You’re driving home from a long trip at night. Storms have shut down the main highway, pushed you onto a side road. You’ve been delayed so long the sun has disappeared. It’s very dark and very remote. Trees are closing in on you from both sides.

Something leaps in front of your car. You slam your brakes, skid to a stop. It's beside your car now, looking straight at you. You think it’s a wolf at first, maybe a wild cat. But despite being covered in sleek black fur, despite having the hind legs of a cat, its torso is like that of a man. Its head is like that of a man.

It vanishes back into the wilderness. Will anyone believe what you saw?

I. Devil Monkeys

The devil monkeys of Appalachia are described as having dark hair, sharp claws, pointed ears, and snouts like a baboon or canine. Smaller specimens are only 3’ in height, while larger examples range from 6 to 8’ tall. Well-muscled, they can make incredible jumps and keep up with cars for short distances. Far more ferocious than most wildlife, devil monkeys have reportedly attacked dogs and humans, as well as killed local livestock1.

The opening story is based on the experience of a young woman driving through Virginia in the late 1990s, a state rife with devil monkey sightings from the ‘50s onwards. In one incident, the monkey is said to have torn the roof of a nurse’s car. In another, it smashed into a car’s windscreen and leered through the glass at those trapped inside.

But what is it? Some cryptozoologists believe it to be a surviving remnant of an ancient group of primates (à la Big Foot). Paranormalists believe it’s a creature with far more sinister origins (the clue being in the name). Could some sightings be an actual monkey? Well…

II. The Danville Monkey

Back in 2001, Danville, New Hampshire had a monkey problem. Over a couple of weeks, the local fire chief and many others witnessed a large black monkey as it ran amok in their small town:

"It jumped out of the trees," [Fire Chief] Kimball said. "As soon as he hit the ground, he took a giant leap and went back where he came from. The first thought I had was: That's nothing that's native to here."
–Seacoast Online, 14 September 20012

Accompanied by a strange hooting or howling sound, this monkey was spotted multiple times in the following days. Despite attempts to catch it, however, after a few weeks the creature disappeared, never to be seen again.

Locals concluded it must have been a pet or zoo monkey turned feral after being abandoned or escaping from captivity, perhaps a Humboldt’s woolly monkey imported from the Amazon. The Internet, of course, was quick to link this story to that of the devil monkey instead.

Using Devil Monkeys in Your Game

So now you know the story, how can you use it in your game?

I. Local Menace

Even fantastical settings can have local folklore, and the existance of a ‘devil monkey’ in the nearby wilderness could serve exactly that.

First, introduce the story as a tall tale told at a local inn over drinks. Then, if the PCs are moving through nearby hexes in a hex crawl, for example, the devil monkey could be a rare random encounter, more likely to flee than fight. And if it’s fleeing, the PCs might be able to track it back to its lair. This could be a place that recontextualises the ‘devil’ monkey as something more or less sinister, or...

II. Wizard Nonsense

In an (urban) fantasy setting, the existence of devil monkeys might be the result of an evil science experiment by a reckless wizard. Desiring servants ala the Wicked Witch, or perhaps following in the footsteps of Dr. Moreau, this wizard has added monstrous, intelligent monkeys to his retinue through foul magicks.

If the existence or location of this wizard’s lair is unknown, perhaps these monkeys periodically elope and attack folk in a nearby forest and/or town—a sign to the PCs that something not right is hidden nearby.

III. Devil Monkey Hot Springs

With apologies to the real-life Jigokudani Monkey Park:

Surrounded by steep cliffs and thick dead trees, ‘Hell’s Valley’ was once a holy site for pilgrimage. Now, it takes its name from the steam and boiling water that bubbles out of the valley’s many fissures that opened after an earthquake a decade ago. Locals believe these cracks lead straight down to the pit itself, and speak of the place as cursed. It is true that the local monkeys, who bathe in these new hot springs, have begun to take on a peculiarly sinister air. It’s also true that they become very hostile towards anyone who tries to check on the rarely-seen monks in the valley’s monastery…

Devil Monkey Statistics (Old-School)

AC: 12
HD: 3* (13 hp)
Attacks: +2 to hit » 2 x claw (1d3 + latch), 1 x bite (1d4)
Move: Standard + Skilled Climber
Save As: Fighter 3
Quantity: Solo or Pack (1d6)
Morale: 8

▶ Leap: Can jump up to 15’ high and 40’ forward to attack. If at least 10’ is covered horizontally, gain +1 to attack.
▶ Latch: If a victim is hit by both claw attacks in the same round, they are latched onto. Until the devil monkey is removed, all future attacks automatically hit.

Devil monkeys use their Leap ability to set up ambush attacks, hiding in nearby trees and foliage. To coordinate in packs, they let out eerie howls that serve the dual purpose of unsettling their prey.

And that’s it for devil monkeys!

I’d like to take a moment to excitedly announce that I have an adventure in Necrotic Gnome’s upcoming Old-School Essentials: Adventure Anthology 3! My temple dungeon, ‘The Grotesques’ Grotto’, is inspired by ancient Greek myth and folklore, and I can’t wait for you all to see it. I’ll be sure to post here and on social media when the book is available.

With that all said, thanks for reading the first Mythoi of 2025! We’ll be back soon with another piece of fantastical folklore.

~ A.C. Luke

★ Find my games on itch.io! ★ Follow me on Bluesky ★ Follow my Instagram ★

You wake in the middle of the night. It’s almost pitch-black, only the thin sliver of moon silver slipping past the edges of the blinds to light the room. Disorientated, you go to move. You can’t. You try to shift your head. You can’t.

A figure stands in the corner of the room, hidden in shadow. It crawls towards you, limbs too long, its hands reaching. You try to move, run, cry out for help. You can’t. It pulls itself up and on top of you, feet crushing your chest, pinprick eyes staring down at you from hollow sockets. It smiles. You faint.

In the morning, you tell yourself it was just a dream. Sure, those deep bruises still mark your chest, but you could have done that to yourself. Right?

I. The Mare

In Germanic and Scandinavian folklore, nightmares aren’t merely signs of poor sleep or a troubled mind, but the direct result of a malevolent presence.

The mare (alt. mære, mara), from which we get the English word nightmare, is a malicious spirit that slips into a person’s room at night and sits on their chest (just like my cat), causing their dreams to go sour1. When it isn’t messing with people’s dreams, mares also ride horses to exhaustion and entangle the hair of the sleeping into knots. Visually, a mare typically appears in the form of a human woman.

One of the first written accounts of a mare is from the 13th-century Norse Ynglinga saga2. After King Vanlandi abandons his wife Drífa for ten years, she hires the Finnish sorceress Huld to help get revenge. Huld summons a mare to ride the King, eventually crushing him. This would be an example of the mare as a conjured spirit, though sometimes the mare is instead a witch or cursed sleeping woman having an out-of-body experience.

If you do end up the target of a mare, however, things aren’t hopeless3. To defend yourself, you can sing protective verses, or you can try and confuse it by doing things like putting your shoes back-to-front (right on the left, left on the right) beside your bed. Alternatively, you can plug your bedroom’s keyhole so the mare can’t get in—or have a friend plug your keyhole from the outside in the middle of the night, trapping the spirit inside with you.

II. The Night Hag

The mare isn’t a creature unique to Scandinavia. In fact, it’s not even unique to Europe more broadly. Monstrous creatures and apparitions that appear when one is sleeping can be found the world over4.

Grouped under the generic term of ‘night hag’, these spirits include incubi and succubi (if you want to get raunchily demonic), jinn and ifrit (in the Arabic world), the Alp (an evil German elf), the Mokthi (a fez-wearing Albanian spirit), the dukak (an Ethiopian personification of depression), and your deceased relative returned as a ghost (this one is from all over the place, including many East Asian countries).

I won’t keep listing so as to not keep us here all day, but take this as a sign you can be as creative and flexible with your in-world equivalents as we have been here on Earth.

III. Actual Sleep Paralysis

If the title hadn’t already given it away, you’d likely already be thinking: this mare/night hag business sounds a whole lot like sleep paralysis! And, dear reader, you would have made an astute observation.

With sleep paralysis, the sufferer is unable to move or speak upon awakening5. This symptom is often accompanied by fear, panic, imagined sounds, visual hallucinations, and… an intense pressure on one’s chest. It’s not a leap to look at folklore like the mare as not just an early explanation for nightmares but as a way of explaining the otherwise seemingly inexplicable effects of sleep paralysis.

A ‘fun’ fact about sleep paralysis is that it appears to be a cultural factor at play6. Those who experience hallucinations during sleep paralysis often come to associate these hallucinations with the presence of the supernatural, and the supernatural threat is linked to whatever is the most appropriate spirit or creature for the cultural background of the sleep paralysis sufferer. Hallucinations reported during sleep paralysis include ghosts, demons, shadow people, hags, and, of course, aliens.

Using the Mare in Your Game

So now you know the story, how can you use it in your game?

I. A Restless Spirit

Your PCs—adventurers, investigators, or just simple troubleshooters—are assembled for a simple task: to find out why their client is unable to sleep and put a stop to it. Each night, he sees a monstrous spirit appear on his chest, tormenting him and keeping him awake. If it’s a modern setting, his doctor might think it’s simple sleep paralysis, but the client knows better. He’s haunted by an evil spirit, and he’s going to keep being haunted until it’s somehow stopped or his heart gives out, whichever comes first.

Has the client angered someone enough to curse him or to find someone capable of setting a mare on him? Has he acquired some cursed artefact that needs to be returned to its rightful place? Or, perhaps, the veil between the dream world and our own has grown awfully thin, and the PCs will need to travel into it and slay a demon on its home turf? Whatever the answer, the PCs will need to hurry to find it. Their client is running out of time.

II. A(n) (Un-)Full(-filling) Rest

In many traditional role-playing games, there’s nothing more important than getting a good night’s sleep. After all, it’s typically how you restore hit points, recover spell slots, and regain the use of spent abilities. In those games, the mare’s ability to disrupt rest might just make it the scariest monster of all.

In this conception, the mare isn’t a physical threat but rather a puzzle to solve. Perhaps a certain item in the party’s possession needs to be purified or destroyed, or a warlock the party angered needs to be mollified. Alternatively, they might just need to figure out an old-fashioned solution—if they can trap the mare in a PC’s bedroom, perhaps then it becomes corporeal and you can stab it to death? If so, can they risk a physical confrontation running on half-empty?

The only thing to be aware of in using this plot idea is that keeping a PC from regaining their abilities is a quick way to make that character’s player extremely frustrated. Consider allowing a partial refresh so they get back some spell slots but not all of them, or let them pick between regaining abilities and health, for example. You want to make the mare a sufficient threat but not at the expense of everyone having fun.

And that’s it for the Mare!

Thanks for sticking with Mythoi through our hiatus—Honours is keeping me sufficiently busy! We’ll be back again soon with another piece of fantastical folklore!

~ A.C. Luke

★ Find my games on itch.io! ★ Follow me on Bluesky or Instagram ★

A teenager is wandering through a church graveyard at night. A foolish thing to do, the result of a dare and misplaced bravado. Ancient graves throw long shadows. Dead leaves crunch like brittle bones underfoot. Thick storm clouds threaten lightning and rain. The teenager knows it must be midnight soon, then they can leave—

The church bell tolls. The teenager’s heart leaps; they look around, ready to be caught trespassing by a priest or groundskeeper. Instead, they hear a padding sound drawing near, a low growl building. An enormous black dog, red eyes glowing, emerges from the darkness.

The churchyard’s protector has arrived.

I. Church Grims

Part of a long line of spectral black dogs, the English church grim is unusual in that its presence is a positive. Despite being a giant ghost dog with glowing red eyes, this canine actually serves as the guardian spirit of a churchyard or graveyard1. After all, this is medieval England. There’s not just graverobbers and vandals to worry about—the Devil himself might send his witches and warlocks to profane the dead!

Still, just because this canine spirit is a force for good, doesn’t mean you want to see it. Like the rest of its spectral pack, the church grim is an omen of death, appearing alongside stormy weather. It’s even known to signal an imminent death by ringing the church’s bell at midnight (by knocking it? By pulling the rope with its teeth?).

This kind of story isn’t limited to the British either. Scandinavian folklore, for example, also has animal revenants guarding its graveyards. Known as the kyrkogrim (Swedish) or kirkegrim (Danish), these spirits aren’t limited to dogs. Stories tell of lamb spirits in Sweden and a ‘grave-sow’ in Denmark for example2.

Whether kyrkogrim, kirkegrim, or church grim, however, these sorts of spirits don’t come from nowhere. You could even make your own—assuming you’re okay with a little animal sacrifice.

II. A Grim Business

Well, I say animal sacrifice, but luckily that might be overstated.

According to some 19th-century folklorists3, church grims weren’t a natural phenomenon—they were man-made. These folklorists believed that, once upon a time, the custom had been to bury a dog alive under the cornerstone of a church. This ritual sacrifice would ensure the ghost of the dog would serve as the church’s future guardian.

This idea is linked to the folk belief that, when a new churchyard was opened, the first person buried there would be required to guard it against the Devil. To prevent a human soul from having to do so, a black dog would always be buried first. This is admittedly a nicer method than the previous one, though it is still asking man’s best friend to take one for the team.

This possibility, that of a substitute burial, carries us to Part 3 of churchyard sacrifices—the human kind.

III. Foundation Sacrifice

The idea of burying someone under a building to act as its protector isn’t just limited to animals, of course. Stories of humans being sacrificed to become protective spirits can be found in many cultures throughout history, travelling far beyond the British Isles.

