dotted with smaller caves that can be used as rooms. Moss and ivy trellises sometimes serve as shortcuts between terraces, and residents are welcome to use vines and even attempt the construction of ladders, bridges, or other means to make getting around easier.
Each small cave is set up with a large stone platform coated in a liberal layer of moss, which can be used as a bed, and fibercloth may be harvested for bed linen (the climate is warm enough that thicker blankets are not required). These 'rooms' are lit up by a combination of fungi and crystals, and each boasts a waterfall of what appears to be flowing, liquid mercury (although hopefully without the deadly poisonous side-effects).
Your character is welcome to live elsewhere, but Centralia's by far the most convenient. Should your character choose to make a life Topside, for example, they can use the trees there for timber, but they'll have to build a house, have a harder time finding food, and have to cope with freezing nights, scorching days, the occasional (though not frequent) rain and even snow, and the lack of convenient communication with other residents.
FOOD
Interestingly enough, the caves have no shortage of food.
Staple Foods
The main staples in the caves, all found in both Centralia's garden and in Mushroom Kingdom, are two types of mushrooms. The first, growing on rock, is a squarish, generally football-sized white mushroom that has the consistency of bread and a fluffy, pourous interior, and the second is a smaller, yellow-orange, branching collection of fungi-forms which grow near water (pieces of this can be broken off and it has the taste and consistency of firm cheese, or it can be squeezed to extract a milk-like substance). Clear, clean water can also be found everywhere underground, gathering in pools or flowing through channels, and there is one massive lake Topside that extends partly inside. The ice inside the Ice Caverns can also be melted down and drank.
While it is possible to survive entirely off the two staple mushrooms and water with no ill effects, for those who enjoy a little variety in their diets, there are, happily, many other options.
The Larder
The Larder is seemingly an extension of the temperate Dawn Garden - a twisting chamber, partially open to the sky, packed with fruits and vegetables. While the Gardens as a collective have a greater range of plant life, the Larder has a greater quantity - and the cave's sole chocolate tree.
Hunting
For those of a more carnivorous disposition, there's fish from the lake, small game in the Larder, and slightly larger game up Topside.
Miscellaneous
To spice up even the reasonably large range of food available, the gardens in the middle of Centralia yield a multitude of joys. Caffeine addicts can find coffee beans to roast and leaves and flowers that are suitable for making tea. There are plentiful herbs to flavor the food, medicinal plants, utilitarian plants like Fibercloth, plants and minerals that can be used to make dyes, and, for those who recognize it, the cacti that grow there include peyote amongst their numbers. There are also numerous other mushrooms throughout both Centralia and Mushroom Kingdom that are edible (along with many that are not, so be careful!).
DAILY NECESSITIES
These caves have an odd but welcome feature -- they provide most of the comforts of modern living.
Clothes and fabric
These are provided by a species of tree that can be found growing in the Larder and Centralia's garden. These trees, instead of leaves, grow dense mats of tangled fibers, forming smooth, flat sheets, almost like Spanish Moss, that vary in density from a light fleece to delicate translucent sheets, depending on the tree's age. A subspecies provides the same fibers, only not tangled together - these range in diameter from threadlike to rope-like. These mats can be used to make clothing, or used as-is for bed linen -- it is surprisingly soft on the skin, and completely hypo-allergenic.
Laundry
The washing of clothing is largely performed at the lake -- a small, separate pool near the entrance has a strange concentration of minerals that aid in cleansing. On the rocks surrounding this pool, an abundance of a special, grey lichen -- that produces a soapy foam when squeezed -- can be found. No matter how much laundry is done in this pool, it never gets dirty or contaminates the lake proper, as it is constantly being flushed by a strange fissure along the side, which acts as a drain (careful of losing items down there!). The sand at the bottom of the pool can aid in scrubbing. However, we'd recommend not drinking this water, as it's quite nasty and may induce minor digestive woes.
Hygiene
No, hygiene is not to be neglected in the caves! Most people will bathe in the lake (taking a refreshing dip while their clothes soak in the laundry pool, if necessary), the increased mineral content of the water making soap and shampoo unnecessary (milder than the laundry pool's water, but still effective).
For more... bathroom-oriented activities, a few small caves dotted around, mostly around Centralia but occasionally found in other locations (and one hidden at the back of the Chocolate Tree's cave) consist of what can only be described as bottomless pits, with an ever-replenishing supply of fibercloth to one side and small waterfalls to wash hands under afterwards. These holes tend to be found behind thick foliage that act as privacy screens (however, it's up to residents to figure out how to let each other know when a toilet is... occupied).
COMMUNICATION
The main method of communication in the residential area (other than, of course, actually getting up and going to talk to a person) is found inside each of the living chambers. What looks like a silent waterfall of mercury running down a wall at the back, gathering in a pool beneath it (which never seems to spill over its perimeter), has an interesting use: it is the built-in voice communications relay for Centralia. Each residential chamber has one, and all the fountains transmit and receive to all other fountains simultaneously, meaning that while you're listening, whatever you say is also being heard, and vice versa. The noise from every room will reach yours with equal clarity, despite physical distance, as yours will reach them. in fact, if you listen carefully, you can even hear the sounds from your own room reflected back at you. It can get quite noisy, especially during the times at which lots of people are home, or if someone's throwing a party or otherwise making a racket.
If this proves too big a hassle, there IS a way for your characters to catch a breather, both from the listening and from the risk of being recorded: at the top, each fountain comes to an apex where there is an opening through which the odd substance flows before spreading out. If your character cares to look down at the basin where the mercury pools, they might notice a strange, rock that isn't part of the fountain's edge, and which just so happens to fit the hole at the top exactly. If you insert this stone, the flow stops, and so does the transmitting, incoming and outgoing, to and from your room. Note, however, that not every fountain's "keystone" will perfectly fit every other fountain's, so if you break or misplace it, either get used to the noise, or go find a new cave with an intact keystone to live in. Note, however, that because there's liquid flowing and trying to escape out this hole, the block has a tendency to not stay put... at least, not for long (instant plot device: our gift to you!).
It also worth noting that it is ill-advised to drink the mercury-like liquid - anyone foolish enough to attempt to ingest the silver, metallic, shining substance will show any (player-chosen or, sometimes, mod-assigned) side-effect, from being violently ill, to losing your voice or hearing, or even being turned into a talking blue duck named Walter (have fun with that!). These effects are temporary.
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