Name: Fiddlewhiskers
Species: Fiend
Age: Unknown.
Gender: N/A given their appearance. Their voice seems to oscillate between neutral and vaguely feminine, so most call Fiddlewhiskers an 'it' or a 'she'.
Physical Description: Fiddlewhiskers resembles a dead black cat roughly forced into the shape of an emaciated human. Her frame is stretched painfully thin and appears to be entering the early stages of decomposition. Her fur is sparse and what little meat she has on her is squishy and smells of rot, her limbs are long, held in place by wooden splints and the joints seem to bend oddly, and her head, while still that of cat, possesses the broken fangs, notched ears, and kinked whiskers of the most unfortunate of strays. She look like she's being held together by those splints and whatever skin isn't sloughing off. This gives her movements an unpleasant puppet-like quality but affords her incredible flexibility. Her voice sounds not unlike a cat trying to imitate human speech and the more past-aware people of the woods have claimed her accent can be described as either 'French' or 'Cajun'.
Gear: Fiddlewhiskers is known for constantly playing a fiddle with cat-gut strings, hence her name. Wherever she is, she always has a tin cup by her feet.
Unique Abilities: Fiddlewhiskers is one of more 'useful' Fiends lurking about the woods, but it took a significant amount of trial and error to figure out how she works. She's always encountered playing that fiddle, and for most she plays it horribly. That hideous atonal screeching can and has driven people insane, and once you hear it it will never leave your head. Ever. The only way to stop it is to drop something into that cup. It's doesn't have to be anything good, people have won her over with a rusted button and dead moth, but it has to be something. She'll always thank you, too. If you try ignoring it, it won't work. Not even jabbing out your eardrums will stop it, and people say they hear it in their dreams. If you set out to find her and finally pay her, you'll find her where you first ran across her, curled on a stump or low branch. She's really greedy, so she'll accept just about anything. In fact, that lead to some people realizing that Fiddlewhiskers might be more than just an annoying cat...
Notes:
Fiddlewhiskers is incredibly greedy. She's also kind of a coward. People only start hearing her when they're truly safe, because Fiddlewhiskers doesn't want anyone (or anything) to get in the way of her playing and spoil the fun. In fact, some say her playing is so bad it actually drives Fiends away, and they're right. Not even the twisted horrors of the Wyld Wood like listening to her. As a result, people tend to 'bait' her into playing near them by carrying items they know she fancies and find they can travel long stretches of the woods unimpeded, if constantly annoyed. One brave soul who arrived in the Woods completely deaf decided to try and experiment by offering everything they could to try and figure out her tastes. Mice, fish bones (not the meat), and coins of all types seem to be her favorites. In fact, he did so well that he compiled a list of interactions from both himself and others.
Interactions of Note:
Tell her to stop/Insult her playing: She plays louder until it causes incredible pain and angers local wildlife. An apology will quiet her down.
Request a different song (without offering): She switches pitch and speed, but it's still preternaturally terrible.
Request a different song (with offering): Person who makes the offering have described her playing as becoming 'tolerable' but everyone else still hears her normal music.
Offer to repair or tune her instrument: Stops playing, stares directly at person, says her fiddle is fine. It actually is. People who possess a knowledge of instruments claim it's masterfully built. Resume playing after silence becomes awkward or appreciated.
Ask to play something on/otherwise borrow instrument: Ignores person completely.
Ask her to play at their home (requires significant offering): Fiddlewhiskers will materialize outside their home and play skillfully for the duration of the night. Occupants of the dwelling chosen will have pleasant dreams and sleep in complete safety until morning.
Play own instrument beside her: Done once by an very elderly woman who woke up with a functioning violin (Working instruments are exceedingly rare in the Wood) and great skill at playing it. Once she began to play, observers reported that Fiddlewhiskers stopped playing and listen intently until the woman grew too tired to continue, at which point Fiddlewhiskers started again. The old woman fell ill not long after and it is reported that as she lay dying, beautiful music was heard being played outside her home. It was said to some of the most haunting sound any present had heard, despite music being very rarely encountered and memories rarely concrete enough to say so. The old woman began to cry, claimed they were tears of joy and that she 'was ready to make things right'. She ordered everyone to leave her room and she began to play the violin along with Fiddlewhiskers. When someone finally entered again, the violin was on the bed and the woman was gone. The duet continued until sunrise.
Name: Gula
Species: Fiend
Age: Unknown
Gender: Male vocalizations.
Physical Description: Gula is the gargantuan torso of a grotesquely obese and extremely elderly man. It has no head, only skin over where the stump would be, long hairless arms drooping with fat, and nothing below the stomach except a ring of flabby, baby-like legs. Aside from a wizened sunken chest, it is composed entirely of putrid lard and wrinkly ulcerous skin. It is covered in rotted food and gore, bodily fluids of every type, and it's own noxious secretions. It mindlessly vocalizes with belches, grunts, gurgles, moans, and other perverse and visceral noises. The smell it gives off is so awful it easily causes vomiting, eye-watering, even fits of uncontrolled screaming.
Gear: None.
Unique Abilities: Gula is slow but unstoppable. It's so incredibly obese and foul that weapons barely affect it. Blades sink to the hilt in gangrenous fat, cudgels slap wetly onto spongy skin, bullets bury themselves in meters of putrid grease, and fire gutters and dies against it's filth-slick skin. Trees are snapped like kindling as it waddles about and people have been crushed flat after falling under it. For reasons not known, it has the remarkable ability to hone in on people cooking in the open woods. Roast meat is the quickest way to call it, and is often thrown as a distraction to buy precious time to run away.
Notes:
Gula doesn't actually eat anything. It doesn't have a mouth. Instead, it rubs whatever it gets all over itself, making disgustingly sensual moaning noises the entire time. Victims caught tend to be mashed into paste after being forcefully ground into the flabby folds with unnatural vigor. The process is horrific and some have killed themselves rather than face death at the hands of this deviant creature.