As Amelia Soth puts it for JSTOR Daily:

“Foundation sacrifice refers to the practice of burying a human being in the foundation of a new building as an attempt to ensure that it stands. Building a structure was an affront to the spirits and deities of the land. To appease them, you had to offer a sacrifice. In turn, the sacrificed person was transformed by death. They became a protective spirit, bound to guard the building that had become their tomb, an idea that some scholars have argued is the root of our modern haunted-house tales.”4

But just because there are stories of something happening, doesn’t necessarily mean it did. Modern humans definitely unearth the occasional skeleton, human or otherwise, when excavating old buildings, but are these evidence of sacrifice or just ancient accidents (or ancient murders)?

That’s an easier question to ask than answer, but the evidence looks like it’s leaning towards the latter, at least more often than not. In real life, however, people did often bury ‘substitute’ sacrifices beneath new buildings, giving up something literally or symbolically precious. These included empty coffins, animal skulls, bottles of wine, and (of course) treasure.

Using Church Grims in Your Game

So now you know the story, how can you use it in your game?

I. Graveyard Encounter

Player characters in role-playing games are not historically known for their respect for the sanctity of the dead—or the places where they’re buried. Church grims offer an interesting encounter for any party engaged in a little light grave robbery, whether they be fantasy knaves or 1920s detectives.

If the church grim is immune to physical harm, the encounter becomes a puzzle too, not just another fight. Can you distract a ghost dog the same way you would a real dog? Is there something the party could do to get the grim onside?

Alternatively, perhaps the spirit can be temporarily put down, but will return the following night if its sacrificed skeleton isn’t dug up and destroyed first. If the grim guards the entrance to a larger dungeon, there’s a big incentive to not have to fight past it every time the party comes and goes.

II. The Graveyard Watch

In John Campbell’s Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland5, he briefly mentions the concept of the faire chlaidh—the “graveyard watch”. Put simply, it’s the belief that the last person to be buried in a graveyard is charged with keeping watch until the next funeral occurs.

This might be a fun way to keep a deceased NPC around for a little while longer, their ghost lingering to guard their grave and give the party closure. It might also be a plot hook, if we consider someone unlucky enough to be the last person buried in an abandoned graveyard. This ancient ghost denied their chance to move on can easily act as either a threat or ally in a tomb-raiding adventure.

Alternatively, perhaps this aged spirit is the last (un)living possessor of a piece of important or secret knowledge. It’s an easy way to explain why someone has remained behind as a ghost beyond a hand-wavey ‘unfinished business’, and the trek to track them down might be a quest in its own right. The only question is: what if the ghost wants to end his vigil? Who are the party willing to assign to the graveyard watch in his place?

Church Grim Statistics (Old-School)

AC: 14
HD: 4* (18 hp)
Attacks: +3 to hit »  2 x claw (1d3) or 1 x bite (1d8) or 1 x omen
Save As: Fighter 4
Morale: 12

