Menaces of Otherlore: The Svriga, the Leorex, the Wardead and the Mute Watcher

A deadly stranger on a late road, a bedazzled fool's conception of a lion, militia fighters made fierce and proud in death, and the striding eyes of an eternal Nightmare.

Svriga

“Don’t mind the footsteps, mind that the torch stays lit.”

The dead must have cause to rest, or else they must be laid to rest, that their time has a definitive end. A life lost pointlessly, without aim and through sheer entropy is a sentence stopped midstream before the period, with space left that any passer-by could write their own continuation. Perhaps none moreso embodies this mechanism of a dreaming world of soul and substance is the Svriga, a spirit of a mortal lost alone on a road to misadventure. These were people who, as fate contrived, were forced to take to the road when no one should, and paid the ultimate price because of it. Svriga are the man whose torch went out from a gust of midnight wind, causing him to take a wrong step on a high road; Svriga are the woman who was lured into the cold from a voice in a dream, whose body is now buried anonymously in a snowdrift. Svriga are these unfortunates, and others like them. But their misfortune is not what makes the Svriga.

This variety of ghost will make itself known at night, along remote and scarcely travelled roads. It will at first manifest as phantom footfalls from behind you, subtle at first, but slowly more apparent as the minutes pass; attempting to ignore the sound just makes them louder and louder, until they fall like thunderclaps. That said, by the time you can hear the Svriga, it’s already haunting you. At this point, your goal becomes simple: keep your light on, and keep moving. The Svriga wants your light and wants the warmth from it, be it a torch or a lantern or even something as small as a candle in a shielded holder; it’s the only thing that reminds it of what being alive felt like, and is thus at that moment the only thing keeping it from inflicting upon you a death as pointless, cold and potentially drawn out as the one it met. If you can do this, your salvation comes from putting one foot in front of the other, for the purpose of reaching a destination, either one to satisfy the Svriga- possibly where they were looking to travel to when they met their end -or one that you can take shelter in, preferably one with a hearth, or with graced with protection from Primal or Wyrd powers. Take care not to look directly at the Svriga as it walks with you; they dislike being stared at.

A Svriga is a ghost which can manifest itself only at night, particularly following storms or rainfall. One only becomes an apparition of itself in life when resolved in the light of any source that also creates heat. The persistence that light and heat keeps the ghost docile, even appearing happy or contented. Do not get lulled into a false sense of security; the second that flame goes out, it will become shocked back to its reality, and will act out violently in its confusion, fear and wrath. In this state, Svriga become less coherent, beings whose limbs trail away into protoplasmic tendrils, as though made of oily smoke. This essence robs strength and life from those who come in contact with it, quenching it from without like the effects of exposure on a living body. A Svriga can be dispersed in the manner of any other ghost, though their tendency to strike before their presence is even felt makes them extremely deadly. They can also be dispersed without violence to send them away for a longer term by escorting them by torchlight to the place they were originally headed. However, you can only destroy them for good by burying their remains properly.

Leorex

“The nature of a king, laid bare and honest as beasts are.”

The lion was a figure of wonder in the northern reaches of the Western Dimense, a Great Beast that claimed the savannahs across the Midden Sea as their territory. Tales of a creature that could crush a man between its paws, yet leap several lengths of its body to pursue its prey circulated. The problem was that words and images do not truly describe the genuine article when the person making the words and images are blinded by their own wonder. So when word passed from south to north across the sea from travellers and explorers of these great cats, imagination filled in more details than it should have. That imagination fuelled dreams of beasts beyond that of the genuine article, dreamstuff imitations whose majesty has allowed them to persist despite the fact that they don’t actually exist. Or at least didn’t used to. The Known World is anything but sometimes.

A Monster is not always a terrible creature, and this is no more evident than the Leorex. Less a stalking boogeyman and more a beast conjured straight from the imagination of the marvelled, a Leorex is a lion as described by someone trying to hold court at all cost, embellished from the basic template to a degree impossible by nature. In other words, it’s a lion with a mane, regardless of lion or lioness, the size of a draught horse but with wings both furred and feathered. With a roar that can shake the ground and claws that can shred apart a covered wagon, the Leorex could be described as a force of nature, if there was anything at all natural about it. While not capable of flying with their massive wings, they’re capable of gliding over hundreds of meters with a mighty pounce. Within a proud brow, there lies a mind that isn’t of a mortal’s sophistication, but few would dare make the mistake as being purely of a beast’s instincts and values. The Leorex is a creature that knows territory is more than simply range for hunting, mating and pride-rearing, but a realm where control can be maintained and subjects can be bound by law, in pursuit of more and greater. With their massive size, shattering strength, weighty speed and mix of wit and instinct, these monsters come to rule over prides of lions as a high king or an emperor would. While ever the picture of bestial ferocity, the Leorex is perhaps a more a more respectable tyrant than any mortal, for they have no mind for cruelty or pointless pettiness. They expect tribute like any monarch, but are more eager to provide in times of need than any corrupted crown.

A Leorex is not some hostile, roaring monster that can be found prowling the savannah; like any royal, they show themselves when they are ready, and not a moment before. But if one has you at attention, there is a modicum of cause to relax. Not total cause to relax, of course, because that is a very, very large lion with wings that is currently meeting eyes with you, and mortal peril is never off the table in that situation. But consider two things beyond the threat of fighting such a creature: the first is that you’re in the domain of ruler, and a crown is never without an army; the second is that a Leorex understands that some tasks are not the domain of beasts alone. They have use for mortals, and they understand the concept of fair trade for fair work. After all, it’s not like lions have use for the coins in the caravans they overturned for the meat driving them.

