Buerks
The Nezherealm is host to some of the most pants-wetting horror-bastards imaginable. It's also home to buerks - fiends which combine the heads of lions with the goat legs of preposterousness.
 |
| Buerk by Zuza Gruzlewska |
Fiends came into existence when the Plane of Faeriala probed at the nightmares of mortal kind and mirrored what it saw. While most nightmares are terrifying, horrible, or unfathomable, others are just weird - in some instances weird and stupid. Buerks may be the greatest living example of that.
Fiends only come into existence when a nightmare is prevalent enough that the image of such a horror becomes manifest in society's wider consciousness. This means that multiple people dreamed about something like this on the regular.
Buerks move as you'd imagine - by cartwheeling on their clippety-cloppety goat legs. This makes eating difficult as their faces point in a different direction to their plane of locomotion. When they catch up to a foe, they actually have to pivot and start hopping at them. It truly is pathetic. The dumbest, most incredulous thing you've ever seen.
When encountered in one of the many hells that comprise the Nezherealm, buerks will spread misery by cartwheeling into a person and giving them a kicking. Thanks to their ridiculous form, this will often see them bouncing all over the place. They become most problematic when a warlock casts 'summon fiends' and they randomly end up with several of these things by accident.
 | |
|
Creature Facts
- On Tumultia, buerks were voted 'Worst Fiend' 10 years in a row. They tried claiming the award, but obviously this proved difficult given their woeful form of locomotion.
- In the Nezherealm, buerks were actually voted 'Least Worst Fiend', because being the 'worst' fiend is something of an honour among the infernal.
 |
| You can download The Quest Factor for free from several retailers. You can buy it in paperback at Amazon |
Creation Notes
These guys are based on a real life demon called 'Buer' from a 16th century grimoire called Pseudomonarchia Daemonum. While the 16th century undoubtedly produced the infernalest grimoires, you have to admit that old Buer looks a little... woeful?
 |
| Goat big or goat home |
Here's the Wikipedia entry:
Buer is a spirit that appears in the 16th-century grimoire Pseudomonarchia Daemonum and its derivatives, where he is described as a Great President of Hell, having fifty legions of demons under his command. He appears when the Sun is in Sagittarius. Like Chiron, the chief centaur of Greek mythology, he teaches natural and moral philosophy, logic, and the virtues of all herbs and plants, and is also capable of healing all infirmities (especially of men) and bestows good familiars.
He has been described as being in the shape of Sagittarius, which is as a centaur with a bow and arrows. Additionally, Louis Le Breton created an illustration of Buer, later engraved by M. Jarrault, depicting the demon as having the head of a lion and five goat legs surrounding his body to walk in every direction.
In my first draft of Game of Plagues the Düm Leavings summoned some fiends that were just terrible. I called them 'pinchogols', but they didn't have much personality. Thinking about it, I can barely even recall what they looked like - think they were just facehugger rip-offs but boring.
On the second draft I remembered reading about Buer. I'd not considered it when I first saw him, but if Buer manifested, clearly he would prove the most ridiculous thing you'd ever seen.
I changed the name from 'Buer' to 'buerk' because I already had 'mæres' and they sounded to similar. As a bonus, 'buerk' sounds like 'berk' - an English insult that means 'stupid person' or 'nob'.
See Also
Comments
Post a Comment