Mæres
You commonly find these foul familiars working for warlocks like Düm Leavings. From a distance you could mistake one for a harmless flying ape, but up close the differences become clear. Their wings look notably fiendish, for a start, and their bodies are sticky and warped. They also have pure white eyes and lack skin around the mouth.
So they're unpleasant, basically. As they're also adept at getting things done, warlock's have much use for them.
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| Mære by Zuza Gruzlewska |
The majority of fiends are mana-hungry beasts that couldn't stop killing even if they wanted to. Mæres number among the few that can take orders, although they do make worse familiars than faer - largely as they still need to enact unpleasantness on a regular basis (although that's only 'worse' if said unpleasantness doesn't benefit their employer's designs, obviously).
It's generally illegal to employ mæres, but you can get an exemption. Some people incorrectly think rich people buy these, but in reality, having money is exemption enough. Rich people reward one another for their 'success', and in the inner-realms, nothing screams success like paying a warped hell-monkey to literally scream the word "success".
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Maere Facts
- Mæres elicit all sorts of shrieks and howls. They also make an unsettling knocking sound by clicking their skull to the side.
- A group of mæres are collectively known as a 'night'.
- These fiends are so sticky that you can use them like greasy notice boards.
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Creation Notes
Mæres are a real creature from mythology, although they spell it 'mares'. Just take a look at one of these lads:
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| Just chilling |
And now read this from Wikipedia:
"A Mare is a malicious entity in Germanic and Slavic folklore that rides on people's chests while they sleep, bringing on bad dreams (or "nightmares")."
So yes - they're the source of the word 'nightmare', meaning a 'mare' is literally the physical embodiment of a terror-dream! That's cool, right? Because what could be darker than a-
-oh no - hang on a minute - I've just remembered that 'mare' is also the word for an adult, female horse. Gods damnit, English! Why do you do this? How does every word have five hundred meanings, and yet we still have more words than 99% of other languages? And it doesn't help that the painting has a laughing horse in the background!
But anyway - this is what I had to wrestle with. I learned of this cool creature then realised I couldn't name them as such because of horse confusion. To get around that I used the Old English variant mære, which is pronounced the same but at least tricks your brain into thinking otherwise.
In terms of etymology, they think the name originated from words that variously translated as the following:
- 'Doom'.
- 'To harm'.
- 'To rub away'.
See Also
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