Crinwin

Trust not thine ears, among the trees Despite the most desp'rate of pleas Look ye up and scan the skies For snarling teeth and pale-dead eyes Long of limb and gray of skin

They've always been there, in the Wood, lurking in the trees. For generations, the Forest Folk hunted them and kept their numbers in check. No longer.

• Out-of-place noises: partial bird calls, off-season insect buzz, a bear's growl from the treetops, snippets of nonsense speech
• Figures scurrying, leaping, swinging through the branches
• Sinewy strong fingers around your throat
• Clammy, blackish blood; too cold and putrid to be natural Tip: pick a sound or word that the PCs have made, and repeat it over and over at different volumes and tones.

Questions

• What odd noise, heard in the night, is attributed to the crinwin? What is it said to mean?
• What common thing do these vermin seem to covet above all else?
• When did crinwin last openly raid the village? What did they take?
• What's the surest sign of crinwin having been nearby?
• Who among you hates those things, more than anyone else does? Why?
• What makes you think they might be more than simple beasts, despite what everyone else says?

Lore

Something interesting: There's something that everyone agrees will keep crinwin at bay (a smell, a charm, a sound, a little ritual, etc.). What is it, and why are you sure that it's next to worthless?

Something useful: There really is something that keeps crinwin at bay, but it involves something uncommon, impractical, or both. What is it, and why isn't it common knowledge (or at least commonly accepted)?

Hooks

• The crinwin have dug something up, something evil and powerful, and it's… changing them.
• A hunter stumbles on a colony of nests, 5 or 6 in one place.
• Crinwin numbers near Stonetop are steadily growing. Is something leading them? Compelling them? Or scaring them closer to the village?
• Crinwin start boldly raiding homes at night. They soon steal something precious (an heirloom, an arcana, an infant).
• A trapper's child has secretly befriended a crinwin, meeting it in secret, playing and trading gifts.

Origins

What are they, and where did they come from? That's for you and your group to decide, but possibilities include:

• They were made by the Fomoraij, as warriors to fight the Fae.
• They were a failed experiment of the Green Lords, escaped into the wild when the Fae rebelled.
• They were once Forest Folk, who were cursed or corrupted by some witch or sorcerer.
• They came through the cracked portal of Vor Svetelik, from some distant place (or even another world).
• They crawled out of some lake, vile spawn of the Things Below.

Nests

Big papery structures, like giant wasp nests, high up in the boughs of trees. The bigger the trees, the better. The mightiest trees might have two or three nests in them.

A small, light person who dares the climb could squeeze inside. It's pitch black inside, with platforms and walls of hexagonal paper cells. Cramped chambers are connected by vertical shafts. The outer walls are surprisingly damp and resistant to fire, but the insides will go right up if exposed to open flame.

Around a dozen full-grown crinwin live in each nest. They store food (rotten, decaying) in the hexagonal cells, and maintain tableaux showcasing flawed trappings of civilization (next page).

The largest chamber in each nest is a nursery:

warm, moist, and carved out of the living wood. Hexagonal tubes line the chamber, each stuffed with goo and larval crinwin.

Pupae squirm about the chamber, feeding on goo and even each other. The nurseries are tended by an old, fat crinwin or—in the oldest, largest nests—a broodfather.

Discoveries

Flawed trappings of civilization

They imitate whatever people(s) they observe, but always get it wrong.

• A line of stones, stacked two or three high, surrounding the tree(s) that hold the nest(s).
• Crudely tilled "fields," planted with nonsense: bits of bone or teeth, pot shards or broken tools, dead wasps, shiny stones, etc.
• A deer carcass, tethered to a nearby tree with a vine around its neck
• A hole, dug like a well, but far too shallow
• A chamber in the nest, filled with old cups, potsherds, scraps of cloth
• "Children" made of sticks and papery mass, clothed in filthy stolen fabric, tucked safely away in a nest or carried about
• Graves or cairns, empty yet revered or else housing still-living, sickly crinwin
• A crude shrine to… something?
• A mundane item or random artifact, misused or cast aside.

Something long thought lost

• Something shiny, a family heirloom perhaps, gone missing in the crinwin's last raid
• A keepsake, given by a loved one, but lost in the Wood years ago
• Something owned by a hunter or trapper who never came home

Strange growths

Enormous pustules, found on some of the crinwin that are a little larger, less agile, and less aggressive. Pop them and they ooze goo, maybe with a small, pale grub, squirming and hissing pitifully as it dies in the open air.

Outcast

An albino crinwin, more curious than hostile towards outsiders, living apart from the others in a landbound nest of stone and paper. Watching the PCs intently, or trying to perform a craft in some painfully wrong way, or getting harassed or beaten by its peers.

Prisoner

A crinwin (beaten, cut, bruised), either being dragged into the area right now by others, or already lashed on a high-up tree branch for who-knows-how-long.

• How can you tell, just by looking at it, that this one comes from different stock than the ones who live here?

Midden heaps

A short ways off from the nest.

• Signs of crinwin biology (remains of what they eat/won't eat, or excrement, or the utter lack thereof)
• Cast-off possessions, giving hints to what they value and what they don't
• Evidence of contact with the Forest Folk, over a decade old and buried deep

Dangers