#hallows edition

[zhemyna]

The last of the Preussan Monsters Halloween Special!

Hallows Edition VI

Melusiyn

Among the creepier monsters is the melusiyn. But any story that deals in dead or undead children typically is. ask the russians they know

Melusiyn are, as the root for their name suggests, water spirits. More specifically mermaids. Sort of. They frequent the central swamps, as most creatures of note in Preussan myths and stories do, as the souls of dead unshrouded children reincarnated into something grotesque and malicious.

They lie in wait in the deeper swamps, hunting intruders in packs. They are sleek and green-grey in coloration, their upper halves like a deformed human with long arms and longer webbed fingers tipped in jagged claws. Their eyes are massive and black, disproportionate to their head, and their mouths are circular, ringed over and over with long needle-like teeth in every direction. Their lower halves are reminiscent of eels, long and paddle-shaped with upper and lower fins. 

Whether it’s the visual shock that kills the unfortunate victims before the teeth and claws or the physical attack itself, anyone who meets a roving swarm of melusiyn disappears. Presumably down the monsters’ gullets. Outside of avoiding their hunting grounds completely, there is no known way to deter them.

Hallows Edition VII

Weeping Windyll

Also known as ‘The Weeper’ or ‘The Cryer’. 

Story has it that back in the days of tribes, a chieftain’s daughter fell in love with the son of another clan’s chieftain. Or a common favorite, an arrogant son of a Polish lord. The romance was short and ended abruptly for a variety of reasons that differ from clan to clan. Whichever telling of it, it usually ends that her lover, now scorned, invites her to join him in the swamps, where he promptly drowns her. Anyone who knows how these stories end will also know that the murdered party usually comes back in a fit of rage, sadness, revenge, or all three and starts causing general trouble.

‘Windyll’ is no different, a dripping wet woman seen on islands in the middle of swamp pools seemingly easy to get to, her head in her hands and crying. The sound of her cries has a calming effect on those who hear them, causing all other thoughts and worries to disappear, luring hypnotized individuals toward her. Whether from lack of sense to swim or from the Drowning Dead in certain pools, they drown.

Those few who manage to make it to her without drowning meet a different, though more gruesome, fate. While they don’t drown and turn into Drowning Dead themselves, they have their faces taken as though wiped clean with a cloth, left on the island while the ghost-siren moves to another location.

Hallows Edition VIII

Marsh Hags

Marsh hags are weird little creatures. Weird, but also extremely powerful.

As the name suggests, they tend to haunt the marshlands around the swamps. They stand fairly short, usually only coming up to a grown man’s knee, and covered in what looks like mossy hair that obscures most of them completely. The only things besides big orange pupil-less eyes that define them as anything other than a grimy hairball are a pair of comically oversized human feet.

Marsh hags are solitary critters, having a very timid disposition. When threatened, they tend to run away in patterns both hard to track and hard to believe could possibly exist. When not running away, they root around in the shallower marshes murmuring to themselves. Observers cannot tell if the language they use is real, since no one who has seen them can get close enough to decipher anything without scaring them off.

When they are cornered, however, they go from defensive running to offensive magick. Their name Hag comes from this ability, as they can cast some fairly powerful curses, though nothing truly deadly. Usually transformation of its attacker in various degrees, something that stuns them long enough the marsh hag can get away again. The curses are easy to reverse, so long as a cursed person finds a priest to laugh at it dispel it.

Hallows Edition IX

Skryllik

Jumping away from the swamps and marshes, the Skryllik is a creature of the southern lowlands.

A spectral horse, something of a mix between an Irish Kelpie and a British Shuck, the Skryllik appears at crossroads as a beautiful horse. The exact physical details as given by witnesses to its majesty varies; some say it is pure white, some say it’s pure black, some that it’s spun silver, some that it’s spun gold... The only thing anyone can agree on is that it is indeed a desirable horse.

