The majority of Tasten's life was rather boring, being stuck growing on a wall with no mode of locomotion.  Only able to stare off into the darkness of the caves around him or watch the random traveler/creature silently as they passed.  And that was how he spent more than three years of his life.

Eventually he sprouted his first arm, fingers soon following.  He was finally able to move, to gesture, but it mattered little.  He would remain still when others came near, appearing as a simple (if not rather large, being almost a foot tall for the majority of his life) mushroom to any onlooker.  He was afraid of most that would venture the caves.  After a few weeks a second arm grew and a day later the bumps that would become his future fingers formed.  Within a month he finally detached from the wall and was able to pull himself into a clump of stones with his arms, where he sat to wait on what he instinctive knew would happen.  His wait wasn't long, a few meager hours was all it took for his stem to show signs of splitting and with a constant wiggling, only pausing when he sensed other beings, his lower stem had split a third of the way up to form what would work as legs.  But it would still be a few weeks before he would venture more than a few feet away from his little stone hiding place, even then he would only go in search of nutrients and would always quickly return.  It wasn't until he had grown too large to hide between the rocks that he moved started to actually explore.

He grew quickly, becoming almost as large as a common dwarf in less then a year.  Along with his size, he grew in boldness.  Attempting to approach other beings instead of hiding (not always to the best of results).  Though he lacked the proper mouth parts to speak, he was a quick learner and found ways to get simple ideas across via hand gestures or other displays of body language.