▶ Mundane damage immunity: Can only be harmed by magical attacks.
▶ Undead: Make no noise, until they attack. Immune to mind-affecting spells. Immune to effects that affect living creatures.
~~~
▶ Omen of Death: Marks someone it sees for death (save versus death). Foes receive +4 to hit the marked and inflict +4 damage; reaction checks involving the marked suffer a -4 penalty. The curse lasts until 1d3 sunrises from the marking unless lifted pre-emptively with magic.

Note: If a church grim is slain, it arises at the next midnight. This can only be prevented by finding the corpse of the animal sacrifice that created the grim and destroying it (e.g. with fire).

And that’s it for the church grim!

Mythoi will be back again soon with another piece of fantastical folklore!

Penny for your thoughts: Have you ever faced off against a spectral black dog in a role-playing game?

~ A.C. Luke

Find my games on itch.io! ★ My Twitter ★ My Instagram ★ My Bluesky

Welcome back to Mythoi, my newsletter on myth, folklore, and TTRPGs, one last time in 2023! I hope you’ve been enjoying your end-of-year celebrations, whether they’re cultural, religious, or ones you and those closest to you have made for yourselves.

Mythoi began in mid-2022, making this the first full year of the newsletter’s run. Let’s talk about what’s come before, what I’ve been up to, and what’s still to come:

I. 2023 Recap!

II. Elsewhere in 2023

I had two pieces of horror flash fiction published this year, both with Nightmare Fuel magazine:

• “Wait” in their ‘Don’t Let Them In’ collection.

• “Summer Burning” in their ‘Campfyre’ collection.

This was a slow year for me in terms of role-playing games, in part due to the number of projects I half-completed. Hopefully more than one of those will see the light of day in 2024! I did have one free release this year, however: The Kobold, a class for Old-School Essentials.

This year I had the pleasure of contributing to Necrotic Gnome’s Dolmenwood setting. When it releases in 2024, you’ll be able to find a little bit of my work in all three of the core books! Even if I hadn’t worked on it, I’d be excited for Dolmenwood’s release—its inspiration of a folkloric Britain is right up my alley.

Quick aside:
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that my four major games (A Family of Blades, Fey Fire, Restless Dead, and Wolf Head) are all currently discounted as part of itch.io’s Winter Sale! If you’ve interested, you can get each individually or as part of a bundle via the link below!

itch.io Winter Sale!

III. Looking Forward to 2024

I went back to university last year with the express intention of pursuing post-graduate study, so that’s kept my pretty busy this year! Luckily, that work has paid off so far, and I’ll be working on an Honours in Creative Writing in 2024. Will a PhD follow in 2025? Fingers crossed!

In between Honours, working, writing, and role-playing projects, I’ve set myself up for a busy 2024, but the plan is to release at least one issue of Mythoi every month next year. That’ll be at minimum twelve columns on myths, folklore, cryptids, urban legends, and more! If you have any specific areas of interest you’d like to see covered, let me know in the comments below or via social media.

IV. Thank You!

Let’s end more positively, however, with a thank you to everyone who’s stuck with Mythoi this last year and a half! I hope I’ve inspired some of you to incorporate folklore into your own games, or at the very least kept you entertained. If I’m lucky, perhaps you’ve even learned a thing or too!

I’ll see you all in 2024!

~ A.C. Luke

Find my games on itch.io! ★ My Twitter ★ My Instagram ★ My Bluesky

It’s the last week of the year in your small Welsh village. A festive cheer battles long nights and frosty air. It’s after dark, and singing and shouting have been carried to you on the wind all evening. Now, when it’s almost midnight and the fire is burning low, you hear a knock on the door.

You approach carefully, then look through the peephole. A group of men crowd the door, but you barely notice them. All your attention is focused on an enormous figure, draped in pale robes and colourful ribbons. Its head is a horse skull, bleached white. Christmas baubles fill its empty eye sockets. It grins at you and begins to sing.

You’ve been visited by the Mari Lwyd.

Hope you’ve been practising your rhymes.

I. The Mari Lwyd

Mari Lwyd is a name that belongs to both a creature and the folk custom surrounding it. A wassailing tradition originating in South Wales and performed around Christmas time, you might already be familiar with it just because of how captivating and evocative the design of the lady herself is. Although it’s a practice dating back over two hundred years, it almost died out in the early 20th century—but luckily, the skeleton horse has been blessed by a cultural revival over the last half-century1.

Meeting Mari Lwyd might seem like the beginning of a horror story, but the old horse is actually supposed to bring good luck! If you’re curious about how one encounters her, let me explain23:

It all begins with a group of revellers bringing her to you.

One person plays the star of the show, the skeletal horse-lady herself, by putting a horse skull atop a pole and then concealing themselves in a white sheet beneath it. The horse skull is decorated with ribbons and other festive accoutrements, and sometimes even has an articulate jaw that can be moved up and down. The rest of the group—traditionally all men—dress up as stock or folk characters, such as a jester, merrymaker, and Punch and Judy. One well-dressed man also holds the reins (so to speak) as the Leader.

Starting at dusk, the group carries Mari Lwyd through the streets of your Welsh village, singing and dancing. Eventually, they’ll turn up on your doorstep, as they will at almost every other house (or pub) throughout the night. The group will sing a verse requesting entry, which you refuse. Instead, a pwnco begins—a call-and-response rhyming battle where you’ll be trading jokes, witticisms, and insults.

A pwnco only ends when one side gives up, with the Mari Lwyd’s troupe either leaving or gaining entrance. The former is pretty rare, however, since it’s ultimately good luck if the Mari and her gang get in. Once inside, Mari causes havoc, running about and scaring children, while her companions play music and entertain the homeowners. The Mari group are given food and drink for their efforts, then sent on to do it all over again next door.

II. Naming and Origins

You’d think we’d know exactly what Mari Lwyd means, but much of the creature’s true origins are shrouded in mystery, giving us two prime options.

One translation gives us Mari Lwyd as ‘Grey Mare’, which puts the creature in conversation with other mythic, pale horses found throughout the British Isles. The second translation is ‘Grey Mary’ or ‘Holy Mary’, instead linking the custom to Mary and the nativity.

Does the second option imply Mari Lwyd began as a Christian tradition? That’s a very thorny question, despite its modern associations with Christmas. Our earliest published account of the Mari Lwyd custom is only from 1800, even though we know the tradition is far older. This has led to much speculation and debate but few answers.

Some believe Mari Lwyd derives from some pre-Christian, pagan custom that was incorporated into the Welsh people’s new belief system, but there’s no material evidence that’s the case. We do know that Mari Lwyd exists in conversation at least with similar traditions of hooded animals and hobby horses in neighbouring parts of Britain, not to mention ritual animal disguises being found the world over4.

In the end, however, the true origin of this festive horse skeleton has managed to remain a mystery

Using the Mari Lwyd in Your Game

So now you know the story, how can you use it in your game?

I. A Festive Tradition

Sometimes it can be fun to just add some flavour to your story world. The party can come from or visit a town that has its own Mari Lwyd tradition—either literally, if your game is set on Earth, or as a form of inspiration if not. Incorporating local customs and folk traditions makes the world feel real and lived in, and not just an arena for the PC’s adventures.

In a fantasy setting, you don’t need to go with a horse head either. The locals might, for example, parade about with the head of a young dragon slain many years ago. However, in that particular case, you might ask what happens when the dragon’s parent comes to town and sees how their kid’s remains are being treated?

II. Case of the Missing Head

Here’s a story starter for you: In one Welsh town, the skull of the Mari Lwyd is kept buried for most of the year, only being dug up for the duration of the Christmas season5. So what happens when the town goes to dig up the skull and it isn’t there?

In a more grounded game, perhaps in the ‘Kids on Bikes’ genre, the thieves are probably just jerks—can your group of wayward teens get it back before the festive season is ruined? For higher stakes, the skull might be worth a lot of money to the right buyer as a historical artefact. Your party will need to retrieve the skull before it gets lost forever in a private collection—or heist it back, if that’s more their speed.

In a more fantastical setting, the skull’s theft likely has more sinister intentions. Perhaps the villains intend to perform some profane ritual, raising the spirit of Mari Lwyd for their own, dark purposes. Or, maybe the Mari Lwyd ritual is secretly protective. What malevolent force will be turning its attention to the town, if the PCs fail to retrieve their skeletal protector?

III. A Midwinter Breather

Alternatively, does there need to be an underhanded plot or dramatic stakes? Perhaps the best use of Mari Lwyd is to just get in on the Welsh tradition. Have the PCs drinking in an inn common room when Mari Lwyd visits, letting them blow off steam between adventures by having a rap battle with a giant skeletal horse (puppet or undead trickster spirit, you decide).

Not every challenge needs to be life or death, after all.

And that’s it for the Mari Lwyd—and Mythoi in 2023!

Thank you very much to everyone who read Mythoi in 2023; we’ll be back again in the new year with even more fantastical folklore!

Penny for your thoughts: Have you ever faced off against a festive monster in a role-playing game?

~ A.C. Luke

Find my games on itch.io! ★ My Twitter ★ My Instagram ★ My Bluesky

Side Note: The Mari Lwyd in the banner picture might have a cow skull for a head, not a horse skull. If so, pretend that’s a free extra plot hook: what’s up with Mari’s secret cow sister?

The nights are getting darker. The barrier between our world and the next is thinning. Have you carved a face into a turnip or pumpkin to keep the evil spirits at bay?

While you avoid contact with the afterlife, however, there’s someone who would do anything to reach it. This Halloween, you might even see his light in the far distance. Just make sure you don’t follow it.

The Tale of Stingy Jack

Under normal circumstances, it’s hard to see how tricking the Devil into not taking your soul could be a bad thing. And yet, we have the Irish folktale of Stingy Jack. The stories vary, but they all concern the contemptible Jack, barred from both heaven and hell, cursed to wander the earth with naught but a burning ember.

How did Jack end up in such a predicament? Well, in at least one version, the curmudgeonly Jack has a momentary lapse of hard-heartedness and helps an old man who is actually an angel in disguise1. As a reward, the angel grants Jack three wishes. He makes all three on the spot, each a variation on “Don’t let people touch my stuff!”. Thoroughly unimpressed, the angel grants his wishes and leaves. Unbeknownst to Jack, his selfishness has now barred him from heaven.

Jack, none the wiser, goes on to live out the rest of his life, until one day a servant of the Devil shows up on his door. It’s come to drag him to hell. Jack may not be nice, but he is clever, and he manages to trick and trap not just the Devil’s servants, but eventually the Devil himself. Jack makes the Devil relinquish any claim on his soul; if he lets him go, Jack never has to go to hell.

The Devil beaten, Jack happily goes on to die—and finally finds out he’s been barred from heaven for his selfish and sinful lifestyle. In a panic, he rushes down to hell and asks to be let in. Unfortunately, the Devil is a man(?) of his word and can’t take him either. Out of pity, he sends Jack off with an ember to light his way2.

Then since Jack is unfit for heaven,
And hell won’t give him room,
His ghost is forced to walk the earth,
Until the day of doom:
A lantern in his hand he bears,
The way by night to show;
And, from its flame, he’s got the name
Of Jack O’ Lantern now.
— “The Romance of Jack O’ Lantern” (1851)

Older portrayals of Jack have him lighting his way with the flame inside a hollowed vegetable (a turnip, then a pumpkin). Newer portrayals, however, have his jack-o’-lantern sitting firmly atop his head.

Jack-o’-Lanterns

Before we wrap up, it’d be remiss to end this Halloween tale without speaking about jack-o’-lanterns. Now the term for spookily-carved pumpkins, jack-o’-lantern was once another term for will-o’-the-wisps. These ghost lights were often seen ‘dancing’ by travellers at night, especially over swamps and marshes. Though we now know these lights are a natural phenomenon, it’d have been a shocking sight to see one glowing in the dark a millennia ago. Folklore across the world associates them with ghosts, fairies, and dark spirits, often ones intending to lead the unwary astray (and, of course, to their deaths).

This is all relevant to our tale today because some stories merge Stingy Jack with jack-o’-lanterns and will-o’-the-wisps3. In this version, Jack now lurks in marshes and bogs, his hobby now luring travellers into danger and death with his ghostly light. And if that really is how Jack’s decided his eternity, can’t say I blame God or the Devil for turfing him out.

Using Stingy Jack in Your Game

So now you know the story, how can you use it in your game?

A Sinister Threat

Taking inspiration from Jack as a jack-o’-lantern, we can imagine him as a malevolent spirit with nothing to lose. If he’s turned to luring hapless travellers to their doom, we have to ask: what for? Cruel pleasures? Or has Jack figured out how to trap the souls of those he kills? And if so, what terrible purpose does he intend to use them for?

Even if you don’t use the old-school D&D write-up below, have a look at its spirit lantern and spirit fire abilities for inspiration. A foe that traps souls in its lantern and burns them for fuel, denying resurrection and eternal rest in your setting’s heaven, is likely to terrify your players!

A Desperate Client

Stingy Jack might be barred from heaven and hell, but that doesn’t mean he’s lost his cunning. If he tricked his way out of an afterlife, surely he can trick his way into one too, right?

In an urban fantasy setting, Jack might approach the PC’s as a client, hiring them to engage in part of his elaborate schemes. In a fantasy setting, if a marauding Jack can’t be defeated using conventional means, perhaps the party can strike a deal with him. He’ll do anything to escape his current purgatory, something the PCs can take advantage of. As long as they’re careful, of course—Jack’s more than willing to burn everything down if he realises he’s tricked.

Halloween Night

Every American kid looks forward to Halloween, especially ones who are the PCs in a ‘kids on bikes’ game (Kids on Bikes, Tales from the Loop, etc). But this year, a concerned parents group has got the whole thing banned. It’s inappropriate, blasphemous, and ne'er-do-wells are putting hard drugs in your kid’s candy!

And yet, Halloween was started for a reason. Jack is only a spectre most nights of the year, but Halloween’s different. For decades, your small town’s Halloween celebrations have kept him at bay, but now, without kids in costumes and jack-o’-lanterns, there’s nothing to scare him away. Unless your party of kids can stop him, there’ll be a record harvest.

Stingy Jack Statistics (Old-School)

Armor Class: 4 [15]
Hit Dice: 7** (31 hp)
Attacks: 1 x sword (1d6 or by weapon) or 1 x breath
THAC0: 13 [+6]
Move: 120’ (40’)
Save As: Fighter 8
Morale: 8

▶ Undead: Make no noise, until they attack. Immune to effects that affect living creatures (e.g. poison). Immune to mind-affecting or mind-reading spells (e.g. charm, hold, sleep).
▶ Immunities: Can only be harmed by magical attacks. Unharmed by fire. Cannot be turned while holding his lantern.
▶ Conditional invisibility: Invisible to anyone more than 30’ away. This does not include the fire within his lantern.

▶ Spirit lantern: When a humanoid dies within 30’, their soul is absorbed into Jack’s lantern (note it’s HD). These souls can be consumed to power Jack’s spirit fire. Trapped or consumed souls cannot be resurrected.
▶ Spirit fire: 15’ long cone of fire. All caught in the area suffer Xd6 damage, where X is the total HD of souls Jack chooses to consume (up to a maximum of 10 HD at a time). Save versus breath for half damage.

If reduced to 0 HP, Jack’s soul risks destruction, so he will attempt to trick, flee, or bargain before this happens. For example, he might keep an important soul trapped in his lantern rather than consuming it for spirit fire—just in case he needs to use it to barter for his freedom.

And that’s it for Stingy Jack!

