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Scarecrow
"A manifestation of fear and hatred."


With their puppet-masters gone, the Scarecrows have been sleeping a pitch black, dreamless sleep...until now.

From the ruins of a cursed family rose the Scarecrow animated; undead guardians made from terrible instructions in grim tomes and dark grimoires, imbued with the fresh organs of human prey, hay sprinkled with unguents and oils, and clothes stitched with horrid runes. Willed into existence with whispered words of fear and hatred, they were single-minded in their mission. When their terrible master passed on, they fell into a deep sleep.

In dark places across the world, other magi would follow these unspeakable rituals, enacting the very same rites and sacrificing the living in order to create golems malevolent in spirit, sadistic and brutal in nature, both addicted to death and immune from it.[1]

From the computer files of the anonymous Sam Krieg fan and Secret World lore researcher (albeit one who fills in the blanks with communist conspiracies), a curt insight into Archibald Henderson, creator of not only the Scarecrows but his first necromancy, Jack O'Lantern. John Anderson's also contain a rare mention of his Farm, a now vacant dwelling which is only alluded to in the Scarecrow lore and whose description in missions is literally cryptic by design, it being a place the player is supposed to search for:

"Henderson's Farm: Henderson had talent for excruciating arts; always reckless, somber, volatile; broke from occult circles to build farm; why? oldest son crushed in 1904 (Bolsheviks?); wife's suicide; enter sorrow; dug deeply into necromancy, thanatology, Egyptian rites; both daughters died; enter madness and melancholy; exit with razor."


Lore[]

1. "Our wisdom flows so sweet. Taste and see…
TRANSMIT - initiate the tattie-bogle signal - RECEIVE - initiate the raggedy cadence - IF I ONLY HAD A BRAIN - illumine the Reanimated - WITNESS - The Scarecrows.

Savage Coast, 870 × 437. Behind a hut

2. "Another bedtime story, sweetling? Another tale of Archie Henderson, farmer and sorcerer. This is the story: by 1906, Archie was mad.

465 × 305 Savage Coast. Random drop from Sackcloth Butchers

3. "There is a longer story. ACCESSING…
Archie Henderson's son died in an earthquake. His wife died by her own hand. His daughter was devoured, skin and clothes and bones, by a Wendigo. He had one daughter left and obsessed over her safety. So he turned to the dark tomes and grim grimoires in his possession and found a way to create guardians for his living child.

Savage Coast 131 × 265. Academy boathouse, behind an upright-stored boat

4. "Henderson hunted the woods for human prey and cut out their hearts. The pain and horror charged these organs with vile necromantic power. He made scarecrows from enchanted materials. The hay was sprinkled with unguents and oils. The old clothes they wore were stitched with horrid runes. Then, into their soft bodies, Henderson placed the harvest of reanimated, beating hearts.

Blue Mountain, 515 × 683. Scarecrow at a pumpkin patch

5. "For a week, a week and no more, the scarecrows worked. They patrolled the Henderson farm and killed any other monsters or horrors that came near. A week after that, they began to kill any humans who approached the farm. Henderson had forgotten one fact about his brute creations – the pain and sorrow of their deaths stayed with them, radiating from the undead hearts and poisoning the rest of the construct with hatred for those lucky enough to truly live.

Savage Coast 495 × 530. Behind a hut

6. "The first scarecrow quickly became known for its gruesome affectation -- to keep the body parts of those it killed. Not intelligent so much as primitively cunning, the scarecrows showed a penchant for endless malice. Only the sharing of their pain eased their pain. And so it was that the first scarecrow, the Collector, took its revenge on its creator, by strangling the life out of Archie Henderson's daughter and arranging her remains for her father to find. That night, Archie ended his life with a straight razor.

Savage Coast 828 × 369. On top of a wall of rock

7. "Without Archie Henderson's will to keep them alive, the scarecrows went back to their perches and fell to a century of sleep. The following generations of Hendersons repaired their shells and kept them around to frighten birds, never suspecting the human hearts that no longer beat within them. Then the Fog came.

