Bestiary: Auf

So there are a lot of things I should be writing.
I have a paper on the semiotic value of footnotes I need to work on.
I have the campaign logs that I'm supposed to be putting here.
I have a piece of fiction that I want to add more to, and someone will actually notice if I don't.

However, this is what my brain decided to focus on, and sometimes my brain withholds sleep from me if I don't write what it wants me to write.

Also, the images turned out a lot better than my artistic attempts usually do. That's a pretty low bar, though.

So, without further ado, here is one entry in what may become an ongoing series of monsters inspired by obscure words found in the OED:

Bestiary

By Zovik the Doomed (dictated posthumously)

Entry #1: the Auf

There is a story told in the city. They say that the small, shrivelled, man-like creatures who live in the mountains -- called the Aufs -- have a penchant for stealing human children. They say that, after taking the human child, they disguise the theft by leaving one of their own, an auf-child.

The auf-child is, inevitably, horribly deformed. Sometimes this is readily apparent. Sometimes it does not show up for years. Sometimes the deformations do not develop until the child is ten or more years of age. It always shows through in the end, though
.
They say that the only way to deal with an auf-child is to take it to the mountains -- the Aufs themselves will not interfere, as they are frightened of the men and women of the city -- and abandon it there, to be raised by its own kind. Then forget.

The original child will never return, for they have become an Auf themselves.

An Auf of the chroolepoid variety.

There is a story told in the mountains. They say that, in ancient days, people of the city abandoned deformed children in the mountains out of shame, claiming that this beast could never be of their blood -- for such would cause the other city-folk to perceive weakness, failure, even immorality on the part of the parents -- and blaming mythical “Aufs” for stealing their true child. They never searched for their “true” child, because they knew in their hearts that the one they had just left to die of exposure was indeed theirs.

They say that, over time, some of the older children who had been abandoned in this manner survived. That they watched for the occasional trips from the city to the mountains, rescued other abandoned children, and raised them in their own shadow-society. They say that these children, knowing that the people of the city thought them deformed, took to wearing wooden masks and shapeless brown robes to conceal themselves.

They say that these children grew up and had their own children, who inherited their parents’ deformities, often to a greater degree. That this shadow-society in the mountains grew, and became organized, and all of them knew of themselves that the people of the city had judged them to be Aufs, so they took this name as their own. And they knew what Aufs were supposed to do with human children.

Both of these stories are, by and large, true.

An  Auf of the Acanthophorous variety.
(I think it's kind of cute; is that wrong?)