Though it wears a bridle and chest-strap with glimmering medallion, no one that has tried can mount it right away. Instead, it appears and begins to lure people from the road, whinnying and playfully enticing. Further and further away from civilization into the wilderness until their hapless victim drops dead from exhaustion and exposure. Then they eat it. Of course, a similar fate befalls any who do manage to mount it, where the horse becomes sticky and it runs and runs and never lets go until its prey dies on its back.

Granted, that is as far as similarities to both base legends go; it has a much more terrifying side. It is known to materialize in camps in the lowlands, looking as lovely as always and allowing itself to be caught long enough to see all humans asleep. No mortal bonds can restrain it and it will drag people off into the dark to eat them.

Because of the Skryllik, those Preussans from the southern lowlands would religiously count their horses to make sure they had the same amount at all times.

Hallows Edition X

Swamp Mist

The last entry takes us once more back to the hallowed cemetery that are the Preussan swamplands.

After burials started taking place in the swamps, the heavy air of death seemed to permeate even the mists that came off them. While sea fog is white and fluffy and almost cleansing, swamp mists are vile and otherworldly.

Not only does it carry the smell of death, but it is common belief that it glows. A faint pulsing green, apparently, as it ‘walks’ along the ground. Said to carry the souls and voices of the dead yet to cross over, people have reported everything from knocking on walls, doors, and windows while it’s abound, as well as the sound of bells and whispers.

People caught in it have been spirited away in it and it’s advised in the times of year when the swamps are producing mist to stay indoors as much as possible. While sounding superstitious, the culture-wide fear of being lead away by the calling of the dead is very real and very tangible.

Let us in...

[zhemyna]

Hallows Edition III

Swamplights

Swamplights are seen in multiple cultures under various different names and functions, but always remain very similar. Their most common moniker is ‘Will-o-wisp’.

Swamplights are believed to be the souls or spirits of people who are sunk in the swamps and cannot pass into the Veilside for whatever reason. They do not communicate with the living often, rather content on being a simple ball of colored light floating around the countryside. There were stories of them taking human shapes and leading invaders away from rural communities, only to die by exposure, injury, or falling and drowning in swamps. Other than passing tales, they are generally seen as non-malicious.

Swamplights don’t stay in the swamps and have been seen flitting and floating around all parts of the country and beyond. They are one of few known local folk-creatures that infiltrate the southern lowlands.

Hallows Edition IV

Marshcats

No one is quite sure what these are. Not even the people who apparently see them regularly.

Marshcats are illusive cryptid monsters that inhabit the deltas and drainage of the swamps to the seaboard, having vague catlike shapes and dripping in muck and swamp-grasses with glowing white eyes. They sound like shrieking children and leave no lasting footprints. No one is sure where they come from or go to, only that they patrol delta flats.

They appear to be hostile, as those few communities who settled around such places have told the stories over centuries of how men, women, children, and livestock have gone missing over the flats. The monsters leave long immense clawmarks on structures and trees when they’ve been around.

Hallows Edition V

Swampdogs

An opposite to marshcats in look, but not so much in temperament.

Swampdogs -not be confused with swamphounds- are very large. About the size of a small bear with just as much bulk, they live in and around the most crowded burial pools. Their purpose is disputed between communities, but the two most common rumors dictate them as both cemetery guardians and also as carrion eaters. In correlation to the latter, they are also believed to be the reason swamplights exist.

Though they look shaggy, their bodies are actually covered in long-leaved murky green grasses with bright red eyes and tall pointed ears. They hide in the swamp pools and stalk intruders, but can be deterred with salt or the chime of silver bells.

[zhemyna]

Halloween Edition I

The Ryejack

Preussans mix Harvest and Hallows, the latter starting the last week of October. Trick-or-treating is celebrated in many of the cities and larger rural communities, the three days surrounding the weekend of that week.

While they do have the traditional commercial Halloweening spooks and decor, those who live in the more isolated rural communities will tell that this is the time of year ryejacks born in late spring begin to mature and warn against them.