Savage Coast, 495 × 550. Drops from His Daughter's Keeper

8. "The sheer surge of supernatural energy jerked the scarecrows awake. They raged silently, vowing to continue killing. The will never stop. And so it goes in Kingsmouth, on the Henderson farm. Archie was not the only magi to create walking scarecrows. Other around the world have enacted the same dark rites. Others have given bloody valentines to make the inanimate animate.

Savage Coast, 535 × 580. Random drop from Henderson's Legacy

See also[]

  • Tattie-bogle is Scottish for Scarecrow
  • "IF I ONLY HAD A BRAIN" is a song sung by the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz
  • Scarecrow lore counts for Bachelor of Parazoology
  • Scarecrow lore counts towards Master of Parazoology
  • Scarecrow lore is required for Doctor of Parazoology


Villains wiki[]

ChainsawMassacre

From the Villains wiki (contributors credited on that page's history):

"Scarecrows are a rare and villainous form of magical construct in the MMORPG The Secret World; unlike other animated scarecrows in media, these creations incorporate more grotesque elements into their construction - including pilfered human organs. Though many constructs throughout the setting have the potential to become dangerous due to their inherent instability, the Scarecrows are actively malicious and often murderous towards human beings - even their own creators.
For this reason, only two major groups of Scarecrows can be found in the game: those patrolling the farms of Solomon Island <note: mostly Savage Coast>, and those protecting the Olaru Farm in Transylvania. Also for this reason, most of these areas have been effectively depopulated by the time the players arrive.
As their names imply, Scarecrows are based on the traditional rural straw men, though few could mistake them for their inanimate brethren: even while dormant, the Scarecrows are clearly much more solid than their counterparts, and tend to resemble human corpses wrapped in sackcloth dangling from a scarecrow's frame. In the event that they aren't already active and on patrol, Scarecrows will remain dormant on their frames until someone enters their immediate vicinity, whereupon they will promptly spring to life, dropping from their frames to attack the intruder.
Despite their human-like movements, the Scarecrows are indeed little more than hand-me-down clothes and hay-stuffed sacking. However, in order to permanently animate these constructs, their creators have anointed the hay with enchanted oils and stitched their clothes with magical runes, with each Scarecrow implanted with a human heart to give them life. Their construction affords them a great deal of strength and resilience, though their human components tend to give them a thirst for vengeance often channeled into aggression and violence. As such, these straw golems are only used by magicians with a desperate need for security, an abundance of organic resources and a deficit of scruples: more ethical mages prefer simple clay golems and familiars: even the Illuminati disparage the use of Scarecrows - though mainly because the drawbacks outweigh any potential benefit.
Though their taste for violence makes them ideal security guards and enforcers, Scarecrows rarely remain loyal for long: because their hearts were often obtained without their owners' consent, the pain and grief the donors felt in the moment of the death lingers in Scarecrows, driving them to fits of rage and sorrow. Over time, this ferments into a bitter hatred for all life and a pain that can only be lessened by inflicting it on others. Possessed of a primitive cunning, they are able to sabotage their masters from within, often killing them in the process.
In the absence of their masters, Scarecrows are content to continue their vengeance on lifekind by slaughtering them wherever they can be found: though only few can wander past the boundaries of their assigned farmland, they can still prove a consistent menace to travelers - especially given that the Henderson Farm and the Olaru Farm lie close to major roadways. While some bands of Scarecrows attack in groups, others are content to wander their patch of ground alone and prey on the outskirts of civilization like serial killers. A few have even been drawn into the service of other monsters: Scarecrows on Solomon Island can occasionally be found working alongside Jack O'Lantern and the Bogeyman.
In combat, Scarecrows can be divided into three types: melee combatants, marksmen, and magicians. Melee variants arm themselves with chainsaws, reveling in the carnage they can unleash in close-quarters; marksmen make use of shotguns; and magicians wield enchanted dolls as magical foci - most likely taken from their former creators."

