No amount of fairy tales before bed prepares you for the real deal.
Let's start with dryads, formerly human souls who died by hanging from trees over the age of three hundred and thirty three (nature holds great preference for the number three). Some trees, those hulking great behemoths of oak and willow, are often stuffed to bursting with dryads from the times of mass hangings. The human equivalent would be an overcrowded apartment tower with no doors.
In their trees they are utterly invisible, perfectly in tune with the woods around them to the point where most of them can peer straight out of their homes without a single person noticing. This isn't so much the case when they choose to leave the tree, as they are often wont to do during warmer days.
The sight of a mostly-humanoid body pulling itself out of bark like a butterfly fresh from the cocoon is something you never forget, especially the sound their body's make as they leave. That dry tearing of old parchment being peeled off a stone wall kind of sound.
It's been theorised that they physically tear their bodies apart from their home trees, that their souls become bonded the second they enter and that each time they leave, their soul becomes just that little bit more torn, just that fraction smaller until they eventually tear themselves to shreds.
Moving on, we come to gnomes, those little creatures we mimic in statues, traditionally to keep actual gnomes from setting up nests too close to our own. They are territorial and commonly prone to killing household pets, often leaving the remains strung up outside all available windows.
It isn't quite known what their end goal seems to be, there are no records of them talking to humans or even being capable of any form of sound. When confronted their default behaviour is fairly akin to a snake's. They twist and writhe their necks (they have an extra three to eight vertebrae that allow for owl-like tilting), darting their heads forward and aiming to bite as high up as they can.
While they posses no venom to speak of, should their saliva come into contact with certain metals it can be highly corrosive. Iron elicits the strongest reactions and as the average human contains four grams of iron in their body, confronting a gnome should only ever be a last resort.
Let's start with dryads, formerly human souls who died by hanging from trees over the age of three hundred and thirty three (nature holds great preference for the number three). Some trees, those hulking great behemoths of oak and willow, are often stuffed to bursting with dryads from the times of mass hangings. The human equivalent would be an overcrowded apartment tower with no doors.
In their trees they are utterly invisible, perfectly in tune with the woods around them to the point where most of them can peer straight out of their homes without a single person noticing. This isn't so much the case when they choose to leave the tree, as they are often wont to do during warmer days.
The sight of a mostly-humanoid body pulling itself out of bark like a butterfly fresh from the cocoon is something you never forget, especially the sound their body's make as they leave. That dry tearing of old parchment being peeled off a stone wall kind of sound.
It's been theorised that they physically tear their bodies apart from their home trees, that their souls become bonded the second they enter and that each time they leave, their soul becomes just that little bit more torn, just that fraction smaller until they eventually tear themselves to shreds.
Moving on, we come to gnomes, those little creatures we mimic in statues, traditionally to keep actual gnomes from setting up nests too close to our own. They are territorial and commonly prone to killing household pets, often leaving the remains strung up outside all available windows.
It isn't quite known what their end goal seems to be, there are no records of them talking to humans or even being capable of any form of sound. When confronted their default behaviour is fairly akin to a snake's. They twist and writhe their necks (they have an extra three to eight vertebrae that allow for owl-like tilting), darting their heads forward and aiming to bite as high up as they can.
While they posses no venom to speak of, should their saliva come into contact with certain metals it can be highly corrosive. Iron elicits the strongest reactions and as the average human contains four grams of iron in their body, confronting a gnome should only ever be a last resort.
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