If you celebrate it, I hope you have a very spooky Halloween! Mythoi will be back again soon with another piece of fantastical folklore.

Penny for your thoughts: Have you ever had Halloween, or a version of it, show up in one of your tabletop games?

~ A.C. Luke

Find my games on itch.io! ★ My Twitter ★ My Instagram ★ My Bluesky

Banner Image by Daniel Lincoln on Unsplash.

You’ve been adrift at sea for days now, your ship destroyed by a malevolent kraken. All hope seems lost, until you spot a speck on the horizon. You drift closer and see it’s an island! It has rocky crevices, sand dunes, and valleys with trees. It’s not home, but after days of harsh sun and caustic, salty water, it might as well be a paradise.

You make landfall, find fresh water, and gather fruit from trees. You even take out an unwary seabird. All you have to do now is start a small fire to warm yourself, boil your water, and cook your food. But, as the flames spring to life, the entire island shakes. The sea begins to flood around you, the land itself sinking into the brine. You realise all too late that you didn’t find an island after all—you’re on the back of a giant sea beast!

I. Aspidochelone

The aspidochelone (Greek, “asp” or “shield” plus “turtle”) is a fabled sea beast, one so large that it is often mistaken for an island. Making frequent appearances in medieval bestiaries, the first recorded version of the legend can be found in the 2nd-century CE text Physiologus:

“There is a monster in the sea which in Greek is called aspidochelone, in Latin "asp-turtle"; it is a great whale, that has what appear to be beaches on its hide, like those from the sea-shore. […] Believing it to be an island, [sailors] beach their ship alongside it, and disembarking, they plant stakes and tie up the ships. Then, in order to cook a meal after this work, they make fires on the sand as if on land. But when the monster feels the heat of these fires, it immediately submerges into the water, and pulls the ship into the depths of the sea.”1

Many famous characters, real and fictional, have had encounters with such creatures, including Sinbad the Sailor, Jewish Talmudist Rabbah bar bar Hana, and even Alexander the Great. All initially mistake it for an island, and, in Sinbad and Rabbah’s case, it’s unlucky seamen starting fires—as per the Physiologus—that rouse the sleeping beast to dive.

These tales are not alone either, with folklore and mythologies from all over the world having examples of sea creatures so enormous they’re mistaken as islands. If we expand our search into pop culture, everything from Middle-Earth to Zelda has a monster inspired by creatures like the aspidochelone.

So, let’s look at one Norse example in particular—an example with more truth to it than you might think!

II. Hafgufa

The hafgufa (translated from Old Norse as “sea-reek” or “sea-steamer”) is a massive sea monster, an enormous fish or whale often mistaken for an island. Appearing in Norse texts such as Konungs skuggsjá and Örvar-Odds saga, it eats whales, ships, and just about everything else, and it does so by using an unusual method to capture its prey2.

To feed, the hafgufa lifts its snout above the water’s surface so that its open mouth resembles two enormous rocks emerging from the sea. Then, when something sails or swims between them, it slams its jaws shut. Some tales also mention it expelling food from its stomach, attracting nearby fish to swim between its jaws.

It’s this highly unusual feeding method that serves to remind us that there’s often at least a kernel of truth in any folklore:

III. Trap-Feeding Whales

Although thought of as a myth for centuries, it’s only this year—2023—that we’ve discovered the hafgufa may not be as mythical as it seems. Island-sized whales haven’t been found, tragically, but there’s now evidence the hafgufa really was observed by Norse sailors back in the day. Except this hafgufa wasn’t a sea monster—it’s actually a very clever whale3.

Over the last decade, scientists have observed whales engaging in trap feeding and tread-water feeding. In both feeding methods, whales sit motionless at the surface with their mouths open, waiting for fish to swim inside. It’s even been speculated that the chum from this eating method might attract more fish, ala the hafgufa’s barfing trick, but that remains to be seen.

So, the feeding style matches, but how do we square the hafgufa’s enormous size with that of an ordinary whale? Well, you could argue that proportions can become distorted when an object is viewed underwater, but there might be a simpler explanation—the halfuga’s size just grew in the telling.

Using Island Whales in Your Game

So, now you know the story, how can you use it in your game?

I. Include an Island Whale!

If you’re running a nautical game, or a game that’s taken a nautical turn, an island whale can make for a classic inclusion. It can be a notable event to make a voyage feel longer, a (brief!) respite if supplies or morale is low, and/or a fantastical break from more mundane oceanic problems.

Alternatively, for a faster, more action-packed encounter, a hafgufa might function as an aquatic trap for your party’s ship! Sailing between those two rocky outcroppings might not have been so wise a move after all…

II. X Marks the Spot That Moves

For a more elaborate inclusion of an island whale, perhaps a magical artefact or MacGuffin the PCs need has been safely hidden atop an aspidochelone. The party will need to track down the island whale (not an easy task when it moves!), then race against time to find the artefact before the creature dives back into the ocean depths. If there’s a whole dungeon atop the whale, this is the perfect excuse to create tension through time pressure.

Feel free to let the PCs know how much time they have too, as long as it isn’t too much. If you do, the diving island becomes the RPG equivalent of Hitchcock’s bomb under the table. The party has to treat time as a resource, which makes spending it turn every action and diversion have real weight!

III. Aspidochelone Park

In a modern or near-future game, perhaps an aspidochelone has been found to exist after all. With this new wonder of science discovered, what’s the next logical next step? Building a luxury resort on top of it, of course!

The PCs are guests of this resort for one reason or another on the night when things, predictably, go horribly wrong. The island whale has been physically restrained to stop it from diving, but now it’s gotten free, or partially free, and is trying to escape. Perhaps some horrifying parasites have simultaneously emerged from its carapace to menace fleeing vacationers as well. Either way, the PCs need to get to the boats, or scale the flooding hotel to reach the helicopter pads, before they drown!

And that’s it for aspidochelone and hafgufa!

Mythoi will be back again soon with another piece of fantastical folklore!

Penny for your thoughts: Have you ever run or played a sailing adventure in a role-playing game?

~ A.C. Luke

Find my games on itch.io! ★ My Twitter ★ My Instagram ★ My Bluesky

It’s 1971, and you’re a kid growing up in a small town in England. Digging around in the garden with your brother, you’ve found a pair of small stone heads. They look ancient, and now strange things seem to be happening around your house. Have you found two cursed Celtic artefacts, perhaps? Or did you just dig up an elaborate hoax?

Either way, these Hexham heads have come out of fertile story-telling ground.

I. The Story

The Hexham Heads were first dug up in 1971 in the small town of Hexham, England, by young brothers Colin and Leslie Robson1. Small, about the size of a tennis ball, and made from stone, these were obviously something important. They resembled crudely carved heads; one masculine, the other feminine. Later, people would say the feminine one resembled a witch.

The Robson kids took them inside their house, after which strange, poltergeist-style phenomena began—the heads moved when no one was looking, while bottles threw themselves at walls without anyone touching them. The strangest occurrence happened, however, to the Robson’s neighbours in their shared, semi-detached house. The matriarch, Nelly, claimed to have seen a half-man, half-sheep creature lurking about!

At this point, sufficiently spooked, the Robson’s got rid of the Heads by giving them to Anne Ross, an expert in Celtic artefacts and mysticism. This moved the strange phenomena to Ross’ house, and she woke up to a half-wolf, half-man creature thumping around her house. A similar, werewolf-like creature was witnessed a few days later by Ross’ daughter too when she returned home from school. In addition to this monstrous presence, Ross also experienced cold spots, doors opening spontaneously, and occasionally glimpsed a dark figure out of the corner of her eye.

Knowing about the Robson family’s experiences, Ross believed the Heads were the cause, and she was likely right—the strange phenomena stopped as soon as she removed the artefacts from her house2.

II. The Truth?

Of course, we could end the story there and say the Heads are locked up tight—safe but awaiting the freedom to haunt again. But the rest of the story is a little more sobering (except for a little twist at the end!).

But let’s start with what you might already be wondering—is this all a hoax? Well, perhaps not intentionally. At this point, the Heads were getting national attention, and a man named Desmond Craigie came forward to say he made the Heads as a present to his daughter. He used to live in what was now the Robson’s house in 1956, less than twenty years before. Now, Craigie created replicas to demonstrate his claim, but these weren’t satisfactorily similar—though whether that’s because it was two decades later or because he was lying is unknown.

What we do know is that the University of Newcastle’s Professor Dearman analysed the Heads and concluded they were artificially moulded rather than carved3. The Heads weren’t ancient artefacts after all.

Does modern science agree? Do we know any more than we did over forty years ago? Well, I can’t tell you. As with all good spooky stories, there’s a last-minute twist—after being passed around between experts for a number of years, the Heads were given to… a man. Who was he? What did he do with the Heads? We don’t know.

He and the Hexham Heads just disappeared.

Using the Hexham Heads in Your Game

So, now you know the story, how can you use it in your game?

Well, if we take the Hexham Heads as genuine cursed artefacts, how about a good old-fashioned haunting? Someone finds or digs up the Heads, and now it’s a race against time before the monstrous spirit inside them manifests fully on our plane of existence.

The questions to ask are:

• What exactly is the half-animal, half-man creature that haunts the Heads? Is it a primal deity, a spiritual manifestation of lycanthropy, or something more demonic?

• Is the spirit a danger by itself, or does it need to possess a hapless victim to do its dirty work?

In a modern, investigative game like Monster of the Week, a hapless victim might have the Head, with stories of hauntings or violence triggering PC interest. In a fantasy game like D&D, the PCs might find the Heads themselves as treasure in a forsaken grave or tomb. If they then take it to an inn or home base, it might lead to a murder mystery as they try to determine which friendly NPC is now secretly possessed. Either way, they’ll need to work out that the Heads are ultimately at fault, or they’ll just be delaying the inevitable when they first slay the spirit and/or its host.

For an example of the Heads might work, try this!

Hexham Head (Cursed Item)

A small stone object resembling a crudely carved human head. If kept inside a house or dwelling:

• 1d4-1 nights after arriving, poltergeist activity begins. The Head may begin to move around, perhaps hoping to conceal itself.

• 1d4 more nights after that, a half-beast, half-man spirit begins to manifest. Inhabitants of the house may glimpse a dark spirit out of the corner of their eye during the day or see it fully manifest during the night. Neighbours might even experience paranormal phenomena too. The spirit remains incorporeal, however.

• 4 nights after that, the beast spirit possesses a suitable host and begins to influence their behaviour—likely towards violence. The Head craves blood, and it’s only a matter of time before it gets it. An exorcism or banishment ritual is still possible at this stage.

• 4 nights after that, the host physically transforms to resemble the beast spirit and their soul is fully corrupted. After sufficient blood sacrifice, they take the Head and bury it to recharge its cursed power through contact with the earth, ready for the cycle to begin anew.

And that’s it for the Hexham Heads!

Thanks for reading; Mythoi will be back again soon with another piece of fantastical folklore!

Penny for your thoughts: Have you ever been cursed by an artefact in a game?

~ A.C. Luke

Find my games on itch.io! ★ My Twitter ★ My Instagram

If there’s one thing English folklore adores, it’s a spooky black dog. From the Barghest and Black Shuck to the Shug Monkey and Gytrash, these spectral hounds love showing off their red eyes, hanging with the Devil, and acting as omens of death. Mythoi could run for years on ghostly canines alone.

Most black dogs too, as you might guess, are actively malevolent. So how about we start with some spectral dogs that can function as both friend and foe?

I. Dando’s Dogs

The core message of Dando’s Dogs is that of hubris, a tale of a wicked priest who went hunting on Sundays and was carried off by the Devil. It’s also the story of a dog’s loyalty and how that leads to them being tragically punished for their owner’s bad behaviour.

The legend begins with Dando, a sinful priest, relaxing after a Sunday hunt1. He drinks all the alcohol his companions brought and demands more still. This is when a strange huntsman appears and offers the priest his own drink. The already drunk Dando, clearly not realising he’s in a folktale, accepts.

Here the tale diverges.

1. In one telling, the huntsman bow seizes Dando’s game from the earlier hunt. Dando, trying to stop the theft, unwisely screams, "I'll go to Hell after them, but I'll get them from thee!"

2. In the other, Dando enjoys the huntsman’s drink so much he proclaims, also unwisely, "I'll gallop to Hell for more!”

Either way, the huntsman obliges his poor choice of words and pulls him atop his horse, whisking him away to Hell. This leaves Dando’s poor dogs to run after their owner in an endless futile pursuit, shedding their mortal forms in the process.

On stormy nights, or early Sunday mornings, Dando’s dogs can be seen or heard galloping across the moors. Local wisdom is that it’s best to steer clear of them.2

II. Or, the Devil’s Dandy Dogs

An alternative story frames the dogs as hellhounds—the Devil’s ‘Dandy Dogs’. In places like Cornwall, dandy dogs are said to snort fire and hunt the souls of the damned by night. In one tale, a pack of them chase a man until he falls to his knees and prays, scaring them off3. If you’re ever in such a situation, and the power of prayer fails, you can also try escaping across running water instead4.

This story has become conflated and enmeshed with Dando’s. If we take these to be the same dogs, perhaps their master being pulled into Hell transformed them into hellhounds. Is the Devil forcing Dando to hunt for him now, and if so, for what purpose? Alternatively, it’s possible the strange huntsman has become their new master.

Given the nature of dogs and the hunt, Dando’s dogs are also often associated with the Wild Hunt5. Perhaps this strange huntsman isn’t demonic at all then, but rather some troublesome ghost or spirit, or even one of the fey. If so, the dandy dogs might just be the prelude for some far greater hunt—and thus, a far greater danger.

Using Dando’s Dogs in Your Game

So, now you know the story, how can you use it in your game?

I. A Campfire Encounter

Dando and his dogs are a pretty obscure piece of folklore, unless you’re from Cornwall, so there’s nothing to say you can’t reuse the story within your own game! You can have Dando be a campfire encounter, someone the PCs stumble across just before nightfall, or someone who asks to join them at their own fire.

Either way, drinking to excess ensures, and that’s when the strange huntsman appears. Given that your average PC is likely a bit more genre-savvy that ol’ Dando, they’ll be able to have their hand in what happens next. And if the huntsman still pulls the poor cleric onto his horse and goes to flee, hopefully the PCs are feeling charitable enough to rescue him!

II. Breaking the Curse

Our next premise leans into the Wild Hunt aspect of the dandy dogs, a threat that can’t be avoided once it starts hunting. In this case, the Devil’s dogs have started menacing a local community, stalking the townsfolk and presaging a greater danger. Desperate, the town hires the party to find someone to drive off the spectral dogs for good.

Given the dogs are immortal, however, there’s only one way to stop them—finding their original owner and asking him to call them off. Of course, all that’ll require is a descent into some dangerous underground prison—or, if the party is really unlucky, Hell itself…

III. The Dog has a Fetch Quest

Alternatively, let’s show some sympathy for Dando’s dogs. If they really are cursed to wander forever without him, that’s going to start weighing on them! After centuries, they’ll be desperate and perhaps even gained a self-awareness far beyond an ordinary dog’s. Which means, through active pursual or chance, they might just end up requesting the party’s help.

