#lore24: february slushpost

The setting as a whole is still nameless, but the main region my worldbuilding has focussed on so far has been christened: The Basilisk Bay. 

As we are at the start of another month, here's a summary of the February work.

• Glowshroom Shine: Heavy liquor made from glow mushrooms. Glows faintly. Upon drinking your skin starts to glow for as long as you are buzzed.
  
  
• Blastroot: a swollen root vegetable the size of a baseball. When punctured or cracked it blasts open with a loud bang, caused by pressurized gasses.
  
  
• Shimmer Flute: A golden flute. Playing it causes surfaces the sound bounces off of to glow. Other than that it functions and sounds like a normal flute.
  
  
• Hob Goblins: Infect hosts through fruit, which grows from a branch grafted on a fruit tree. The fruit looks like a member from the host tree, but strangely shaped like a head. At the start of infection, a small head emerges from the neck of the host person, with memories and a personality of many past lives. Slowly the parasite takes over more and more of the host body, until the original host is nothing but a head along for the ride on what used to be their body. Once the host dies, the spores lie dormant, waiting for a fruit tree to grow nearby which it can latch on to.

Unfortunately, this is probably my source for this idea

• 6 known hobs:
1. Ban: Sadistic, but cares for their future body. Sees causing suffering as an artform which they are trying to master over their many lives.
   
2. Ro: Insecure, and wants badly to be popular. They have had many lives to learn to be charismatic, but as their aims are selfish and shallow, so are all their relations.
   
3. Ly: Wants to feel bad about taking over the host's body. Tries to negotiate an agreeable transitional period, but are rude and hurried whenever good byes take too long. 
   
4. Heb: Snobby, but with an incredibly aquired taste. Has grown bored of beauty and fineries, instead prefering fermentation, decay and offensive features.
   
5. Ange: Compulsive liar, tells tall tales based on rumours and legends they heard in a prior life. If their host pursues any of the more dangerous tales Ange gets extremely nasty.
   
6. Gur: Anxious mess, deadly afraid their future body will get hurt or expire prematurely and the will have to wait another indeterminate amount of time for another shot at life.
   
   
• Even with the recently built Gullsroost Lighthouse to guide them, many ships wreck near the Basilisk Bay. An entire industry has sprung up around the wrecking of ships, from demanding tribute for rescuing the crew, to salvaging and plundering boats no one tried to save, to putting up false pyres during storms to get shops to wreck themselves on the coast so they can be looted. Be ware of any coastal town with many bishing boats and almost no fishing nets! (Inspired by this video about the Block Island wreckers)
  
  
• Most Honest Herring: When in large schools, these fish seem to be able to understand human speech as they will direct those who seek aid. Unfortunately their name is ironic, and they always direct the needy towards the opposite of what they ask for. There is a folktale that the cabinboy of a ship distressed during a storm asked the herring to point towards their certain doom, and tricked them into pointing the ship to safety.
  
  
• Gullsroost Lighthouse was build at the request of the Shipping and Traders Company to prevent the frequent wrecking their ships experienced. They payed for the lionshare of the construction and as a 'neutral party' oversee its maintainance and staffing. In return they got toll right and any ship that enters port after it has been outside of the Basilisk Bay has to pay the fee upon docking. 
   
• The local Merchant Guild has joined the Shipping and Traders Company. As a part of this, most of the local members of the Guild have gone oversees to gain experience, while merchants from far away have come to the Bay to learn. As these folk only speak the Company tongue and whatever mumbling they call language back where they come from, they have a hard time integrating and the newfound influence of this 'foreign' version of the Merchant Guild is feared by locals. (Inspired by the historic Hanseatic League)
  
  
• The bright light of the Gullsroost Lighthouse has disturbed gull nesting behaviour, causing them to move elsewhere. This has affected the work of egg and guano collectors as well as the lives of folks living in nearby villages, which are now plagued by gulls.
  
  
• The Shipping and Traders Company has special tax exemptions, which they gained by aranging a special deal on handgonnes for the city watch.
  
  
• The Forsaken Vanguard is part of a hireling army controlled by the Shipping and Traders Company. The Company buys up punishment rights of convicts damned to the gallows. The nooses they thought to escape this way are used to make enchanted collars, which will strange those who attempt to flee or forsake their duty.
  
  
• Dirk Snitched is the unofficial commanding officer of the Forsaken Vanguard. Clearly punishing himself for some past mistake, Dirk has voluntarily served 5 campaings witht he Vangaurd. He is the only one to volunteer that many. On the battlefield he constantly risks it to save the lives of others in the Vanguard. He is build like a scar riddled ox, surprisingly quick on his feet, a mild demeanor and soft spoken.
  
  
• Lea Cheated has served the most campaigns of anyone in the Vangaurd, but none of them voluntary. She has a gambling problem and always gets back into trouble because of it.
  Her knife fighting style is renowned, and often cited as the reason she has been able to survive this many campaigns. It is all about deceit, constantly tricking opponents into a false sense of security by faking maximum range, pretending to be hurt after an attack missed, and disguising what is really a short range knife throw as an out of distance swing.
  She currently only gambles with 'fun people' (i.e. people who don't get too upset if she is unable to pay them) as a strategy to stay out of trouble. The only way anyone has ever managed to become her student was bywinning all her money in gambling and having her bet her skills on winning her losses back.
  
