The first night had been the coins.

They fell through the holes in your hands as you tried to snatch them from the air. Soon they were up to your knees, and your thoughts fled from greed to survival. The room had no door, no windows. You kicked and shouldered at the walls. Scratched futilely at the paint with the scored edge of an Umbrial Doppelpiece. All to no avail. The flattened faces of dead kings sneered at you as you lost your balance in the pelting swell. They crammed themselves down your gasping throat and the last thing you recall was the taste of copper. Then you woke up.

The second night were the teeth. The less said there, the better.

There was no third night. You chased down the dawn by draining your purse on drink and camaraderie until, leaving the fifth tavern of the evening, you finally stumbled out into daylight, victorious.

The fourth night had come quickly, though. All your money spent, you had nowhere to go. You kept a knife at the ready to jab yourself, should you nod off in your chair…but sleep is as inescapable as its more permanent cousin. You found yourself in a rotting forest, and as you looked around expecting the raised hackles of the wolf or bared blade of the bandit you instead felt the familiar hand of gravity reverse its pull. Up, up. Past the barren fingers of the trees you strained to clutch at and into the wide mouth of the midnight sky. Flailing as the ground fled past the edge of your vision, you froze when the grey nothing was pierced by a great peal of agony. The shriek bit into your mind as your sightless eyes turned over white.

Your room was empty, of course. As it should have been. The window, though, was open; banging against the sill. And your knife. There was blood on it. Not yours. These two facts, and the story that they told together, so disquieted you that you failed to notice the third strange thing in your room. A thin strand of gold sprouting from your lips and swaying in the draft. As you got to work nailing your window shut, it caught on the breeze like gossamer leaving only a faint numbness on your tongue.

BOTCHES

Humans, unsubtle as we are, have acquired a number of strange parasites in our time. Worms steal food from your gut. Ghouls steal bodies from the Graveyard. Leechfolk steal blood from their lovers. Botches steal your nightbreath while you sleep.

Short & squat, cloaked in tatters. Bird’s feet. Clay masks and copper rings braided through tangled hair. They live off of the dreams of men.

They:

Creep along the rooftops checking for unlatched bedroom windows.
Mark the houses of their victims with clumps of blood moss. Easy to find again.
Place their copper rings over the eyes of the sleeper. They won’t wake.
Stomp on the chest, forcing out nightbreath in heaving coughs.
Weave the dream-laden fog into golden silk; eating some & stowing the rest in wraith-bags.
Retrieve the rings and flee, cackling, out the window until the next evening.

The victims experience this a series of deeply traumatizing, restless nights. Plagued by nightmares, they wither, stop eating and eventually die exhausted. The Botch does not care about this. She just moves on to the next window.

When she has enough dreams to live on for a while, she starts sewing up a band of Stitchlings. They roam the countryside bringing her new victims to cage & drug. An easier source of silk. No longer a hunter, now she farms. Botches tend to outgrow their discretion at this point. Overhungry for power, most end up dead. They make a nuisance of themselves or their Stitchlings kidnap someone too important to ignore. Someone smart & strong enough to make their living in steel comes to claim silver off of their head.

The smart ones stay cautious. That’s where the real danger lies. A clever botch grows slowly, threading her den through with dream-silk all the while. If she comes full into her power before some enterprising ratcatcher kills her, that silk can cut through reality like a knife—splitting unwary adventurers with a whisper. The webs forms little windows into the dreamscape, and half-formed nightmares come limping into our world. At the center of the knot, the Botch hangs atrophied in a golden carapace, fed by her shaggy stitching servants. Blades turn to serpents at a withering glance. Men fall gibbering to their knees at a hushed word. Reality holds no grip on her sanctum.

Even those lucky enough to stumble back out of her lair tend not to notice the thin strands of gold that cling to their skin. Even if they are pointed out. Now the botch mother has flesh-and-bone marionettes that she can make dance to her whims. If she can subdue the local seat of power in this way, then it is only a matter of time before the town, or forest, or whatever locale she preys upon is subsumed entirely into the Land of Nod.

STITCHLINGS

Hair, feathers, hooknails, hay. Bone-meal dust and potter’s clay. All stuffed deep in a burlap sack and sewn up tight with nightmare thread. A vacant mask affixed upon the lump you made to mock a head.

Now you have a Stitchling.

Don’t know why you’d want one, though. Horrid, beastly little puppets. They do what their Mother Botch says, so long as she lives. Once freed, they roam unfettered, attacking people and eating their dreams. They do this with a great deal less nuance than their departed masters. Crack open the skull. Eat the soft bits. Repeat. They don’t really have anything on the inside that could process this meal, but it seems to do something for them anyway.

Stops the pain for a bit, I suppose.

I’ve always liked nightmare folklore, and I’ve been looking for a good way to make zombies feel fresh so these are that. A nightbotch that has spellbound the local mayor works for a fun low-level mystery. A town halfway into the clutches of a diabolic puppetmaster. Or you could just have a weaker one leeching sleep off of one of your players, have them try to figure out what’s going on before they waste away. Bad dreams are always an easy source of flavor and vibe for your game. If you’re using D&D, it seems like a good use of the semi-vestigial exhaustion mechanics, otherwise just take another hit die from them every time they sleep.

I think Matt Colville (prolly not the first) brought up the value of “no-ethical-quandary” bad guys to throw at your players whenever something drags. Sometimes you want to have your players worried about ‘orc-babies’ or what have you, but sometimes they just wanna get their swords wet. I buy that, and think mindless dead fit the bill perfectly, but, y’know zombies. So passé. So I witched ‘em up a bit. Gave them a plausible origin and fun reason for the brain thing. I think, at least. I’d have these guys just roaming whatever countryside your players are in. The undying remnants of some past cataclysm-level Botch that got taken out or something.

TL

ART:

The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli

Mask Witch by Robert Allen Burns

Stitchling Sketch by Robert Allen Burns

WRITTEN TO THE TUNE OF:

Pile—Dripping

Suis La Lune—Heir

City of Caterpillar—S/T