Archibald Henderson[]

"Like many monsters on Solomon Island, the Scarecrows were a creation of the infamous sorcerer-turned-farmer Archibald "Archie" Henderson: having already created the equally-notorious Jack O'Lantern and attempted to enhance his powers by harvesting the terror of those who lived nearby, he began a new spree of atrocities in the late 1900s, ironically in an attempt to keep what remained of his family safe. By then, his wife had killed herself, his son had been killed in an earthquake, and one of his daughters had been eaten alive by a wendigo, and Henderson had developed an unhealthy obsession with the safety of his remaining daughter: turning to the dark tomes in his private library, the magus set out to create his own private army to protect his property and kin, and - as he was still a farmer - he sought to give them the perfect camouflage.
Murdering several dozen innocent travelers in the woods around Kingsmouth, he tore out their hearts and implanted them into enchanted bodies of straw and sackcloth. Thus, the first of Solomon Island's scarecrows were born. For a week, they functioned exactly as intended, killing any roaming monsters who strayed too close to the farm; after that, however, things started going horribly wrong. Henderson had failed to take into account how the pain and sorrow of of his victims would taint the newly-made constructs: from the hearts he had stolen, the hatred corrupted each Scarecrow, slowly instilling them with an unreasoning hatred of all humanity - and eventually, all life.
In the second week of their existence, the Scarecrows began murdering humans too, killing first intruders, then visitors, then passers-by. One of them, known only as the Collector, even took to collecting the organs of those he had murdered. Eventually, though, the hatred of the Scarecrows eventually inspired them to turn on their creator; though Henderson was too powerful to be harmed, the Collector was cunning enough to take its revenge on him by strangling the life out of his daughter and leaving her dismembered corpse for her father to eventually find. Shortly afterwards, Henderson killed himself.
Without the sorcerer's animating will, the Scarecrows returned to their perches and descended into inanimate slumber. Eventually, other farmers appropriated the motionless Scarecrows for use on their farms, scattering Archie Henderson's legacy all over the island; even while still inanimate, the straw men possessed impressive longevity and didn't often need repairs, inspiring even the most superstitious of farmers to keep them around.
Then, in 2012, the Fog swept over Solomon Island: magical energies took root in the soil, resurrecting the dead as zombie all over the Island - and reactivating the Scarecrows along the way. With little else to do, the Scarecrows resolved to continue murdering intruders and passers-by, content with inflicting their pain on all living creatures within reach.
Unfortunately, Archie Henderson's techniques did not die with him, nor was he the only modern magus to create Scarecrow servitors; a visit to Transylvania reveals that another group of farmer-mages took to creating Scarecrows in order to guard their orchards and fields."

Hunting Grounds[]

"Currently found only in Solomon Island, Maine, and Bacas County, Transylvania, the Scarecrows make use of very specific hunting grounds. Normally, the Solomon Island Scarecrows would have been restricted to the old Henderson farmland in the region commonly known as the Savage Coast. However, thanks to their re-appropriation by other local farmers, combined with Nathaniel Winter building an amusement park on the site of the old Henderson Farm, the Scarecrows have been spread from Innsmouth Academy grounds all the way to the foothills of the Blue Mountain.
With most of the surviving populace hiding at the police station or the Wabanaki trailer park, the Scarecrows will most commonly attempt to take out their frustrations on the players; however, some of the more outgoing strawmen have strayed as far as the Academy boathouse, allowing them to massacre several members of the faculty as they tried to escape by boat. Given their propensity to eventually reanimate after being disabled, it is not known exactly how many Scarecrows are present on the island, though the current population could stand at over a hundred at the very least - another indication of why Archie Henderson has become so notorious.
Meanwhile, the Olaru Farm in Transylvania was using animate Scarecrows at least up until the events of the vampire invasion: it is not certain if the farmers were killed by their creations, as the presence of werewolves and ghouls on the abandoned property suggests that the rural magicians simply fell victim to Queen Mara's auxiliaries, and the Scarecrows took over the farm in their absence. However, the Olaru Scarecrows are kept much more occupied than their Solomon Island counterparts, in no small part due to the Blajini living nearby: as such, players are tasked with escorting the helpless Blajini past the Ratcatcher Scarecrows in the mission The Kindly Ones."


Mobs[]

  • The Slaughterhand
  • The Mangler
  • The Patchkeeper
  • The Red Harvester
  • Blackchaff

Missions[]

Links[]

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