And here's another Faerie, of slightly more lethal mien. Ironically, the hardest part of this guy was making up a decent name. I swear, I went through about twenty iterations and must've bugged half my players and co-GMs.
Not exactly terror-inducing, but I can safely say that no one else has this name. (My other idea was Gravedancer, but that steps on the toes of a certain bloodstained ballerina).
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The Elegist
- Zig, zig, zig, Death in a cadence,
Striking with his heel a tomb,
Death at midnight plays a dance-tune,
Zig, zig, zig, on his violin.
The winter wind blows and the night is dark;
Moans are heard in the linden trees.
Through the gloom, white skeletons pass,
Running and leaping in their shrouds.
Zig, zig, zig, each one is frisking,
The bones of the dancers are heard to crack—
But hist! of a sudden they quit the round,
They push forward, they fly; the cock has crowed.
-Danse Macabre, Op. 40, by Camille Saint-Saëns
There is a hush. The moon hangs low in the sky, bathing the cemetery with its pale glow. A single figure steps out into the graveyard. He raises a violin to his shoulder, and begins to play, a fast, quick little melody, of the sort that causes one's fingers to beat a tattoo in time with it.
The first dancer arises, pushing the barren earth from his form. He is old, but he still remembers a few steps from his youth. His companion is lovely, perfectly frozen in the shape of her burial. Together, they begin to dance. Soon they are joined by others.
By midnight, the entire cemetery is dancing, as fast, clever music fills the air. Thus is the passing of the Elegist.
Appearance: In person, the Elegist resembles a certain kind of dying young poet. He is a slender-framed youth, clad in black clothing with a white rose upon his lapel. His skin is pale, and his blond curls fall in a dishevelhed heap about his head. His eyes are large, and dark blue, and the Elegist carries a violin of ebon-wood with him.
The Death-Fey, however, takes the appearance of the dying poet a step beyond. His skin is the pallor of the corpse, and an observant viewer would notice the first signs of decay around his large eyes and his fingers. The Elegist moves in a jerky, uneven fashion, as if a marionette with a poor puppeteer. Those familiar with it would consider the Elegist one of the Obedient Dead at first glance.
At the same time, his heart does beat, quickly, too quickly. The Elegist breathes, though he rarely speaks and never smiles. All his uneven movements, likewise, do not hurt his playing ability one whit.
Nature: For all that this Death-Fey rarely speaks and almost never travels beyond the confines of his graveyards, most of the town will soon learn if the Elegist has paid them a visit.
The first few nights (and the Elegist is only ever seen at night), the Death-Fey does little more than play his violin within the cemetery, standing before the headstone of some long-forgotten soul, and filling the night with his slightly deranged music. For now, the Elegist plays slow dirges and mournful laments to the dwellers of the graveyard. Nothing yet has happened. Sometimes, the Elegist leaves after this point.
More often, however, the Elegist's music changes. It becomes quicker, faster, possessed of a rhythm and melody that hint at the Death-Fey's otherworldly origins. Now, the denizens of the cemetery know him, and to this music, they rise up to dance.
Merchants and beggars alike, buried in their finest threads now greatly decayed, the dead open their coffins and pass to the surface in some mystic fashion. Some are zombies, or embalmed to look quite nearly human in their somber suits. Others are skeletons, clad in a few tatters of cloth. Some few are merely ghosts, shadows and echoes of the past. At first, only the bravest and most venturesome of the dead answer the Elegist's call, but in time, they all dance.
Stately waltzes and sprightly mazurkas are the Elegist's fare, interspersed with folk dances of the distant past. Still, the dances are yet harmless, provided one doesn't venture into the graveyard. The Elegist will not venture forth, and those who avoid the cemetery between dusk and dawn are safe.
The Last Movement: Still, it is an untenable position, and eventually the Elegist finishes his visitation in one of three ways. Sometimes, the Death-Fey grows bored and departs. He arrives and turns the cemetery into a nightly uproar for some days or weeks, but then is gone, and the confused and frightened town is left to wonder, and often times to put stouter locks upon the lichgates.
More often, however, the Elegist refuses to depart until a sacrifice is made. Scholars debate and argue for why this is so, but most suspect that he loathes leaving a graveyard unattended, and so seeks a 'replacement' for himself before he leaves.
The sacrifice may be a man or a woman, young or old, but they must be a good dancer and of sound limb, and so most are youths. Sometimes the Elegist makes his requests clear through signs upon the cemetery walls, ominous scribblings in old blood or ink. Other times, the Elegist collects the sacrifice himself, luring them to the cemetery with hypnotic songs.