Ryejacks are a type of spectral hound that pop up most notably around late autumn. Given that the main source of grain grown in Preussan lands is the hardy rye, it is obvious to see that the occasional patch of wild rye growing away from any main crop in the middle of the darkwood forests could be seen as strange, especially those with equally-hardy forest vines twining their way through them. While such phenomena can be shrugged off by modern day, stories of ryejacks have still persevered through the ages. They still say that when the wind blows around these patches, you can hear a cackling bark.

According to myth, the ryejack lives in these odd little patches of wild rye, partially reclaimed by the forests they root in. Pups are born of the earth and stone, hiding in the thick stalks of their birthplace unless disturbed. They are not much for malicious harm at this age, more or less tricksters that pop up on intruders and laugh. Which does not sound entirely frightening until one considers these pups have no head. Tall and wispy, colored a putrid green-brown, they are a sight to behold. Even if they are more or less about rustling the rye and laughing at people at this age. 

Any attempts to remove the animals from their home and replant them anywhere result in more gruesome tricks, heads of their kidnappers removed while the pup rematerializes back in their home patch. After doing so, they hide for a time before starting up their old tricks again.

Adult ryejacks are much more malevolent instead of playfully so. They have a head … sort of. A ghastly thing still detached of the body, they are made of twined rye stalks with blazing white eyes and remain on the ground. The bodies are taller and more filled out, standing about as high as an average man’s chest, though still with an elegant wisp and a darker coloration of green and brown. While intruders are distracted by the massive body, the head sharks through the rye patch before grabbing ankles and dragging off the hapless victims to be brained and devoured. 

Those lucky enough to get away are chased, as the body is no longer tied to its patch. The only two ways to get away from a ryejack are to spray saltwater from your mouth at it, at which it will recoil and run back, or get over a body of moving water, as ryejacks cannot cross such things as streams, creeks, and rivers. 

There are ways farmers use to prevent ryejacks rooting near their crops, in order to keep them from hiding in the middle of fields; although they don’t expand to foreign rye, stumbling on one can be bad. The most common means to prevent rooting is having a priest come out to sprinkle saltwater on a field. Due to their aversion to salt, ryejacks will keep away.

[zhemyna]

The practice of dropping bodies into the swamps as a burial ritual was actually a relatively new thing to those refugees from the southern lowlands. They had the firm fertile clay soil that didn’t shift easily, and so buried their dead there.

The northern highlands have loam. In many places, it’s packed down so water saturating it will still retain a certain firmness to walk across. But in quite a few places, it’s loose, meaning there’s a fair bit of air pockets in it. 

The northern clans tried many times to bury their dead, but every spring and fall rainy seasons, they had trouble with unexpected visitors when the water filled these air pockets and pushed bodies to the surface. It’s a very startling thing to be visiting a dead ancestor only to see them go whizzing passed you on torrential run-off, especially since Preussans are known to honor their dead. You could see entire families of people running after their vagrant deceased. Such was such a problem that for almost two hundred years, a new job known as ‘Waterman’ was devised for the sole purpose of paying someone to watch out for bodies blooping to the surface during the rainy seasons.

Preussans are very much about giving back physical form to the earth. The earth is not only their means of sustenance, but they also have a firm belief that they were born from it as a species. Dust to dust, and all that. So the shock and upset that the earth didn’t want to take them back made them devise a different burial method that could fulfill this. Only part of this decision was because chasing Grandpa down the hills on a macabre Slip-n-Slide was more than a little distressing. Using a different belief of theirs in which veins spread across Preussas originating from the central swampland gave them their idea to start sinking the dead instead. There, they could liquify in peace and in turn, sweep through the land via the Veins.

Watermen had a new purpose after this, catching dead bodies as they bobbed to the surface during the rainy seasons to be rewrapped in a shroud and tied with a gold cord before being hoisted to the swamps to be dropped in. By the time the surviving southern clans came to merge with the untouched northern clans, the practice had been established and was passed on to those newcomers.

While the job of Waterman is no longer available as those bodies in question have been moved, every so often someone’s bones still wheedle their way to the surface after all this time and end up on someone’s front doorstep. Much to the morbid amusement chagrin of the unlucky recipient.