In a fantasy world, this might require locating a lost tomb and putting Dando’s ghost to rest, or plumbing the depths of Hell itself. Or, in an urban fantasy setting, who’s to say the Devil still has Dando’s soul? After hundreds of years, he’s traded it to someone else. Now the party must find the new owner and figure out how to barter with them for Dando’s soul. Or, of course, they could just try and heist it…

If the party succeeds, Dando’s dogs will be forever in their favour. They’ll probably be reading to follow their old master into the hereafter, but they need to give the PCs something as a show of thanks. How about a whistle?

Dando’s Whistle (Magic Item)

A flint arrowhead fashioned into a shepherd’s whistle. Blowing into it releases a sound above human hearing and causes a dandy dog to arrive in 1d6 rounds. Its disposition regarding being summoned is based on a reaction check modified by past interactions.

If the dandy dog is killed, its soul moves on, and the whistle will only blow a low, mournful note in the future.

Dandy Dog Statistics
Depending on the nature of your dandy dogs, you can use the stat block for a Blink Dog, a Hellhound, or a regular Wolf with immunity to attacks not made with silver weapons or magic.

And that’s it for Dando’s devil dogs!

Mythoi passed its one-year anniversary last month, so a special thank you for being on this folklore journey with me! We’ll be back again soon with another piece of myth and legend.

Penny for your thoughts: Have you ever met, or used, a spectral black dog in one of your games?

~ A.C. Luke

Find my games on itch.io! ★ My Twitter ★ My Instagram ★ My Bluesky

Original Banner Picture by Liza Phoenix

When it comes to books judged by their covers, dragons are top of the pile. Old-school European dragons are almost universally evil, and modern D&D dragons follow suit by being literally colour coded based on their morality. If it shares a colour with a Magic: The Gathering card, you’re good to start slaying.

Still, every now and again, there’s an old story to suggest you shouldn’t be quite so hasty in attacking a dragon. For example, what if it’s actually your sister?

I. The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh

Once upon a time, in the Kingdom of Northumbria, a kind king lost his wife. Like many fairytale kings in his position, he immediately makes a bad decision and marries a beautiful but cruel witch. With the King’s son Childe Wynd across the sea, the witch takes the opportunity to rid herself of her new stepdaughter, Princess Margaret. She does so, of course, by turning the princess into a dragon:

‘I weird ye to be a Laidly Worm,
And borrowed shall ye never be,
Until Childe Wynd, the King's own son
Come to the Heugh and thrice kiss thee;
Until the world comes to an end,
Borrowed shall ye never be.’1

The locals chase this new monster to Spindleston Heugh, a nearby crag. Not sure what else to do, they feed the dragon seven cows daily to keep it at bay.

This status quo breaks when the witch hears Prince Wynd is to return. To stop him, she sends imps to ambush his ship at sea. Luckily, the keel is made from rowan wood—a folkloric protection against malevolent beings—and the imps are powerless. They return to their master in defeat.

Next, the witch switches to Plan B and enchants the Laidly Worm to stop her brother from coming ashore. The dragon successfully repels the prince’s ship three times, so he orders his men to stop trying to land. In her hubris, the witch-queen declares victory.

In reality, however, Wynd just has his ship go slightly up the coast and dock there. He and his men leave the ship, ready to engage the dragon. By the time they reach her, the witch’s magic has worn off. The Laidly Worm makes no effort to fight Wynd, who swoops in for the killing blow. Before he can strike, however, the Worm speaks in his sister’s voice:

'O, quit your sword, unbend your bow,
And give me kisses three;
For though I am a poisonous worm,
No harm I'll do to thee.'

Although suspicious, Wynd kisses the Worm three times and it transforms back into his sister. He wraps her in his cloak and the two return to the castle. There they confront the witch, and Wynd touches her with a twig from a rowan tree. This causes her to shrivel and transform into an enormous, ugly toad.

And, to this day, the Laidly Toad haunts the streets near Bamburgh Castle.

II. The History & Similar Tales

The ballad of the Laidly Worm comes from Northumbria, first published in a compilation of folk songs in 17782. The titular Spindleston Heugh can be visited in the parish of Easington, Northumberland, while the adjective Laidly is a Scottish variant of loathly.

Similar ballads can be found in England, Scotland, and Scandinavia, stories of someone (usually a woman) transformed unjustly into a monster and needing to be cured. Kemp Owyne3, for example, has the same outline but with the dragon offering the hero a magic belt, ring, and sword in exchange for each kiss. The Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea4, another variation, has the king step in as protagonist, rescuing his transformed son (laily worm) and daughter (mackerel) from his new witch wife.

Given its repeated use, the story of the Laidly Worm clearly has potential outside its original framing. Given that, how can it inspire your own game?

Using the Laidly Worm in Your Game

I. Use the Ballad!

The easiest way to adapt this tale to your game is just to use it wholesale! Prince Wynd hears a dragon is threatening his homeland, so he sends the party ahead to investigate before he arrives. In this version, the Laidly Dragon can’t speak, so once the PCs discover the truth, they’ll need to race to warn Wynd before he slays his own sister!

Alternatively, you can place the PCs in Wynd’s role, intent to save the kingdom themselves from this new, draconic threat. Will they discover the truth in time to save the princess? And who among them will step up to kiss the dragon?

II. A Loathsome Tale

The next option is to use the tale, with a twist. Perhaps the ballad:

• …is the backstory for a kingdom ruled by a Dragon Queen. The story is accurate right up the end, when Margaret ate both the witch and her brother, assuming control of the lands for herself.

• …ended in tragedy, and Wynd was killed. In this scenario, the witch went on to lead the kingdom to disaster, leaving just her and the Laidly Worm to haunt its ruins.

• …was interrupted when the queen defeated Wynd. Now she rules with an iron fist, turning the Laidly Worm against her enemies. The party needs Wynd to break the curse and deprive the queen of her dragon, but finding and convincing him to try will be an adventure in and of itself.

III. The Laidly Toad

The ballad of the Laidly Worm leaves us with the witch defeated and turned into a toad, one that might still be around today! With a perfect detail like that, we’d be looking a gift toad in the mouth if we didn’t try and use it.

Say the ballad, or a version of it, occurred in the past of your game. If you’re playing in a medieval or fantasy setting, this could be the recent past, or hundreds of years ago for urban fantasy. What’s important is that the only remaining character left alive is the witch, still trapped in the form of an enormous toad. No doubt she’s plotting to regain human form and take revenge on Childe Wynd and Princess Margaret’s descendants!

The Laidly Toad could be anything from a weird encounter in a ruin or cave to a plotting antagonist behind the scenes of a whole adventure. And if Wynd’s descendants are in trouble, who better than a band of adventurers (or paranormal investigators) to turn to in a time of crisis?

Laidly Toad Statistics (Old-School)

Armor Class: 6 [13]
Hit Dice: 4* (18 hp)
Attacks: 1 × bite (1d4+1) or 1 x tongue or 1 x spell
THAC0: 16 [+3]
Move: 90’ (30’)
Save As: Fighter 4
Morale: 8

▶ Witch: Cast spells as a 4th level magic-user.
▶ Surprise: On a 1–3, as she changes colour to match her surroundings.
▶ Tongue: 15’ range. On a hit, the target is dragged to the mouth and immediately bitten.
▶ Swallow: If the Laidly Toad rolls a natural 20 on an attack roll against a target smaller than a horse, she also swallows them. While inside: suffer 1d6 damage per round (until the Toad dies); may attack with sharp weapons at -4 to hit.

As a witch, the Laidly Toad likely knows special spells or has magical abilities prepared that are not known to normal magic-users. The fact she is statted as a 4th level mage reflects her current, diminished state.

And that’s it for the Laidly Worm (and Toad)!

Thanks for reading; Mythoi will be back again soon with another piece of fantastical folklore!

Penny for your thoughts: Have you ever used a good, or at least misunderstood, dragon in one of your games?

~ A.C. Luke

Find my games on itch.io! ★ My Twitter ★ My Instagram

It’s the witching hour, and you’re standing on a bridge.

In theory, disused bridges are a great place to loiter after dark. You feel safe knowing you’d be able to see anyone approaching from either direction. You’re completely alone. Then, as you stare out into the inky blackness of the night water, you hear a noise. A baby’s cry; a voice floating up from beneath the bridge. Instinct tells you to flee, but what if there’s a baby nearby, one that’s in distress? You lean over the side of the bridge, shine the light of your phone down as a torch.

You don’t see a baby. You see something far, far worse.

I. Haunted Bridges

Bridges are a popular destination for hauntings. They might be built to protect and facilitate travel, but one wrong move and you could plunge into the dangerous waters below. Even if you do everything right, what if the bridge collapses underneath you?

Bridges are an open, liminal space, floating atop another liminal space (a body of water). They’re a tenuous connection to somewhere else. What better place for the manifestation of spirits and demons? It’s no wonder bridges are often associated with the afterlife.

Unlike many liminal spaces, however, bridges aren’t so easy to avoid. They typically exist for an important reason—allowing humans to cross otherwise unsafe obstacles. Even if you wanted to avoid one, how far out of your way would you have to go? Isn’t it better to just take your chances?

Indirect signs you might be on a haunted bridge include your car stalling halfway across, glowing eyes in the dark, splashing in the water below, and, of course, strange voices crying out. If you’re particularly unlucky, the bridge might lead somewhere it’s not supposed to—the past, another location, or a sinister dimension.

To narrow our focus, let’s look at a special kind of haunted bridge that can be found across America. Let’s look at…

II. Crybaby Bridges

Put simply, Crybaby Bridges are bridges where the sound of a crying baby can be heard as you cross it. This ghostly phenomenon is usually accompanied by an urban legend explanation:

“And so the story goes that there was a woman […] driving at night, and she either became possessed or got sick of her kids or something, but she stopped at the bridge and threw her kids over the bridge and then jumped off herself and drowned and died. The other version I’ve heard is she became possessed and drove the car off the bridge, killing her and her kids.”
— Cry Baby Bridge, USU Student Folklore Fieldwork1

Sometimes the baby wanders away and accidentally drowns, while in others there is malevolent intent23. Sometimes the baby's cries are accompanied by those of a woman, presumably the lost baby's mother. These bridges can allegedly be found throughout the United States, including in Kentucky, Ohio, Maryland, and Texas.

At this point, you might be thinking that this story has a lot in common with other folktales like La Llorona and the Woman in White. You’re not wrong, and if you like, it’s easy to link these tales together to add a more active presence to your sinister bridge. I’ll definitely write an article on these spirits in the future, however, so for now, let me present you with another angle.

There are very few true stories that explain Crybaby Bridges. There usually aren’t any records of women or babies dying at them; rather, these stories come about as a retroactive explanation for why someone heard a baby crying at the bridge. People are spinning tales to explain something inexplicable. In real life, of course, the simple conclusion is that these bridges just aren’t haunted. But a fun alternative to consider is this:

Using Crybaby Bridges in Your Game

At this point, you might be thinking:

“Well, that’s a great spooky story, but I’m not sure I want to put dead baby ghosts into my relatively light-hearted role-playing game.”

And it’s a good point! Even if you’re dealing in horror, dead children (especially babies) are often a line that people aren’t interested in crossing. You might accidentally unearth real-life trauma, or it might just be a real buzzkill at the table.

The easiest approach is to pivot to using White Lady-style folklore, focusing on the dangers of a ghostly mother figure. If you want to stick with Crybaby Bridges in particular, however, here are several unorthodox ways you can use one in your game.

I. Fairy-napping

A baby has been stolen out of its crib by a fairy. Locals pursued the creature, but it disappeared as it fled across a nearby bridge. If you listen carefully, however, you can still hear the baby’s cries when you stand atop it. Can our heroes figure out how to use the bridge to cross into Faerie and rescue the stolen baby before it’s too late?

II. It’s Not a Baby

Locals speak of a Crybaby Bridge and its rumoured haunting. It wasn’t considered much more than a tall tale, however, until people recently started reporting real baby cries. Perhaps it’s warranted a small article in the local newspaper, or the recordings have shown up on YouTube. It’s spooky, but the fun kind of spooky—at least until the disappearances start. Because something is wrong with the bridge, but it’s not the ghost of a deceased child. That’s just the sounds ‘it’ makes to lure you in.

Whether they’re investigators or curious teens, quickly present the PCs with definitive proof that there haven’t been any child deaths at the bridge, and let their paranoia spiral from there.

III. Fakelore

Many Crybaby Bridges are arguably fakelore—that is, fiction invented by someone on the internet that’s been given legitimacy by claiming to be an older story. In the real world, there are plenty of reasons why someone might lie about something like this (e.g. the author is bored). In our fictional world, however, perhaps the PCs are tasked with investigating who’s behind these stories. In this case, it might be a Scooby Doo-style plot to distract from a mundane crime, or perhaps whoever is spreading these rumours is actually trying to manifest a supernatural presence in the real world….

And that’s it for Crybaby Bridges!

Thanks for reading and bearing with Mythoi through our short hiatus. We’ll be back again soon for another fantastical piece of folklore to use in your role-playing games!

Penny for your thoughts: Have you ever had a bridge act as a major set piece in one of your games?

~ A.C. Luke

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In folklore, is there anything more dangerous than a body of water? A humble stream, a forest spring, a roaring river, an expansive lake; all places that teem with spirits the world over. And, unluckily for us humans, these are usually the kind of spirits with murderous intent.

In Slavic mythology, this primordial fear of drowning gives us the world’s froggiest old man.

Vodyanoy

The vodyanoy (or vodyanoi, both meaning “the one in the water” or “water entity”) is a dangerous male water spirit1.

Unlike many water spirits that choose to manifest as attractive naked women, the Slavic vodyanoy appears as an old merman with a frog-like face and a long, algae-filled beard. His skin is covered in green or black scales, his hands are webbed, and he has the tail of a large fish. Rather than use his name, locals refer to him by the honorific “grandfather”.

As with many water spirits, when a tragedy happens near a waterway, it’s likely the vodyanoy’s doing. Broken dams, flooded mills, and drowned people and animals are all his handiwork. Some tales even say that he imprisons the souls of those he kills, making them his slaves in an underwater kingdom2.

To avoid death and disruption, fishermen, millers, and all who make their livelihoods on or near the river offer the vodyanoy tribute. Bread, salt, vodka, and tobacco are all accepted, and it’s hard to go wrong with some good old-fashioned animal sacrifice. Of course, if one merely needs to cross a river or stream, a sign of the cross might be enough as temporary protection. Worst comes to worst, as with many human grandfathers, placating words and a slow backing away is also a time-honoured strategy.

Vodník

In Czech, Slovene, and Slovak folklore, they have the vodník rather than the vodyanoy. Appearing more like a gilled, web-handed, algae-green human, vodníci love bizarre dress and wearing strange hats. Outside their ponds, one can be recognised by the fact they’re always dripping wet.

Vodníci can be benevolent or hostile, depending on each individual’s disposition. Some might still drown you, but others are more chill. If they do drown you, however, the vodník will store your soul in a porcelain teapot3. Among vodníci, the size of one’s teapot collection reflects wealth and status. So, even if you think you've met a friendly vodník, remember to play nice—just in case.

