Gnomes

Gnomes are individuals who gather mushrooms by their own means.

They’re mostly interested in mind-altering fungi, because those are the ones that sell at the highest prices. They deal illegally, because they conduct their own tests on newly found species, which are not approved by the Fungi Research and Administration. However, gnomes have a great advantage over the legal distribution, which is the huge variety of rare mushrooms they have available. Instead of farming and engineering mainstream substances like legal pharmacists, they venture way out into off-limits areas to get the wildest specimens.

They’re called gnomes because of the pointy caps they wear. The purpose of these is not only to freak people out, but also to make them look taller if a strange encounter with a creature happens to occur. They say there are dangerous mutant things in off-limits areas.