  
• Pith Dowell is chair of the Union of Thievery. Most consider them to be offputting, as they are incredibly direct and crass beyond belief. However, they are also extremely loyal to the union and its members, and fierce when defending them. Pith sees it as a challenge to alter how much people value things, either by undermining the assumpions that underly such beliefs, or by convincing folks of the merits of what they deemed worthless. Most of this is sport, but they'll insist it is to instruct new members on the maleability of value.
  
  
• The seafloor of Basilisk Bay is covered in myriad statues of various creatures all facing the same way. 

• The Dreamworld is a strange, chaotic parallel to the one we tend to call real. Wizards and witches know this source of Spells and Charms to be no less real than the waking world.
  As a real place, it also has its native inhabitants. They vary in shape and logic, making taxonomy near impossible. The only meaningful distinction to be made is between the benign Dreambeasts and the malign Night Terrors (also called Nightmares by common folk or Demons by warlocks). The former have no interest in the waking world, and dislike being forced to exist in it, whereas the latter are inamored with this rigid world in which they are more powerful than gods. They enter it, either through posession (which is difficult and thus rare) or by being summoned by a warlock.
  
  
• Through contracts warlocks are able to manifest a Demon's power. However, the cost is often more significant than it might initially seem. Due to these onforseen potential costs, warlocks are looked down upon by both the Wizards of the Dream Academy and the Witches of the Hidden Coven.
  
  
• Some dreambeasts will become familiars of Wizards, who use them to gather information in the Dreamworld. Wizards who have bonded with such dreambeasts are also able to temporarily manifest their familiar through a spell:
  
  
  Spell: Manifest Dreambeast/Partial Manifestation
  
  Manifest Dreambeast: For as long as you concentrate your dreambeast takes physical form and obeys your commands. Dreambeasts don't like it here, as our world seems non-sensical to them. When they are manifested they can be hurt and will immediately leave when this happens. If they survive their injuries, they will require time to recover in their own world.
  
  Partial Dreambeast Manifestation: For as long as you concentrate an aspect of your dreambeast manifests in the physical world. This could be its bite, sight, voice, hands, etc. and can be chose once the caster realises their spell will be only a partial sucess.
  
  
  
  Multiple (partial) manifestiations of the same dreambeast is possible, as the dreamworld is not bound by the same spatial concepts of identity as the waking world.
  
  
  
• Fropple: Fruittree which grows on the edge of water, with half of its roots in the ground and the other half submerged. Eating tis fruit grands temporary gills allowing land creatures to breath under water. Squirrels eat them to raid fish eggs, horses to graze water grasses. If a young horse eats to many fropples they turn into a kelpie.
  The interference of these newfound gills with a creatures normal breathing causes most to croak at random intervals, hence the name frog apple, or fropple.
  
  
• Wargs: When creatures kill a pack of wolves out of fear or hatred but for whatever reason leave a pup alive, this pup turns into a ward: an intelligent wolf capable of speech, with obsessive hatred for whatever species killed its family. Some work as lone wolves, others recruit packs of normal wolves, conspire with likeminded wargs, or even make alliances with enemies of the nearest representatives of the object of their vengeance.
  Sadly, warg behaviour, which is often the result of people acting based on onjust fear, often reinforces existing fear and hatred of wolves, or inspires it where there was none.
  
  
• The Corpse Eater of Rattlemill is an urban legend featuring the villager of this town famous for its meatpies. According to the tale, when the village was suffering from plague, the people were unable to bring in the harvest of care for the beasts. So to stave of hunger, they used the meat of those who died to the plague in their pies. Since then, they have become immune to this terrible disease, which is why they haven't suffered from it since.
  The story is a complete fabrication, but residents of Rattlemill still sometimes suffer due to this prejudice.
  
  
• Gooseflowers: A plant growing near water. Its flower like a cracked egg, when polinated fuses together. After a while a goose hatches from the petal egg and swims away. When eaten, the seeds in the goosefruit start growing inside the creature that ate it, causing extreme thirst, and killing their host. From the ground fertilized by the corpse a new Gooseflower grows. 

• A Giant Sea Serpant uses the Basilisk Bay as a creche for her spawn during summer. When the Submerged Island emerges, it gets trapped in the Bay and starts to get hungry.
  Prior to giving birth, the Sea Serpent and the father of her babies drive a whale into the bay, where she kills it to feed upon it together with her offspring. Many other fish flourish in the Bay due to this increase in available food. The Sea Serpent is such a regular visitor that its coming is celebrated by locals, who fear and respect the creature as a near divine entity.
  
  
• Curtle Swoon is captain of the Knights Joyous in the Basilisk Bay.
  On first impression he seems friendly, warm, and charismatic. However, he is zealously intolerant of any negative emotions and will yell at you with a manic smile to 'cheer up' and 'do something about it' whenever you show sign of distress. He is agressive, toxic positivity personified. 

Thoughts

The bay is starting to take shape a bit more in my mind due to this challenge. I write up a lot of weird creatures and plants I notice. The NPCs are usually low effort quickies, as it feels easy to me to come up with a character which embodies one these institutions and the institutions have already been made for a previous project. 

I notice that I had hoped that this challenge would help me get a regular writing habit. Instead, I tend to do most of these in a paniced hurry as my partner and I lie in bed and she would much rather we go to sleep already. Perhaps that is fitting given the name I go by online.