Verreauxi Aquilae, accessed at their deviantArt page here
[Welcome to Bogeys Week! This week, we’re covering a variety of tutelary monsters, literary horrors and other Things That Go Bump. The first is an act of creature syncretism, remixing the Other Mother from Coraline with her literary antecedent, the “New Mother” from the story of the same name by Lucy Clifford. Seek it out, it’s short and haunting. I was worried that a fairly obscure children’s story from a century ago wouldn’t have any available art, but the first result for Google Image Search nailed it.]
Beldam This wooden monstrosity stands like
a tree grown into the shape of an immense crone. She taps behind herself with a
heavy wooden tail, and eyes like glass orbs are set into its gnarled face. The
spindly creature stands twice as tall as a man, creaking with deliberate and
uncanny movement.
No
creature represents the decay of reality as strongly as a beldam. These bizarre
intelligent plants native to the Plane of Shadows are obsessed with consuming
lives and “season” their victims by trapping them in a web of illusions
specifically tailored to each victim. As the poor soul slowly realizes that
their fantasyland is not what it seems, the beldam often engages in rigged
contests and games designed to drive their victims into an even deeper sense of
despair. Once the beldam is revealed for what it truly is, it consumes the
life-force of its victim and transforms it into a literal shadow of itself to
join the beldam’s “family”.
Beldams
do not associate with others of their kind but do gather to their sides all
manner of horrible monsters to serve it. Some of these creatures have foolishly
entered bargains with the beldam and serve to avoid being killed and eaten, but
others are poor souls that prefer the beldam’s world of fantasy to the
harshness of reality. Every hundred years or so, a beldam is driven to
reproduce and plants a seed in some remote location. For fifty years, the
juvenile beldam is merely a tree, albeit one that bears an uncomfortable
resemblance to the human form, until it uproots itself in order to spread chaos
and misery.
A beldam
stands fifteen feet tall and weighs 800 pounds. They are seemingly immortal and
are only able to be killed by violence.
Shores of Swords 