250 Retweets Goal - Five Rumors

As the 250 retweets goal, here are five rumors for The Fantasy Trip . . .

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There will be no stats in this section, because the creatures are poorly known, unknown, or misunderstood. They may or may not really exist, and they may or may not have any of the properties associated with them by legend.

Wednesday Hill

In the middle of a forest there stands a hill. Not a terribly unusual hill, though it’s somewhat odd to find just a single hill in otherwise gently rolling terrain. Nevertheless, there it is.

     . . . oh, wait, it’s gone.

Wednesday Hill got its name because it’s only there about one day a week. The schedule is not regular; local wise people have kept pretty fair track of it for centuries now, and they still can’t predict when it will appear or how long it will stay.

If you are on Wednesday Hill when it vanishes, you will notice nothing. Time will not pass for you until it appears again. There’s an old hermit who has lived in his hut on the hill for more than 500 years as the rest of Cidri measures time. Scholars, it is said, sometimes visit him to talk about history, but they leave disappointed, because he knows about as much about the world around him as does a turtle. If you bring him a skin of wine, though, he’ll trade old stories for as long as the wine lasts.

When the hill is gone, it is replaced by perfectly normal forest. If you are in that forest when the hill appears, you find yourself somewhere on the hill.

Stories of “Wednesday Hill” are told in many lands. If it’s real, there might be more than one. It’s definitely not the same hill just moving around, because anyone who goes up it, except the old hermit, eventually comes down in the same area. The hermit never comes down at all!

Some tales talk wildly about the lost treasures of Wednesday Hill, but there is no common thread to those stories except that a sleeping elf-lady might be involved. And there are tens of stories about sleeping princesses of all kinds, so it may mean nothing.

Strong Toad

Some say this is a fat, greedy swamp dweller, big enough to gobble down a halfling. Others say that it is a toad of regular size, and inoffensive, but with such great strength that it cannot be picked up and contained in a regular cage, or even squashed with a regular weapon blow. Many tales hold that there is a valuable gem in the toad’s head, and some claim that those who touch it will have strange visions.

Tiny Zombies

Travelers have reported local outbreaks of zombie-ism confined to small wildlife – squirrels, lizards, and so on. If this is true, it doesn’t seem to spread widely and it doesn’t seem to affect humans – not much, at least, or it would be well known. A wizard who uses the Zombie spell would no doubt ve very interested in a specimen, and surely it would be safe to catch one. Surely . . .

Talking Jewels

There are hundreds of stories of gems, both unset and in jewelry, that speak to people. Rarely does this last for very long, as though the jewel is temporarily possessed by something that soon moves on. In the tales, the talking jewels are usually friendly. If they offer information, it’s probably true, though often cryptic.

The Intelligent Sniffle

There are many accounts of people who, suffering from what seems to be a bad cold, are temporarily “possessed” by a personality that seems to be the disease itself. Multiple sufferers have been known to cooperate. The disease does not seem to be as sinister and wicked as one might expect from a talking plague; in particular, the stories of its spreading itself by force all sound like exaggerations meant to scare children. If anything, the “cold” seems to be surprised that it is a disease. Often it tries to learn about its surroundings, between sneezes, before it fades and the victim’s normal personality reasserts itself.

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