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Draug
"The cause of a hundred ghost ship tales."


The Norsemen who fought in the Darkness War paid a great price for their victory.

Draugs2

Queen and Sea Witch concept art

None of the boats that set off from the North American coast would return home with their crew unchanged. Some would not return at all, but those that did would travel through the roiling fogbanks and alien weed stretching out from that accursed sea-grave: the Filth manifested, gathering under their fingernails like soot, catching in their throats like smoke, running fingers through their nightmares. And in their nightmares, it found the tales of the Draug.

DraugBoss

Behemoth and Secret Worlders

By the time they returned to their coastal villages, the Vikings had fallen sick, and the sickness spread despite the administering of their dreamspeakers and shamans: worse, it overcame them, too, in their trances. In the course of weeks the once-thriving villages were left abandoned, for outsiders to wonder what had drawn them all out to sea.

DraugLord

Lord

It was the call of the darkness, gathering its newfound instruments, bringing them back to escalate the physical and mental changes in their bodies beneath the waves. Not dead, but now consumed by some horrible unlife, these Draug shed their old skins in the brine to grow tougher, colder flesh. The matter they sloughed off in the primordial deep joined with the Filth weed, coalescing into new forms, colonies and pods that supported their new, unnatural reproductive cycle.

DraugArt

Behemoth concept art

In the years to come, they would prey on seafaring nations - the cause of a hundred ghost ship tales - drowning the crews, putting them to work as slaves and eventual material for the creation of new Draug. Now, the Draug are on the warpath, empowered by the activity of commanding whispers and dark dreams...[1]


Drones[]

  • Impalers
  • Maulers
  • Incubators
  • Brood Pods
  • Sea Witches - impregnate the dead with tentacles
  • Seacallers - magic attack

Leaders[]

  • Behemoths
  • Draug Lord
  • Queens

Deep Ones are not Draug, but as fellow worshippers of The Dreaming Ones, "they follow the lead of the draug"


Debriefings[]

Dragon; Out of Our League, excerpt:

"Your report confirms the hierarchical structure of the Draug. The Draug Lords use telepathy to command their troops. After this defeat, it will be increasingly difficult to draw them from the depths."


Lore[]

Draug - Drones[]

1.

"Our wisdom flows so sweet. Taste and see…
TRANSMIT - initiate the Sargasso signal - RECEIVE - initiate the hugr call - MULTITUDES OF LIVING BEINGS - ALGAE, WHALES, SEA MONSTERS - REVELLING IN AN ORGY, FROM THE SURFACE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA - illumine the Cycle of the Draug - WITNESS - The Draug."

Blue Mountain, 447 × 15


2.

"Initiate the oral histories…
"The Norse folk tell legends of the draug, both as ghosts haunting the graves of Vikings and as the reanimated corpses of mariners who died at sea. Denied a proper burial and eternal rest, the soggy wretches haunted the shores. Their flesh is said to be hel-blár or nár-fölr -- that is, "death-blue" or "corpse-pale". In folklore, they were harbingers of death to whoever was unlucky enough to see them."

Blue Mountain, 349 × 191


3.

"SCANNING… New England.
The Draug of Kingsmouth are very real, very corporeal. When the fogs came, the townsfolk walked into the sea to drown, rising again from the waters, driven forward by pale humanoids. Clad in the seaweed of the Sargasso, these pallid creatures sported shells and all manner of aquatic growths. Their bloated bodies crawled with marine carrion-eaters and parasites, becoming walking nests of the crustaceans that served their will in symbioses. Adapted to life in the ocean, they look deceptively awkward on land. Their presence is betrayed by the putrid stink rot that they carry from the bottom of the ocean. Their decaying, undead brains carry no mercy or empathy."

Kingsmouth, 80 × 577


4.

"The malignancy of the draug manifests in manifold forms. There are several common types. We see them, sweetling, haunting Kingsmouth. We see the Maulers and Spikers. They are the warriors among the waterlogged. Large coral growths form weapons. Their dead skin and sinew blunt the blades that strike them. Their wounds and abscesses may make them appear fragile, but their bodies are formed from the inside pushing out, as they constantly mutate new muscle structures."

Blue Mountain, 899 × 771. Drop from 'Vetr Bludgeoner' boss


5.

"We see the Seawitches. These transformed shaman have uniquely retained some sense of individuality, if not their past lives. They are forever locked in their trance-state -- where once they heard the will of the spirits, now they only hear the whispers of the Dreaming Ones. They wail songs of madness. We see the Seacallers -- the fog, this airborne Filth, responds to their voice and the water churns to their will. We see the Broodwitches -- slimy tentacles reach out from their chests, impregnating the walking corpses with eldritch seed."

Kingsmouth, 515 × 253. In the water, just south of a boat



6.

"We see the Incubators. The draug round up the drowned zombies. A terrible embryo is placed inside each rotting corpse, where it gestates until it is large enough to be removed from the body and placed in the shallow water to grow into an egg pod. Do you see the pods, sweetling, dotting the shores? Walking corpses carry them about. The weird cycle continues."

Kingsmouth, 486 × 171. In the water at the base of a cement pier piling


7.

"Initiate the Secret Histories…
The Norse who fought in the Darkness War paid a great price for their victory. Some boats did not return, they were lost with Excalibur in the Sargasso Sea. There would be no glorious death and the pyre for them, but only the cold sea and no death at all."

Blue Mountain, 170 × 907. On the Cliffs behind Spinecrusher Champion


8.

"Some boats did return, but those Vikings did not come home unchanged. They had travelled through roiling fog banks and an ocean of alien weeds, a graveyard that was a sea. Something got into them, gathered under their fingernails like soot, catching in their throats like smoke, dripping into their nightmares. The Filth sifted through their minds and darkest dreams, and there it found the passed-down tales of the draug. It bubbled and delighted at this inspiration."

Blue Mountain, 323 × 90. Rock outcropping next to the ocean


9.

"By the time they returned to their coastal villages, the Vikings had fallen sick. The pestilence spread despite the administering of their dreamspeakers. Not even the Seiðr, the elite female shaman, could cure the sickness. Weeks later, outsiders would find the villages abandoned, rows of footprints leading to the sea. We saw the poor souls changing. Drowned but not dead, they shed their skins in the brine to grow tougher, colder flesh. The matter they sloughed off in the primordial deep joined with the Filth weed, coalescing into new forms, colonies and pods that supported their new, unnatural cycle."

Blue Mountain,

80 × 775. Half up a tall rock at the ocean's edge

This lore counts towards Bachelor of Parazoology, and Master of Parazoology, and is required for Doctor of Parazoology

Links[]

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