Using Vodyanoy & Vodník in Your Game

So, now you know the story, how can you use it in your game?

Frog Toll

As part of travelling, or maybe as an encounter in a hex crawl, you can have your party encounter a body of water that belongs to a vodyanoy (or vodník). Perhaps the PCs need to reach a shrine on an island in the centre of a lake, or there’s only one safe river crossing for miles in either direction. They just need to get past the vodyanoy first. This could be a combat encounter, but it’ll be even better if the party can trick or bribe the spirit into giving them safe passage.

Tsar Vodyanik

Some Russian legends tell of the Vodyan Tsar4, a royal vodyanoy who rides a black cloud and can create new rivers and lakes at will. If the party ever has reason to petition him—to reign in one of his subjects or to lend his magical assistance to a drought-stricken land—then reaching his kingdom in the clouds or beneath the water could be an adventure in its own right.

Souls in a Teapot

Perhaps the most interesting story hook raised by the vodníci is their soul-in-a-teapot-based economy. For example:

• In an urban fantasy, a vodník might run a stall at the local goblin market, selling magical teas brewed from human souls.

• In an epic fantasy, the party might need to journey to the underwater land of the vodníci to rescue a trapped spirit.

• In a dark fantasy, what will the PCs do if a vodník has something they want but demands souls in return?

• In a cyberpunk setting, perhaps Vodník is the handle of a malicious hacker who traps people’s consciousness in cyberspace in exchange for a ransom.

And in all of these scenarios, the option of a ‘teapot-breaking rampage’ is always available as a feel-good conclusion!

Vodyanoy Statistics (Old-School)

Armor Class: 5 [14]
Hit Dice: 4* (18 hp)
Attacks: 2 x claw (1d6) or flood (2d6)
THAC0: 16 [+3]
Move: 90’ (30’) / 180’ (60’) swimming
Save As: Fighter 4
Morale: 8

▶ Surprise: On a 1–4, when hiding in water.
▶ Flood: While in contact with water, can create 60’ long, 20’ wide wave of water. All caught in the area must save versus breath or suffer damage and be swept up to 60’ away. Can be used up to three times per day.
▶ Immunities: Unharmed by poison and fire (including magical fire).

Legends speak of Tsar Vodyanoy, royalty amongst their kind, with greater HD and more powerful magical abilities.

And that’s it for vodyanoy and vodník!

Thanks for reading; Mythoi will be back again in two weeks for another fantastical piece of folklore to use in your role-playing games!

Penny for your thoughts: D&D seems to love having a bunch of different types of frog people—have you ever had a memorable experience with them?

~ A.C. Luke

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A crucial area of myth and folklore that doesn’t always make it into role-playing games is magical plants. Brewed into potions, fashioned into amulets, smoked or eaten to reach the gods; plants have historically been a powerful source of magic.

But, to be fair, eating leaves doesn’t immediately inspire riveting gameplay. So how about we start with one of history’s most famous human-plant hybrid: the mandrake.

The Mandrake

“Of all the medicinal herbs used in the ancient and medieval world, none was regarded with as much fear or wonder as the mandrake”1.

The mandrake is a plant with mystical properties and thick, often forked, roots that resemble a human form. In reality, this is anthropomorphism, but in older drawings we often see the mandrake as a literal miniature man or woman with leaves and flowers growing from their head.

In pre-modern times, the mandrake was a herbal remedy for fertility, convulsions, melancholy, and mania. It could also be fashioned into a talisman or amulet with more mystical qualities2. These magical artefacts had the power to bring good fortune, cure sterility, discover secret treasures, ward off evil spirits, and act as a love charm. If you’re a witch, you’ll already know it’s a key ingredient in the ointment that allows you to fly, as well as many magic potions and brews.

That all sounds pretty good, so how does one go about harvesting mandrake for themselves? Well, historically, with extreme care.

When you uproot a mandrake, it emits an ear-piercing scream that kills or drives mad whoever is trying to harvest it. Not only that, but some tales say it also condemns your soul to hell. Given that neither of those is ideal, the traditional method of harvest is as follows3:

1. Plug your ears with wax—the ol’ Odysseus trick.

2. Tie one end of a rope around the plant, and the other to your hungry dog’s collar or tail (hmm).

3. Reveal a treat, causing your dog to suddenly sprint forward (hmmmm).

4. Your dog pulls the mandrake out of the ground, then dies (hmmmmmmmmmmm).

And ta-da! You have a mandrake. And, uh, one less dog.

Historical Beliefs

The mandrake as remedy stretches back to the ancient world. The Greeks burned mandrake as incense, and it was used in the Classical world as an aesthetic and sedative. Mandrake was also used to treat fertility and as an aphrodisiac, accomplishing the former in the Book of Genesis.

In medieval and early modern Europe, the mandrake became associated with witches and the devil. Because of its famous qualities, playwrights of the time often wrote about it, including Shakespeare4. In Othello, its sleep-inducing qualities are mentioned; in Macbeth, consuming it brings madness; and in Romeo and Juliet:

And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth,
That living mortals hearing them, run mad.

As you can imagine, the oddly human shape of the mandrake root contributed heavily to its lasting popularity. Along with other magical plants, it became wrapped up in what is called the ‘Doctrine of Signatures’5. Put simply, if a plant resembles a body part, it must be able to be used to treat ailments of the body part it resembles. From our 21st-century vantage we know that definitely isn’t how plants work, but it’s an interesting concept to keep in mind if you run a game set in a medieval fantasy world.

Real-Life Mandrake

So, what is mandrake actually?

Well, what we call a mandrake is actually the root of plants from the genus Mandragora, itself a part of the nightshade family. Simply put, it’s incredibly poisonous. Consuming the leaves or roots of all species of Mandragora can indeed reduce pain and induce unconsciousness, but it also causes hallucinations and delirium. Less glamorously, other side effects include asphyxiation, seizures, vomiting, and diarrhoea.

So pulling a mandrake out of the ground may not actually kill you, but I definitely wouldn’t recommend sticking one in your mouth.

Using Mandrakes in Your Game

So, now you know the story, how can you use it in your game?

Healing Talisman

As dangerous as they are to harvest, the magical properties of the mandrake are hard to overlook. A sick and dying patron NPC—or a fatally poisoned PC—could turn the search for a mandrake into a quest in its own right. Perhaps mandrakes only grow in a dangerous locale, like the garden of an evil giant or dragon. Once the PCs find the mandrake too, they’ll still need to figure how to harvest one without damning their own souls in the process.

Alternatively, you can spice up a regular magic item that provides some sort of resistance or healing benefit by describing it as a small root shaped like a tiny screaming human!

Fatal Gardening

Some rather unsavoury medieval tales have the mandrake created by the fallen blood (or semen) of a hanged man6. Perhaps the party comes across an evil wizard’s garden, rows of men hanging from nooses while the magical plant grows beneath them. When it’s time, the wizard uses necromancy to have the hanged corpse dig up its own mandrake. This causes the zombie to die once again, though the necromancer cares little for whether this means its soul has been damned.

Seems like something a hero might want to intervene in.

The Mandrake Familiar

From German folklore we have the concept of the alarun (or alarune), which is essentially a mandrake homunculus7. Carved from a mandrake root, its purpose is to assist magicians and witches in magical rituals, in addition to bringing good luck—assuming a witchfinder doesn't catch you with it.

An alarun can’t be neglected, however—it needs to be wrapped in a white robe, bathed every Friday, and kept in box, lest it scream for attention. According to legend, an alarun must also be sold at a higher price than it was bought for—trying to get rid of it any other way has it magically reappear in its owner’s room.

If regular familiars, or strange Scandinavian ones, aren’t your speed, perhaps you’ll like one of a more botanical nature?

Mandrake Familiar Statistics (Old-School)

Armor Class: 5 [14]
Hit Dice: 1* (4 hp)
Attacks: 1 x bite (1d3 + poison) or scream
THAC0: 19 [0]
Move: 60’ (20’)
Save As: Magic-User 6
Morale: 9

▶ Poison: Victim must save versus spells or fall asleep for 2d3 rounds.
▶ Scream: All creatures within 60’ must save versus paralysis or be distracted (–2 penalty to attack rolls) for 2d3 rounds. The mandrake can scream at most once every 3 rounds.

▶ Good Luck: Once per day, a mandrake within 30’ of its owner can allow them to reroll a single die.
▶ Follower: If there is ever more than 200’ between the mandrake and its owner, it will disappear, reappearing in its owner’s presence the next time they settle down to rest (e.g. return home, make camp, find lodging, etc.).
▶ Upon Death: The owner suffers 2d3 damage. In 2d12 hours, they spend 1 turn painfully vomiting up a new body for the mandrake.

Mandrake familiars, or alarun, are primarily created to assist magic-users in small tasks and magical rituals.

To produce one, a mage will need to uncover the secret process first—a ritual that requires both harvesting a mandrake oneself and a sacrifice of the mage’s blood (enough to reduce their max hp). At the Referee’s discretion, having a mandrake familiar can lower the time and/or cost of magical research.

And that’s it for screaming mandrakes!

Thanks for reading; Mythoi will be back again in February for another fantastical piece of folklore to use in your role-playing games!

Penny for your thoughts: Have you ever had a plot in your game revolve around a magical plant?

~ A.C. Luke

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It’s an age-old question: Is a kobold a fairy, a lizard, or a dog?

For our first article of 2023, Mythoi presents a serious, hard-hitting investigation into this elusive question, going from German folklore to the origins of TTRPGs to the present day.

And, as you’ve likely already guessed, the answer is that they’re all three.

I. Kobolds of the Hearth

In Germanic folklore, kobolds are a spirit akin to a goblin or fairy. With the ability to turn invisible, and a preference for staying that way, these sprites live secretly alongside humanity.

Most kobolds tend to have a positive relationship with humans, often assisting their mortal neighbours with jobs and menial tasks. An angry kobold, however, is just as quickly an explanation for an inexplicable accident or disaster1. When not invisible, kobolds are typically depicted as human-like, very young or very old, and the size of a small child. Many can shapeshift too, assuming the forms of other people, small animals, objects, and even fire.

Most commonly, kobolds are household spirits, putting them in the company of the Scottish brownie, English hob, Nordic nisse, Slavic domovoy… (I could definitely go on). Taking up residence in a human household, they perform chores and help out around the house—as long as they’re given food and treated with sufficient respect. If not, they’ll become angry, causing accidents and bad luck until placated or driven away.

Though many kobolds choose to live in human households, not all do. As they tend to be primarily defined by their habitat, we have two more types of kobold to discuss…

II. Kobolds of the Earth

Many spirits are said to lurk beneath the earth, and oftentimes that includes the kobold. As miners went about their businesses, they believed they could hear kobolds drilling and hammering elsewhere in the mines. Some even said they could move through rock like it was air. These underground kobolds were often far more malevolent than their above-ground counterparts, being blamed by miners for accidents, rock slides, cave-ins, and just simply for chucking rocks at people2.

A particularly important accusation levelled at kobolds was their spoiling of silver ore into a worthless and dangerous substitute. This ore was dubbed kobold by the miners, but it wasn’t spoiled silver at all, but rather a new element that came to be known as cobalt3.

III. Kobolds of the Sea

The third kind of kobold is the water spirit klabautermann (likely from the Low German klabastern meaning "rumble" or "make a noise")4. He merrily and diligently assists sailors and fishermen with their duties, to the point where, if a sailor is washed overboard, he’ll leap into the sea to rescue them. Dressed as a sailor, the klabautermann carries a tobacco pipe and wears a sailor’s cap. Sometimes his likeness is carved into a ship’s mast for good luck, though no sailor actually wants to set eyes on him—it’s only to a doomed crew will he ever reveal himself.

If you’re unlucky, however, your ship might attract a more sinister kind of klabautermann. This kobold is blamed when things go wrong on the ship as it plays pranks and, inevitably, brings about the ship’s ruin.

A Brief History of Kobolds in D&D

So, if that’s what a kobold is, how did we get from there to trap-using lizard people that serve dragons in 5E? Well, let’s go back to the beginning.

In Original D&D (1974), kobolds were sparsely described as a kind of ‘weaker’ goblin—which, given where goblins normally place in D&D power rankings, seems particularly damning. But, as ignoble as that might be, it gives us a key link in their evolution. Conflating kobolds and goblin, at least in the folkloric sense, isn’t really inappropriate at all!

In the first AD&D Monster Manual (1977), kobolds are described merely as hairless with small horns. They abhor light, and so can be found living in tribes either underground or in overgrown forests. Kobolds now also have a hatred of gnomes, which is amusing given that gnomes are pretty much exactly what kobolds in folklore are. Still, in living underground, we can see the link to the folkloric mining kobolds that will continue throughout the critters’ long career.

So, where do dog kobolds come in? Everyone knows old-school kobolds looked like dogs, right? Well, the descriptions of kobolds in early D&D remained vague. They’re ‘dog-like’, and their language sounds like ‘dogs yapping’, but they also have ‘hairless, scaled skin’ and ‘rat-like’ tails. Ultimately, what they looked like in any given book was more or less up to the artist’s interpretation. Some leant more lizard, others more dog. There are even kobolds that look particularly rat-like too!

Still, if you want an official source for dog kobolds, the Mentzer Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (1983) has the following description:

These small, evil dog-like men usually live underground. They have scaly, rust-brown skin and no hair.

It’s this kind of kobold that makes its way via BECMI D&D to Japan, ensuring future Japanese kobolds in video games and anime were strictly canine.

Future TSR D&D products kept kobolds ambiguous, not a dog but not fully a lizard either. This is where they would remain until Wizards of the Coast’s Third Edition gave them the subtype Reptilian and a standardised, lizard-like look. Kobolds quickly became the servants of dragons, and perhaps even their distant relations, a link which has only strengthened in recent years.

And with all that, the last remnants of the dog kobold had been swept away. Official kobolds are now strictly ‘lil lizards.

P.S. If you’re wondering where kobolds as trapmasters comes into all of this, we can safely blame the now infamous 1987 Dragon Magazine #127 editorial ‘Tucker’s Kobolds’. You can give it a read here, and see how these little dog-lizard men were changed forever.

Using the Kobolds in Your Game

Rather than write up stats for a kobold or goblin (something every monstrous compendium in the world has you covered on), I decided to do something different this week!

After all, with all that talk of old-school kobolds, wouldn’t you rather have one onside than be up against them?

The humble kobold knows that there's strength in numbers. 

As such, kobold adventurers are shrewd allies, capitalising on every trick and trap they can set to get ahead in life. These diminutive humanoids, some dog-like, others lizard-like, may not last long in a one-on-one fight, but that's why they're keen to join your party.

The Kobold is a class designed for use with Old-School Essentials and similar kinds of old-school games.

Play a kobold if you want to be a cunning trapfinder, someone whose small size belies their smarts and guile. Kobolds are easy to underestimate, but you'll show all those bigfolk exactly what you're made of.

If you’re interested, you can download The Kobold for free here!

And that’s it for kobolds!

Thanks for reading and I hope you all have had a great start to the year. I’ve got an exciting project planned for Mythoi this year, so stay tuned for more information on that in the future!

