“While at times it was easy to tell how a place got its name, at other times, things had moved on over the years that the features that used to give the place its name had since become far less prevalent. In such cases it often fell to the locals to then relate the story to outsiders who came to visit and wondered about how the name came about.” - From a lecture by Garth Wainwrought, Dean of the Levain Institute of Higher Learning, circa 691 FP.

“You know, one thing made me wonder,” said Cal late in the dinner service that night, when everyone was pretty much stuffed to the brim and only a few of them even had room for the dessert, which consisted of slices of candied fruits set in some sort of nutty jelly, which gave off a hint of earthiness to match the sweetness, and a smooth, silken texture in contrast to the crunchier bits of fruits. “But how did the name Gloomshine Isle came to be?”

“How the name-designation for the island came about, you ask-query?” asked the rotund therian man while he snacked on his bowl of dessert. Other than Cal herself and her blood mage students, most of the rest of the group had been far too full to even touch the dessert, which just meant extras for them. The therian man, while smaller in size, made evident on how he got his rotund body shape though, as he feasted eagerly alongside them.

And that was despite how blood mages like Cal and her students tend to have large appetites due to how their magic overused their body well past its natural limitations all the time. As such, their appetites were inflamed as their body demanded nutrients to fuel the repairs that the magic had done to overturn the damage they did to themselves.

“There’s an old-ancient story-tale there, if madam-lady likes, I can bring-lead you tomorrow to a place-location that will answer your question, yes-yes,” said the rotund merchant after he finished his bowl. Cal accepted the offer, since they came to sightsee to begin with, and some amongst her group like Vark were rather interested in the old lore around the islands.

Besides, they had time to spare since there were still a couple of weeks until the time she had agreed to meet with Arquivaldo on the northern port of Gloomshine Isle, so no reason not to spend the extra time having fun.

******************************

The next day, after breakfast, A’ng-Whu introduced them to a local guide, one of the smaller kinds of lizardlike therians that were native to the isle. She introduced herself as Rezz’tia, and led them to a large, open carriage with which they would travel to their destination.

Of course, not all of them took a seat on the carriage. Ilena and Leila rode their respective animal companions who easily kept pace with the carriage, which was drawn by a pair of hairy, ox-like beasts of burden at a leisurely pace, while Cal and her students preferred to walk alongside it. That sort of trip would only serve as a light warm-up for them to begin with, and they could appreciate the sights better that way.

The trip took most of the morning, before they reached an indigenous village a bit deeper in on the island. Most of the natives were of the smaller breed of rodent-like and lizard-like therians, and Cal soon saw the reason why.

They had built a village in the middle of a patch of massive mushrooms, some as tall as three meters or more. The outer portions of the stalks of said mushrooms were sturdy enough that they were nearly as hard as wood, and the locals had carved out the softer, edible insides and made their abodes within the gigantic fungi.

It looked almost as if they had stepped into another world, at first sight. Rezz’tia introduced the village to them, as she was a native born and bred in another similar village. As could be expected from people who lived in such a large patch of mushrooms large and small, the fungi were closely tied to their survival as well, along with being omnipresent in most parts of their lives.

The locals “farmed” the various edible mushrooms and subsisted primarily on them for food. A few other kinds that were inedible for people proved to be edible to a species of large lizard indigenous to the island, and the villagers had taken to ranching those lizards in such mushroom patches.

Those lizards provided them with a source of eggs - while the lizards had not laid their eggs as frequently as ranched poultry like chicken did, they made up for it by laying large eggs in clusters at a time - and fresh meat. Given the smaller sizes of the locals, one such lizard, which was easily as large as a goat or a sheep, if with shorter legs, would have given them plenty of meat indeed.

The locals welcomed visitors like Cal and her group warmly, as they were quite used to tourists. Some peddled local handicraft, pendants and the likes carved out of the wood-like outer layer of the large mushrooms or items made out of the scales and bones of the raised lizards. Others brought them local foods, which mostly consisted of various types of mushrooms prepared every which way.

Rezz’tia brought Cal’s group to a medium-sized inn located on a hill that oversaw the village when it approached the evening. The inn seemed tailor-made to house tourists that came to visit the village, which made sense since most tourists would not have been able to fit inside the small mushroom-houses of the inhabitants.

It was only after the sun had set, over a dinner of local specialties like roasted skewers of lizard meat and plump cuts of mushrooms, and a large, thick omelette loaded with more of the same, that they washed down with an odd-tasting but pleasant ale-like drink made from fermented mushrooms, that Cal and the others saw the source of the island’s name.

In the darkness, the canopies of the mushroom-houses shone with a fluorescence not unlike some kinds of moss and lichen. The shine was not that bright, and gave more of a lighting to the gloom of the night instead. It was evidently plenty for the locals to move around on, as Cal saw no other sources of lighting in use at the village, unlike the inn where they lit lanterns and magical lighting inside.

It was an apt name, she thought, a shine that pierced through the gloom of the island.