Hogbins
Across the Tumultiverse, faer are employed to complete all manner of household tasks. One of the grossest is disposing trash. Thankfully, there's a group of faer that will gobble up pretty much anything.
Hogbins originated on the Isles of Orszc where they lived in mounds. Nearby villagers would give them offerings - believing that doing so would bring them good luck. Said offerings included food, gifts, booze, and suggestively shaped rocks - all of which the hogbins devoured.
Although they 'ate' these offerings, they didn't digest them. The reason they swallow things is hogbins can extract trace amounts of mana from objects people have touched. This lack of digestion means hogbins just keep getting bigger. For the people of Orszc, this meant dragging their hogbin out to sea once a week to squeeze it empty.
Hogbins fell out of favour when it became clear they didn't actually grant good luck (not unless a person enjoyed squeezing rotten food out of a weird, lumpy thing, anyway).
Despite losing their original purpose, hogbins have become one of the most prevalent faer beings in the multiverse. Their love of swallowing literally anything makes them ideal household waste containers.
Modern hogbins live in boxes, and their employers feed them trash until they get too big for them. They'll feed them for a few days more, too - watching as the hogbin bulges over the rim, dribbling banana peels and spaghetti. After a few more days, they'll drag the bloated faer outside to vomit into the outside bin.
In recent years, different varieties of hogbin have been discovered that can recycle. Variant hogbins are able to swallow common, everyday objects like paper, ploostic, glass, and swords. The only problem is they become very sick if you feed them the wrong material - a fact people find out to their horror when they feed one a tin with the label still on.
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| Hogbin by Zuza Gruzlewska |
Hogbins originated on the Isles of Orszc where they lived in mounds. Nearby villagers would give them offerings - believing that doing so would bring them good luck. Said offerings included food, gifts, booze, and suggestively shaped rocks - all of which the hogbins devoured.
Although they 'ate' these offerings, they didn't digest them. The reason they swallow things is hogbins can extract trace amounts of mana from objects people have touched. This lack of digestion means hogbins just keep getting bigger. For the people of Orszc, this meant dragging their hogbin out to sea once a week to squeeze it empty.
Hogbins fell out of favour when it became clear they didn't actually grant good luck (not unless a person enjoyed squeezing rotten food out of a weird, lumpy thing, anyway).
Despite losing their original purpose, hogbins have become one of the most prevalent faer beings in the multiverse. Their love of swallowing literally anything makes them ideal household waste containers.
Modern hogbins live in boxes, and their employers feed them trash until they get too big for them. They'll feed them for a few days more, too - watching as the hogbin bulges over the rim, dribbling banana peels and spaghetti. After a few more days, they'll drag the bloated faer outside to vomit into the outside bin.
In recent years, different varieties of hogbin have been discovered that can recycle. Variant hogbins are able to swallow common, everyday objects like paper, ploostic, glass, and swords. The only problem is they become very sick if you feed them the wrong material - a fact people find out to their horror when they feed one a tin with the label still on.
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Creation Notes
This creature design was actually a gift from Zuza. It was originally titled 'Very Lost Monster', which left me with the task of giving it a back story - a task I very much enjoyed!
Looking at it, it was clearly a creature that:
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This creature design was actually a gift from Zuza. It was originally titled 'Very Lost Monster', which left me with the task of giving it a back story - a task I very much enjoyed!
Looking at it, it was clearly a creature that:
- Would eat anything you put in front of it.
- Lacked the physicality to hunt down food of its own.
I decided it wouldn't make a very good monster, but it would make an excellent faer. I like faer to perform the roles of household appliances, and these guys seemed like they'd make excellent bin-bags - a creature that ate up all your trash and got bigger and smellier the more it ate. If you've ever removed a bin-bag that should have been taken out days ago, I imagine you'll appreciate how horrifying it can be!
In terms of lore, I largely based these guys on a type of goblin from the Orkney Islands known as 'hogboons'. These creatures lived in mounds where they'd receive gifts of food from neighbouring humans. They also had similar goblins known as 'trow'. The difference between the two seems to be that the trow were - to put it mildly - little dickheads.
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| This image of a trow from Geograph describes them as "the Shetland equivalent of the Norse troll|" |
Trow also exist in the Tumultiverse, although they're known as 'trowbins'. They're the equivalent of cheap, nasty bin-bags that split before you can get them outside - showering you in stink-juice and regret. The fact they look pretty much identical to hogbins means no one realises their mistake until it's too late.
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