The Principality of Penrod is pleasant state, ruled by Prince Pepin the Young, surrounded by jolly allies and good-natured rivals. Chief exports include timber, flax, tin, literary culture, and temperate fruits. A brutal king many many generations ago hated all the minority cultures of Penrod and so did his darndest to eradicate them by forcing the dominant language on the populace (on pain of death), thus solidifying the Penrodite culture as we know today: literate and unified.
The Penrod of today is full of chipper flax farmers, timely tin miners, and flouncy quill-bearing fops in the capital, safe from the frigid foothills of the southern reaches, thick forest to the north, and sinister mountain peaks at the eastern border. And so—there are beasts abound. At these borderlands lurk creepies and crawlies, and in the liminal spaces of all human life (underground, beneath floorboards, in the walls, between specks of civilized light) dwell the horrors that shall consume us all.
A Bestiary
1. Flaxenvaccim
When refuse from the flax harvest is piled at the edges and corners of the fields, and these fields lay adjacent to drained cranberry bogs and the hopeless cranberry pulp laid aside after being pushed through juicers and strainers, the rotting flax and cranberry mix and mingle, slowly birthing a Flaxenvaccim.
This slim creature is fragile and wet—its bones are flax fibres and its flesh is cranberry jelly. Slop sloughs off as it walks, and it often has to stop to scoop bits of jelly back onto itself, or to affix a fallen flaxen fibula back onto its knee joint. When first born, they're usually the size of a small child, but proportioned like a human adult: two legs, two arms, a torso, and a lopsided head with no eyes or mouth.
As they grow by feeding on god knows what, they solidify and gain strength and stiffness. Eventually they mature at about waist height, but never really gain full strength. They love to hide in fields and steal cats.