Penny for your thoughts: Have you ever had a particularly memorable kobold experience? Has a GM ever Tucker’s Kobold’d you?

~ A.C. Luke

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Once, the Norse celebrated Midwinter with the festival of Jól. Now, over a thousand years later, this term has become one that is used in many places to refer to Christmas—Yule.

Yuletide is a liminal time, the end of one year and the beginning of another. And where there’s liminality, the supernatural always finds excuses to creep into our world. And while many are filled with winter cheer, others remember that this is a time when monsters walk amongst us.

Monsters like… the Yule Cat.

I. The Yule Cat

The Yule Cat (Jólakötturinn in Icelandic) is, to put it bluntly, a very bad cat. Huge, vicious, and with an appetite for human flesh, the Yule Cat haunts the snowy countryside of Iceland during Yuletide (starting December 21st)1.

This black cat has a particularly unusual feeding pattern—if you haven’t received any new clothes to wear before Christmas Eve, that’s when he’ll get you2. So if you see two very large kitty eyes peeking into your house this Christmas, you better hope someone was nice enough to put socks under your tree. Historically, however, getting new clothes was tied to working hard at one’s job or at weaving, knitting, and sewing, so there’s a rather simple moral here:

Some say the Yule Cat only eats children, while others have it go after adults too. Maybe the former is just a preference. Fairy tales do seem to teach us that children are tastier, after all.

There are versions of the legend that are a little kinder too, having the Yule Cat merely steal the food and treats of its victims instead3. Given it’s now the dead of winter, however, I’m not sure that’s necessarily much better.

II. Grýla the Giantess

The Yule Cat himself only appears in written accounts as of the 19th century, but the stories of his owner begin at least two centuries earlier. And who exactly would want to own this monstrous cat?

Grýla is a giantess, enormous and repulsive. When she was first mentioned in 13th-century sagas, she was a monstrous beggar, approaching parents to ask if she can eat their disobedient children. Later poems tie her to Christmas, the time of year when she leaves her cave to hunt for tasty child-sized snacks. Throughout the year Grýla collects whispers of disobedient children, meaning she knows exactly who to look for. If she manages to kidnap a child, she carries them home in a sack and cooks them into a stew4.

Grýla lives with her third husband, the troll Leppalúði, who is quick to appease his wife so as to not end up like husband one and two (eaten). Accompanying the happy couple are Grýla’s thirteen prankster children, the Yule Lads, and, of course, her cat.

Using the Yule Cat in Your Game

So, now you know the story, how can you use it in your game?

I. Grýla’s Hex

I’d hoped to write up Grýla’s Cave as a mini-adventure this month, a location you can drop into your game or hexcrawl wherever's most convenient. I was too busy to get the chance (though I did write something, see below!) but that doesn’t mean you can’t take my ball and run with it!

Grýla’s cave is potentially crawling with nasties—her trickster spirit children, two giants/trolls, and a gargantuan cat—meaning PCs will need to think on their feet to navigate it. Why risk it? Perhaps Grýla has kidnapped one or more local children and is keeping them prisoner with the intent of eating them. The townsfolk are willing to pay the PCs to get their kids back, but the party better act fast if they want them to still all be in one piece. Just watch out for the cave’s guard cat—I hear he’s particularly nasty!

II. Kitty Kaiju

The tales of the Yule Cat mention that it peers through windows with its enormous golden eyes, which means it has to be pretty big! Why not scale that up even further, make the Yule Cat even bigger? At a certain point, a monster stops being a fight and becomes more like a puzzle. If you can’t merely stick the Yule Cat to death, how are you going to get it out of town with the least amount of collateral damage?

III. The Off-Season

Not that one should be worried about the logistics of fairy tales, but what does the Yule Cat get up to for the other 51 weeks he isn’t eating people? Maybe he transforms back into a regular cat, resigned to lounging around Grýla’s cave. I can’t imagine he’s too happy about that—perhaps he’s even looking for a way to say monstrously large permanently? That seems like something a party of adventurers should think about preventing.

Of course, if the Yule Cat is currently the size of a regular cat, that means we’d need some even smaller adventurers for him to still be a threat. Mouse-sized adventurers, perhaps?

The Yule Cat (Mausritter)

Once a year, in the middle of winter, Jólakötturinn grows to an enormous size and goes out to consume children who weren’t given clothes as a Yule present. This is his true form.

For the rest of the year, however, his curse causes him to shrink back to the size of a regular cat. This is a fact that makes him extremely bitter.

Recently, Jólakötturinn has been kidnapping mice, seeking magical knowledge on how to break his curse. If not stopped, there's no telling what damage will be wrought as he tries to succeed.

The Yule Cat is an NPC write-up for Mausritter, a sword-and-whiskers role-playing game where you play as mouse adventurers.

You can download it for free by clicking here!

And that’s it for the Yule Cat and Mythoi in 2022!

Last week marked six months since I started Mythoi back in June, so a big thank you to everyone who has been reading along, whether you’ve joined me today or have been here from the beginning! We’ll be returning in the new year with a hard-hitting investigation—kobolds: fairy, lizard, or dog?

And, just so you know, all my games are 20% off until the beginning of January as part of itch.io’s Winter Sale! If you’re interested, you can check out the sale by clicking on the link below:

Check out my itch.io Winter Sale!

Penny for your thoughts: If you have a favourite Mythoi column from this year, or any requests for subjects next year, leave a comment below!

~ A.C. Luke

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Summer is long over. The Sea Mither has lost her battle against Winter. The Orcadians sense evil walks amongst them once again. There is no trickery or joy in this creature. There is only malevolence and hate.

The nuckelavee, a spirit in flesh, is free.

I. Nuckelavee

Has Mythoi featured an evil greater than the nuckelavee?

Creatures like the beithir and tatzelwurm are ultimately beasts, driven by primal instincts. The headless dullahan acts on behalf of death itself. Even the four horsemen of the apocalypse were created to serve a purpose.

The nuckelavee, instead, is malevolence made manifest.

Deriving its name from the Orcadian knoggelvi, nuckelavee ultimately means "Devil of the Sea"1. This enormous creature resembles a man riding a horse, except that his torso merges into the horse where the rider would normally be seated. Its head is ten times the size of a human, pig-like with an enormously wide mouth. The horse itself has a singular red eye that burns with a red flame. The nuckelavee is skinless, a creature of raw flesh and pulsing black veins2.

The nuckelavee’s breath is a horrid poison, blighting flora and causing disease in animals. The sea-devil is blamed for livestock disappearing, plagues and epidemics, and prolonged droughts. An unusual quirk of the nuckelavee is that it takes great offence to the burning of seaweed; the mere sight of it driving it into an uncontrollable rage. Once, it vented its wrath by inflicting every horse on the island of Stronsay with the deadly disease mortasheen (likely what is now known as glanders).

According to folklorist Walter Dennison:

“This being was looked upon with unutterable horror, was regarded with mortal terror, and spoken of with bated breath. He was a monster of unmixed malignity, never willingly resting from doing evil to mankind. Indeed, if not restrained by the Mither of the Sea in summer, and winter by his terror of fresh water, he would long ago have made Orkney a manless desert.”3

Indeed, the only weakness the nuckelavee is said to have had is its intense fear of fresh water. If you encounter it, your only hope is to make it across a loch, river, or stream. If you can’t do that, then all that’s left for you to do is to pray for rain.

II. Mither of the Sea

No mortal can stand against the nuckelavee, which means the people of Orkney must rely on the benevolent Sea Mither/Mither of the Sea to protect them4. The spirit of spring and summer days, she quells the turbulent sea waters around the north isles of Scotland. Nowadays, locals and fishermen invoke her name as protection against the Devil.

In Orcadian folklore, the Sea Mither is locked into a continuous battle against her arch-enemy, the winter spirit Teran. Their back-and-forth struggle creates periods of peaceful summer weather (when the Sea Mither is victorious and imprisons Teran) and periods of terrible winter storms (when Teran breaks free and forces her to retreat to rest). An annual problem then is that the Sea Mither also keeps the nuckelavee trapped in the ocean depths during her summer months, meaning the demon can roam free when Teran is in charge.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that maybe you should line up any future Scottish vacations with warmer weather.

III. Dangerous Company

No discussion of the nuckelavee can be complete without noting that it’s in prestigious company. Water horses, such as Scotland’s famous kelpie, are a recurring creature throughout world mythologies. I wouldn’t recommend taking a ride on any of them though, just in case.

We’ve actually already discussed a topic with such a creature—Queen Malgven and then King Gradlon of Ys ride the water horse Morvarc'h, capable of galloping over the waves.

I have no doubt that the nuckelavee and Morvarch’d won’t be the only times this subject comes up—humanity loves putting a horse in water!

Using the Nuckelavee in Your Game

Now you know the story, how can you use it in your game?

Delving a Water Temple

The nuckelavee hasn’t menaced the coastal villagers of your fantasy kingdom for some time, ever since great heroes in the past helped a sea goddess seal it away for good. But now, enemies of the kingdom have found a more devious way to defeat their foe than simple open warfare—getting the nuckelavee to do their job for them! They’ve travelled into an undersea temple or dungeon* in search of freeing the devil from its prison. Can the party stop them in time?

*Everyone loves a water temple, right? Here’s your chance to include one!

Mortasheen

Like so many folkloric creatures, the nuckelavee is a creature that brings with it poison and sickness. In the case of the sea-devil in particular, it once cursed all the horses on an island with the deadly disease mortasheen. If you abstract the effects to be more fantastical, a race against time to lift the curse of mortasheen from their horses and livestock could make a great rural adventure in a fantasy or pre-modern setting (e.g. Vaesen).

Linking with our themes of fresh water, perhaps our party needs to locate and travel to an ancient sacred spring. It’ll be a dangerous trek, one heading deep into a dark forest or treacherous mountain range, but the alternative is tragedy. Only through the healing water of the spring can the livestock of their home be saved.

Nuckelavee Statistics (Old-School)

Armor Class: 3 [16]
Hit Dice: 9** (40 hp)
Attacks: 2 x hoof (1d6), man: 1 x weapon (1d6 or by weapon), horse: 1 x bite (2d6) or 1 x breath (3d6 + disease)
THAC0: 12 [+7]
Move: 120’ (40’) / 180’ (60’) swimming
Save As: Fighter 9
Morale: 10

▶ Attack pattern (horse head): 50% chance of breath attack, otherwise bites.
▶ Breath weapon: Can be used up to three times per day. Creates a poisonous cloud 50’ long, 40’ wide, 20’ high. All caught in the area suffer damage (save versus breath for half) and become diseased (save versus poison to avoid, +4 if the save versus breath was successful).
▶ Disease: The victim is sick for ten days (no physical activity possible except half speed movement).
▶ Mundane damage immunity: Can only be harmed by magical attacks.
▶ Poison immunity: Unharmed by any form of poison.
▶ Magic resistance: Unaffected by illusions, sleep, charm, and hold spells. Can detect invisible creatures within 60’.

The poison expelled by the nuckelavee immediately kills all vegetation and creatures with less than 1 HD within range, then dissipates after 1 round.

And that’s it for the nuckelavee!

Thanks for reading; our next column places us squarely inside Yuletide, so we’ll be finishing the year by taking a look at Yule’s least well-behaved cat!

Penny for your thoughts: What’s the nastiest demon or devil you’ve fought in a role-playing game?

~ A.C. Luke

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Heatstroke. Sandstorms. Dehydration. All of these are very real threats to one’s survival in the desert. But before any of these natural causes can claim you, there’s something even more dangerous lurking beneath the sands.

It’s not just any worm.

It’s a death worm.

I. The Worm, The Myth, The Legend

Known in the West as the “Mongolian death worm”, this creature is referred to in Mongolia as the olgoi-khorkhoi (“large intestine worm”).

The olgoi-khorkhoi is several feet long, shaped like a sausage, and lacking a head or neck. A dark red colour, it appears almost like a living intestine, hence its name. Some accounts give the creature spine-like projections at both ends of its body too1. The olgoi-khorkhoi spends most of its time hidden beneath the surface of the most desolate parts of the Gobi desert, burrowing through the sands.

So, why is it called a death worm? Well, for more than one reason. First, its allegedly so poisonous that merely touching it can be fatal. And if that wasn’t concerning enough, some stories furnish it with a ranged attack, letting it kill at a distance. This is accomplished by either spraying a corrosive venom or by discharging a lethal dose of electricity2.

So, if you ever take a trek across the Gobi desert and stumble across a death worm, here’s some local advice on the subject: just steer clear of it!

II. The Reality

The olgoi-khorkhoi first came to Western attention as a result of American paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews’ 1926 book On the Trail of Ancient Man. In it, he describes hearing about the creature second-hand at a gathering of Mongolian officials:

"None of those present ever had seen the creature, but they all firmly believed in its existence and described it minutely."3

Stories of a 'death worm' fascinated people back in America, and numerous expeditions have been launched over the years to look for it. Alas, no one has ever been successful in finding any evidence of its existence. Nowadays, the consensus seems to be that the olgoi-khorkhoi's powers are apocryphal, and that the death worm itself is likely to be a misidentified sand boa4.

Using the Olgoi-Khorkhoi in Your Game

Now you know the story, how can you use it in your game?

A Guard Worm

Why settle for having a yappy dog or poisonous snake guard your belongings when you could entrust them to a death worm? Just deposit one or more into a sandy pit alongside your most valuable treasures and you can be sure no one will want to touch it. Just make sure when you throw food down there to feed them that you say safely out of poison/electricity range.

An Exotic Pet

Everyone likes having a pet that gets people talking, and what’s more eye-catching than owning something called a Mongolian death worm? If you ever need to establish exactly what sort of person an NPC is quickly, just have them proudly show off their (allegedly) domesticated olgoi-khorkhoi. And if your PCs are investigators or trouble-shooters, they can easily become involved when it turns out owning a death worm as a pet is likely to cause problems—especially if (when) it escapes!

A Prelude to (More) Worms

As with similar creatures in pop culture, you can also always go with the idea that the olgoi-khorkhoi is actually the baby or larval form of some much larger monster. If the baby is this dangerous, what could it possibly be like when it’s fully grown?

Perhaps the olgoi-khorkhoi are aliens, ones who entered our world through an ancient portal and could never fully grow outside their home. This portal, now deactivated, was hidden long ago when the desert sands covered up the structure (or city) it resided in. Unluckily for your PCs, whether they be D&D adventurers or Call of Cthulhu investigators, the true location of this structure has recently been relearned. Now, the party needs to reach it before the bad guys do, lest they widen the gateway and let something titanic and far more horrifying through!

Olgoi-Khorkhoi Statistics (Old-School)

Armor Class: 7 [12]
Hit Dice: 3* (13 hp)
Attacks: 1 x bite (1d4 + poison) or 1 x electric discharge (1d10 + paralysis)
THAC0: 17 [+2]
Move: 90’ (30’)
Save As: Fighter 3
Morale: 8

▶ Ambush: Hides beneath the surface of the sands, bursting out when something walks within 20’.
▶ Poison: A character who is bitten by the olgoi-khorkhoi, or who touches it with their bare skin, must save versus poison (with a +4 bonus) or die.
▶ Electric Discharge: Up to 50’. A hit leaves the target stunned for 1d6 rounds (save versus paralysis). Can be used up to three times per day.