Eventually, the sacrifice arrives, and thence the Elegist offers a dance with his victim. It seems dreadfully important to him that the victim accept of their own free will, and the Death-Fey does nothing to compel them. Of course, if they refuse, the waiting dead tear them limb from limb, but that is something the Elegist does not tell them.
Then the Death-Fey and his victim dance, twirling through the night as the restless dead look on and keep time, knocking bony knees and clapping decayed hands. A single dance, and if the Elegist is satisfied, then the victim's fate is sealed. While they dance, the waiting dead prepare a grave, and bring out a headstone for their new neighbor.
At the dance's conclusion, the Elegist shows the sacrifice his or her new abode, and bids them enter their coffin, compelling them with some eldritch magic of the Faerie. Then the coffin is sealed and lowered into the grave, and the Elegist supervises its burial, binding the grave with powerful magics that it is not disturbed or tampered with.
The next day, at dusk, the Elegist is no longer present, but in his stead, the graveyard has a new ghostly member. The sacrifice is translucent and otherworldly, and for the rest of eternity is doomed to dance the night away, waiting for his or her partner's return.
Of course, sometimes the sacrifice is unsatisfactory, or perhaps the Elegist decides these things but pure caprice, but a third option is possible. Very rarely, on the night of the new moon, the Elegist will lead his dancing entourage into the land of the living.
Some of the undead, those buried with husbands or wives, have partners and are harmless. But those without such fellows seek out partners in the dance. They scrabble into windows, break down doors, seek out mortals with whom to share the Elegist's song. This mad collection continues, a hunting of the living until all have a partner, or the night grows late. Before dawn, the Elegist leads his expanded troupe back to the cemetery.
There, with dark magics and vile pacts, he lets his entourage take their dancers back into their crypts and coffins, burying themselves beneath the ground... with their mortal partners in tow. And then the Elegist departs. Few of the townsfolk survive their entrapment below the earth, and even those who are dug out in time... spending several hours trapped with a corpse in a coffin does not do one's sanity anything good.
Defeating the Elegist: Aside from simply hoping he gets bored and goes away on his own, the Elegist is a difficult foe to face. The surest way to avoid his dark visits is to give him a sacrifice, a ghostly partner in the dance to replace him after he departs. Some towns, those familiar with his stories, find it the simplest solution.
Actually
destroying the Elegist is rather trickier. The Elegist knows old bindings and pacts, and mystic songs most have forgotten. Moreover, he usually has an entire cemetery's dead as his servants. That said, the Elegist
can be defeated.
In particular, the touch of rowan wood is deathly dangerous to the Elegist. It burns his skin, making it crackle and smoulder like flaming parchment, and causes the Death-Fey an unholy pain. Were a rowan stake plunged into the Elegist's throat, then his manifestation in this graveyard is ended, and all that is his disappears into an oily smoke. Never again will he trouble that town... though others may feel his sting.
As for destroying him permanently? Well, that requires destroying his violin. One must steal the instrument and smash it to kindling with a rowan staff, and then burn it upon holy ground. The ashes must be mixed with holy water, and then buried beneath a church. Of course, the difficulty lies in the fact that if the Elegist's manifestation is destroyed during this, than the violin disappears. And it is unlikely that the Death-Fey will take the theft of his property lightly.
DM Notes: The Elegist is a bit simpler a foe than most of the others presented before. He's frightening, he's powerful, and he's explicitly malicious. His visits cast a pall of fear over the town where the PCs are staying, and the alternatives are to sacrifice one of the town's own, or else risk unimaginable destruction. Beyond that, destroying the Elegist is simple. Hurt him enough, preferably with rowan-wood implements, and he goes away. (bear in mind that simple does not by any means equal
easy).
That said, the Elegist also serves as a kind of 'bait-and-switch' antagonist. Most players, hearing about trouble in the graveyard, expect vampires, or liches, or necromancers, or maybe mad scientists looking for Flesh Golem parts. A Faerie is most certainly
not what they are going to be expecting. At which point he goes and unleashes a wave of zombies upon them, or buries dozens of people alive in graves.
I love the Fair Folk.
*embarassed cough* I really do know better, but my creative mind has been permanently locked into 'Dracula Time'. Most of the most famous Gothic Horror books were Victorian-era in style (Dracula, Frankenstein, anything written by Poe), so my imagination gravitates to it.
