My friend Nick and I have been discussing collaborating on a project. I'll write blerbs about weird monsters, and he'll make illustrations. Here's my first attempt; we may be doing something else instead, we'll see. The idea is that each of these posts will be like a chapter from a travelogue from some noble adventurer, or a traveling merchant, like Marco Polo. I'm setting these in the Land of Nog, which is basically a loose fantasy setting that takes place on the face of an incredibly large, incredibly slow moving giant.
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In my travels through the land of Nog, it foremost stands
out in my recollection that never a single night were we at peace from the
haunting howls of the Yolbum. Each supper, precisely following sunset would the
caterwaul begin—first as a single lone yodel, then followed by a cacophony. Early
on our journey, it was a mystery to us, as to where these beasts—whom we
presumed to be most fearsome—were hiding, as our first leg took us through the
vast expanse of the Face Waste. Nary a tree nor hill stood to conceal their
forms, and yet looking out across the pocked earth, one could see nothing, even
if the sound seemed to come from only a stone’s toss away.
It was one night, and, at this point, the yodeling had begun
to wane from wondrous to irksome, that I set out, determined to find my first
Yolbum, and harangue it for it and its kin’s assault on my ears each night.
Thoroughly I sought, late into the night. It was only by high moon, by my
count, when I had all but given up, that my foot caught on a hole on the
ground. Easy enough to miss, looking out over the uneven ground—even then one
could walk right by and mistake it for another of the Waste’s many craterous
divots—yet, certainly large enough to twist an ankle of a blundering oaf such
as myself. Luckily, I merely scuffed my traveling vest as I fell to the ground.
On a hunch, I scurried away from the hole, and lay down
close to the ground to watch the opening, certain that it would reveal to me my
quarry. And indeed it did, only perhaps an hour later. The yodels had waned,
for a time, as they sometimes did, only to start up again suddenly with full
force. As I listened closely, I could hear the sound approaching, like a
reversed echo, until a call sounded from one Yolbum not a mile away. Then, out
from the hole before me slithered a long, sinuous creature. Like a worm, and
fleshy pink, it unspooled itself into a great pile of flesh on the earth around
its den. Along one side, the creature split, all the way down its hairless
length, opening up a long, horrible mouth, filled with small blunt teeth, and
it bellowed its ponderous howl into the night.
In a foolish attempt to gain further insight, I stood, and
uncovered my torch. The moment the light touched its hideous body, the creature
recoiled, slithering its bulk instantly back down into the dark burrow.
Further investigation has revealed this:
- Each Yolbum to emerge from a given hole is a different
individual. I speculate they have a vast network of tunnels under the earth.
- My manservant speculated that they consume the earth
itself, but whatever they eat, there is, as yet, no explanation for the lack of
apparent leavings that must follow.
- Each yodel is subtly different from the last. Either each
creature has a unique call, or the ululations of a given call are random. In a
letter from my dear wife, she fancied that they were singing lullabies to one another
in their strange language, and each song was a unique composition.
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