Although usually only a few feet in length, rumours persist of much larger olgoi-khorkhoi that can rival even purple worms in size. Such creatures are said to produce lightning that vaporises any target it hits.

And that’s it for death worms!

Thanks for reading; Mythoi will be back again in a fortnight for another fantastical piece of folklore to use in your role-playing games!

Penny for your thoughts: What’s your favourite memory of fighting a giant worm?

~ A.C. Luke

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The headless horseman rides in search of revenge. His head has been struck from his shoulders, and now someone must pay. An omen of death, he represents the past and its relentless pursuit of us into the present. And in Ireland, he goes by dullahan.

The most famous headless horseman might be from Sleepy Hollow, but that doesn’t mean he’s the only one. So, strap on your boots. Let’s go for a ride.

Dullahan

The dullahan is a headless phantom, an omen of death that rides a black horse through the Irish night1. Also called Gan Ceann2 (Irish for "without a head"), he brings his decapitated head along for his rides, holding it high in one hand. In his other, the dullahan wields a whip made from a human spine, which he can use to flick out the eyes of those who watch him. His horse is often headless too, or at least flaming eyes.

When he’s out, pray the dullahan doesn’t stop outside your house—if he does, someone inside is soon to die. Don’t open your door as he rides by either unless you want him a bucket full of blood to your face. Still, that’s not as bad as if the dullahan’s severed head speaks your name. If he does, it’s already too late. Still, if you’re desperate, it’s said that he has an irrational fear of gold, which might be used to ward him away.

Depending on the story, the dullahan is a phantom, a fairy, or both. He’s also a common associate or lackey of the banshee, another Irish spirit whose presence presages death. In these cases, the dullahan is likely using his other ride.

Not Just a Ghost Rider (Also a Ghost Driver)

The dullahan might be a headless horseman, but that doesn’t limit him to just a singular mode of transportation. Just as often as you find him atop a horse, you’ll find him driving the Cóiste Bodhar (“deaf/silent coach”)—known in English as the Death Coach.

Yeats writes in Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry3:

An omen that sometimes accompanies the banshee is the coach-a-bower [cóiste-bodhar]—an immense black coach, mounted by a coffin, and drawn by headless horses driven by a Dullahan. It will go rumbling to your door, and if you open it, according to Croker, a basin of blood will be thrown in your face.

If you don’t mind passing the buck, hurry to open any gates in its path so it can ride by you quickly. The sight or sound of the coach is a harbinger of death—it never leaves the Earth empty.

One of Many (Headless)

Many websites give the dullahan credit for inspiring Sleepy Hollow, argue he's the ‘original’ headless horseman, or make him out to be an ancient Celtic god. The reality is that he's unlikely to be any of those things, especially the first two4—but hey, that’s okay. There’s room enough for more than one headless rider in the world, regardless of who came first.

In fact, the world is plenty full of headless figures generally. In Arthurian legend, Sir Gawain lops off the Green Knight’s head, only for him to pick it back up again. In Christianity, cephalophores are decapitated saints who carry their own heads. And in Brazil, the mula sem cabeça is the ghost of a woman condemned to roam the earth as a headless, fire-spewing mule. A reminder from real-life to always think outside the box5.

Using the Headless in Your Game

So, you have a man without a head. How do you use him?

Headless Omen

The ghostly arrival of the dullahan would put anyone on edge. After all, someone is going to die—it’s just a matter of when. Still, can the PCs piece together the identity of the would-be-victim in time to save them? This works especially well if everyone is trapped in a single location on a dark and stormy night. As those inside look on, the dullahan waits at the entrance on his coach to receive a dead body by dawn. And if the horseman must receive a body, is the solution as simple as the PCs being forced to kill the murderer to save their victim? Or will the tense crowd around them begin to speculate who deserves to be sacrificed?

Headless Driver

By re-contextualising the dullahan as a headless driver rather than headless horseman, he seamlessly fits into urban fantasy. When the magical crime boss or unseelie faerie queen sends for the PCs, what better way to set the tone than with a headless chauffeur? For the classical, he can still be driving his black coach (“Mind the coffin”), or you can lean into the contrast between urban and fantasy with a sleek new limousine.

Headless Patron

The headless horseman can easily be a threat of course, but what about a sinister ally? There’s the old standby of him seeking a soul that escaped the reaper (before his boss the banshee finds out he messed up). Or, more tragically for the dullahan, perhaps his head has been kidnapped? The rest of him has approached the PCs for help finding it, potentially before the head is used for nefarious purposes. If the head can speak names and have them die, can it be forced into acting as a murder weapon? In the meantime, perhaps the dullahan is carrying around a pumpkin or substitute head, though he’ll sadly confesses there’s no replacing the real thing.

Headless God

Certain sources, such as the Irish Times6, posit that the dullahan as the pagan god Crom Dubh/Crom Cruach. According to later Christian writers, Crom demanded blood sacrifice until his worship was ended by St Patrick. What kind of blood sacrifice? Decapitation, of course.

If your campaign deals with old or forgotten gods, you can reframe the dullahan as a cast-out figure, a shadow of his former self. And if you lean into his supposed darker nature—perhaps he has a plan to return to his former power? From D&D to Call of Cthulhu, stopping evil gods from returning is a roleplaying staple for a reason. Even without appearing in person, a cult dedicated to performing sacrifices in his name could be threat enough!

Dullahan Statistics (Old-School)

Armor Class: 5 [14]
Hit Dice: 5* (22 hp)
Attacks: 1 x bone whip (2d6 + special) or 1 x blow (1d8)
THAC0: 15 [+4]
Move: 90’ (30’)
Save As: Fighter 5
Morale: 11

▶ Undead Fae: Immune to effects that affect living creatures (e.g. poison). Immune to mind-affecting or mind-reading spells (e.g. charm, hold, sleep).
▶ Whip: On a successful whip attack, the target must save versus wands or suffer one of the following effects:
(A) be knocked violently in a direction of the dullahan’s choice, or
(B) be caught by the whip, which inflicts 2d6 automatic damage each subsequent round. The dullahan cannot make whip attacks while holding someone this way.
▶ Mundane damage immunity: Can only be harmed by magical attacks.
▶ Fear of Gold: Artefacts made from gold repulse the dullahan. If a cleric brandishes a gold holy symbol while attempting to turn them, they add +3 to their turn undead check.

The traditional mount of a dullahan is a warhorse, often an undead one. A more powerful dullahan, with greater HD, might instead ride a nightmare.

And that’s it for headless horsemen.

Thanks for reading and have a happy Halloween!

Penny for your thoughts: Have you ever had a PC lose their head before?

~ A.C. Luke

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The King is just. Rather than execute you, he cursed you with the head of a wolf. Instead of death, he exiled you to be hunted for the rest of your days.

But now, the King needs you, or someone like you. There is a great crisis threatening the realm. If you were to solve it, he would remove the curse, pardon you of your crimes. What would you be willing to do for absolution?

WOLF HEAD is a dark fantasy tabletop role-playing game about medieval fable and what you will, and won't, do to be let back into the fold.

Players take on the role of wolves, criminals cursed by the King with the head of a wolf. You have become defined by your crimes—did you commit murder, foment revolution, speak heresy, or love the wrong person? And will what you did help or hinder you in clawing back what they took from you?

Wolf Head @ itch.io

Wolf Head @ DriveThruRPG

I wrote Wolf Head for René-Pier Deshaies’ itch.io Dash Jam, so it’s part of the Forged in the Dark lineage. If that kind of game isn’t your cup of tea, hopefully you still find the ideas and quest prompts worth a read!

If you have any thoughts about it, I’d love to hear them—you can leave me a message here or contact me on Twitter.

~ A.C. Luke

Addendum: Originally this article linked to a free copy of Wolf Head as a thank you and celebration of three months of Mythoi. That promotion has now ended, but stay tuned for more gifts and discounts on my gaming work in the future!

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So, what exactly is a werewolf? Well, they’re a person who transforms into a man-wolf hybrid under the light of the full moon. They have an uncontrollable rage and this affliction stems from a curse, one passed on by being bitten by another werewolf.

That’s what a werewolf is. Except, of course, when it’s not.

Here are four alternative takes on werewolves from around the world.

Rougarou

Our first werewolf, the rougarou, takes us back to Bayou Country. With its name derived from the French loup-garou, this Cajun legend haunts the swamps of French Louisiana1.

While we can at least agree the rougarou has the body of a man and the head of the wolf, as with many folktales, the details change with the telling. Becoming one is typically a curse, contractable in numerous ways:

• If you reveal the name of someone you know to be a rougarou, you might just be cursed to become one yourself2.

• If you break the rules of Lent for seven consecutive years.

• If you’re cursed via a spell. In this case, you have to remain in the form of a rougarou for 101 days and, potentially, you need to draw someone’s blood in that time to pass your curse on to them.

• Another rougarou draws your blood to break their own curse (a bit of a jerk move if you ask me).

Now that you’re a rougarou, you likely transform at night, voluntarily or involuntarily, and get up to all sorts of mayhem. Maybe you drink blood and eat flesh. Maybe you beat up people who break the rules of Lent. Whatever floats your boat.

Before we go, though, here’s one weird trick rougarou don’t want you to know: they can’t count higher than twelve. Lay thirteen objects out in front of it and by the time it gets to the thirteenth object, it’ll get confused and start counting again. Now you just have to wait it out until the sun rises, chasing it off.

The Livonian Werewolf

In 1692, Thiess of Kaltenbrun was put on trial for heresy in Swedish Livonia. This trial was the accidental byproduct of another, where, when called as a witness in a church robbery, the octogenarian freely offered to the court that, ten years prior, he had been a werewolf3. But not a Devil-consorting werewolf, of course—Thiess had been a “hound of God”.

Many years ago, Theiss and other werewolves would meet up and transform into wolves. He and the other werewolves would go around butchering and roasting farm animals (‘How do wolves roast meat?’ asked a judge), before getting down to business:

Q: How often in the year do they go into hell together?
A: Ordinarily thrice: Pentecost Eve, St. John’s Eve, and St. Lucia’s Eve. The first two are not always exactly on these nights, but when the grain is blossoming. Then and at the time of sowing, the sorcerers carry off the yield and there-after carry it into hell, so the werewolves work hard to bring it back.
(Trial Transcript4)

Theiss also explained to the judges how he had first become a werewolf when “a rascal” had drunk a toast to him, giving him his powers. In fact, Theiss could do the same for someone else by toasting, breathing into the jug three times, and proclaiming "you will become like me.” Unfortunately, however, he hadn’t found the right person yet.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, things didn’t work out for Thiess in the end, though not for the reasons you might think. During the trial, he couldn’t prove he was a devout Lutheran—he didn’t attend church or regularly pray—and it was found that he performed folk magic and healing for the community. Since his blessings didn’t invoke the name of God, the judges decided they encouraged people to turn away from Christianity and were thus criminal. Theiss was flogged and banished for life.

Vrykolakas

In Greek tradition, werewolves and vampires are often closely related. We can see this in particular in the undead vrykolakas, whose name comes from the Old Slavic term for “wolf-pelt”. Vampiric in nature, rather than drinking blood they instead crave human flesh (and livers).5 They roam about causing epidemics and panic, often engaging in poltergeist-esque activity. Sometimes they go through a village, knocking once on each door. If you answer, you'll die and rise as a vrykolakas yourself in several days.

Revenants, these damned corpses rise for the usual reasons (sacrilegious behaviour, excommunication, unconsecrated burial, etc.) but also if you eat the meat of a sheep wounded by a wolf or werewolf. Slain werewolves become powerful vrykolakas after death too, if their corpses are not properly destroyed.6 If you ever need to kill a vrykolakas, trap him in his grave and set him on fire. Saturdays are great for this, as they can’t leave their graves then. Never let it be said I can’t also provide strictly practical advice.

The Head of a Wolf

Another interesting idea comes from medieval England, where “wolf’s head” referred to an outlaw who could be killed as if they were a wolf:

“For from the day of his outlawry he bears a wolf's head, which is called wluesheued by the English. And this sentence is the same for all outlaws." (Leges Edwardi Confessoris, 6.2)7

While this is obviously metaphorical, fantasy easily lets us make this a literal realisation of dehumanisation instead. And if you’re interested in hearing a take on this as an RPG premise, I’ve got you covered!

This last month I’ve been writing a dark fantasy RPG called WOLF HEAD, where you play a criminal cursed with a wolf’s head:

The King is just. Rather than execute you, he cursed you with the head of a wolf. Instead of death, you were exiled to be hunted for the rest of your days.

But now, the King needs you, or someone like you. There is a great crisis threatening the realm. If you were to solve it, he would remove the curse, pardon you of your crimes. What would you be willing to do for absolution?

If that sounds interesting to you, check out WOLF HEAD here!

Using These Werewolves in Your Game

It’s all good to have different conceptions of the werewolf, but how do you use them in practice?

Bayou Curse

Everyone loves a good werewolf mystery (I think there’s a game named after it?). The problem of course is that the rougarou curse is transmittable via speaking the identity of a rougarou aloud. How do you solve a mystery when doing so risks you becoming a monster yourself? At what point do you cross that line? Does arresting or punishing someone in human form for being a rougarou count as betraying their secret?

If you want to really delve deep into this idea, you can explore lycanthropy as a memetic virus, a perfect idea for a modern horror game like Delta Green.

Hounds of God

The most interestingly gameable takeaway from Theiss’ tale is the idea of “hounds of God”. His story takes a traditional view of werewolves, empowered by the Devil, and reframes it as gallant heroes charging into Hell to thwart the actions of witches and devils. So, why not add holy werewolves to your own game? In a D&D-style fantasy, werewolf clerics dedicated to a ‘Good’ deity could easily make for a memorable encounter or faction. If your party needs help thwarting the efforts of some demon or devil, they could do far worse than recruiting some wolfish allies.

Just don’t forget too that Theiss’ werewolves still hunted and butchered the local livestock before their quest. Just because you have a troupe of holy werewolves doesn’t mean they can’t get up to bad behaviour.

Werewolf II: The Vrykolakas

Everyone knows you have to kill a horror movie monster twice.

The vrykolakas is a great way to have a werewolf villain rise from the grave for revenge. For one, their weaknesses and powers have changed, avoiding the problem of having the same fight twice and forcing the party to adapt to new circumstances. The unusual behaviour of the vrykolakas creates a mystery to investigate too, which couples with a fun last-minute reveal of the villain’s identity. In your Monster of the Week—or Monster of the Week—game, this is a great way to keep the episodic structure while still creating continuity through callbacks.

And that’s it for weird wolves!

Next month, we’ll be celebrating the spooky season with some equally spooky folklore. Next week though you’ll be getting a bonus column with the free copy of WOLF HEAD for subscribers, valid until the end of October, so keep an eye out for that too!

Penny for your thoughts: Have you ever run or played in a game with a werewolf villain? Have you ever played a werewolf yourself?

~ A.C. Luke

Find my games on itch.io! ★ Follow me on Twitter ★ Follow me on Instagram