02 - What Walks Among Us?

CONSPIRACY THEORY & LOCAL LEGEND

Over a dozen tales of strange occurances or outright villany that surrounds Arivid, each with a dozen or more of their own variations or local elements. Not a single story is verifiable but the overall concept seems to be that the fat old monk is either evil or something literally monstrous in disguise and living among normal people.

Some aging Eiyudi 'socialites' wonder aloud why the enigmatic Arivid Khallupi refuses to talk about his youth or answer direct questions about the knowledge he seems to have about things nobody can explain. Nobody seems able to produce any evidence of any nefarious wrongdoing on his part which is somehow only adding to the rumours that he must be doing something sinister.

While viewed from the outside, as Arivid has himself observed, it may simply be that the vain socialites are perturbed at his continued good health while their own fortune isn't so good. Arivid was encouraged by his follwers to speak publicly on the growing popularity of the rumor and has done so many times while 'working' as a crabster during the yearly Crab'ageddon celebration.

Spread

For roughly twenty years the rumours and stories about Arivid have been circulating among Eiyudi social circles along the Hidden Sands Cove. Every year it seems the tale grows or another missing person is somehow inexplicably linked to Arivid. Tracing the actual origin would be impossible but there's no doubting that the tales have certainly grown in both believability and outrageousness. It's quite likely that every single person living on the coast has heard at least one version of a whispered tale of the suspicious fat monk who loves to tell stories.

Most adults believe the tales to be the jokes of children who like to make fun of the old man grew up a little and started telling stories about him that would frighten their younger siblings. In rural communities it's common to find a cultural outcast, or two, who live among a community that is different from their own.

Depending on how they hear it, children either love the tales or are terrified they'll be confronted by the real thing one day. Whether it began that way or not, the scary stories are now becoming a mythos that includes strangely accurate details scattered among dangerously unhinged claims that would could only be more horrific if they were concocted in a liars mouth.

Variations & Mutation

The original legend was not perfectly perserved and can only be roughly recalled. It claimed that Arivid was seen with several children taking a wagon stacked with shell sheath into the darklands, further inland than they were allowed to go. The narrator claimed to have waited several hours for them to return but no one came and he grew nervous so returned home. Arivid wasn't seen for days and nobody noticed the missing people or property that had vanished. It is then claimed by the narrator that one relation or another, their sibling or friend, told them that the fat monk showed up out of nowhere after a Storm to entertain the crabsters like he hadn't vanished for days with no warning. They all qustioned him about his absence but he just laughed and said he had some extra energy so he went to check on his shrine. Everyone believed him, of course, but we shouldn't. We know better.

Depending on when you heard the story you might recognize some differences. The people the narrator claims to see with Arivid are usually his victims but sometimes they're cloaked cultists stealing from the good people of Podrost. Although the story began with a specific shadowy event it soon evolved into a growing series of unsettling or spooky occurrances supposedly surrounding the old man and his bizarre habits.