Wardead

“Those who died for a land not their own will claim the battlefield they fell and lay unburied upon as their country.” 

Some dead rise because they have reason to carry on. Others rise because because there was no reason to their fall. No more is this true of the farmers, bakers, fishers and carpenters that were levied from their simple life into soldiery at the will of their local lord, only to die pointlessly in some conflict of unpaid debts and hurt feelings. Many strong and able, often those who lived too simply or too briefly to have any real stomach for bloodshed or cruelty, cut down in a conflict they were forced to fight, yet had no stake in. The cooper’s eldest son who died trying to remember his mother’s face, the arrow through his eye having fractured his last thoughts. The lacemaker-made-shieldmaiden who suddenly found herself by the riverside in spirit, with a hag washing the blood from her best blouse, because in body she’d been blindsided with a maul. The sheep-shearer siblings who tried to haul one another up from the break in a burning bridge, only to both be smashed by a chariot being pulled by a fear-mad and arrow-riddled horse. These and more like them are those that make up the Wardead, those who had no reason to die, yet did.

A simple, yet common injustice and a common fear- to die anonymously in a heap of mud and gore far from home, for a country you were denied and a cause that was never yours. That fear realized in the lingering between life and death that entails the waiting for any sort of rite of passage to the Next Life torments the mortal remnant, in time turning to anger and spite. Anger at their pathetic and pointless fate. Spite for those living that would dare defile with careless booted feet the last things they can lay claim to: their own dried bones and leather flesh, and the earth they’ve become one with. Disrespect the nation that is their battlefield graveyard and these militia will rise and fight once more, but this time with a new ferocity bred from the solidarity of commonality and cause. For the Wardead are proud of their homeland, because all else was denied them but what they can claim in death.

It’s for this reason that the Wardead are at once one of the most and least fearsome forms of corporeal undead. For it’s strange that an undead creature would be capable of any sort of palpable emotion, let alone the impetuous fury these risen militia can raise among their number. Those that are capable of it will either chant or taunt; those whose minds are a bit more far-gone to trauma may instead repeat a nonsense word or phrase, or simply bellow incoherently. Even those that are little more than bones held together by their helmets, mail shirts and clothing have been observed ringing their shields with broken falchions and axes that are little more than rusted shards at the end of a haft. These are not mindless ghouls, but actual soldiers among the undead, which employ line formations, shield walls and skirmishing tactics. They are capable fighters, easily more fighters in death then they were in life, something uncanny in comparison to less coordinated shambling corpses. But it’s this uncanny nature that makes them a lesser danger, for just as they are proud soldiers of a small, pathetic homeland, they are also adverse to pointless fighting with those who pay proper respect. Treated well, Wardead can be treated with, perhaps even willingly exorcised.

Mute Watcher

“In the fury of the storm I thought I had been graced by the miracle, that a star bright enough to pierce the clouds and rain with its light had chosen to guide me. Then thunder flashed, and I became aware of the stilt-like legs rising up from the waters around my vessel, rising up towards a strange body. It’s then that I knew that light was no star, and this was no miracle…”

The Nightmare doesn’t need eyes- it has other, more comprehensive ways to see and sense. But eyes it has anyway, for the Nightmare has many specific means to its many specific ends. It has eyes that are figurative, in its mortal servants and those of its agents that can make themselves into an acceptable shape to walk among us. But it also has eyes far more literal, eyes with a mass of a mind sufficient enough to dream the Nightmare far from its natural reach and maintain that bridge. Eyes with a body, made of stuff that could be flesh but could also be metal, wrought with the runic patterning of Nightmare logic, which are also veins that breathe rather than pulse. Eyes with legs, like the narrowest and most bone-like of spider legs, of indeterminate maximum length, capable of extending and contracting while striding or standing. Eyes with bodies that can turn as still as statues, holding subtle vigil over a town at distance or getting even so close to simply stare unblinkingly through a single darkened upstairs window. Eyes with simple directives driving them in their slumber, that should always be left to sleep, for when they wake they become far less pleasantly calm things than they were dreaming the Nightmare.

The Mute Watchers is one of the vanguards of the Nightmare of Want, variably tall, weedily-narrow insect forms that stride forth from the boundaries of the Nightmare’s reach. They are spies that are both limited and simple, but capable of being exceptionally subtle, sent when the Nightmare needs to see realms or people beyond even its most quiet influences, yet has no need of a proxy… yet, perhaps. Sighting one is an ill omen, and one that is likely to get one labeled as a dreamer or a craven, as Mute Watchers always know when they’re seen, and will take only a moment to redeploy themselves away from their last spot. It’s not currently known how far the Nightmare will send these strange and awful things, only that lands in the Western Dimense, the Cradles and the Farthest Shores have known them to stride hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles from the fringes of Waste and its influence beyond.

The stuff that makes Mute Watchers is the same strange Dread Matter that much of Nightmare craft is foundered from, a numbing and skin-crawling to the touch hybrid of iron, meat and dreamstuff. But the eyes, numerous in number and multiplicitous in sizes and shapes and the brain-mass within are crafted from the changed corpus of Xin thralls, heaped and arranged in a method no waking mind could understand the logic of. Together they become one, a dreaming mind powerful enough to be found by the Nightmare far beyond its borders. But when woken, the connection is severed and the Nightmare can no longer see. Now the problem changes, though, for the Mute Watcher has woken, now bringing the fury of multiple chaotic and terrified minds wielding legs like a phalanx of long pikes