Poludnica

Poludnicas are bitter, lonely fey tethered to the Material Plane by their connection to the sun. They yearn for a family life that they could never get, and lure mortals away from their families, expecting to be loved and considered as family by them. These fey makes themselves evident in the middle of hot summer days, and takes the form of whirling dust clouds and carries a scythe, sickle or shears; most likely the shears. They will stop people in the field to ask them difficult questions or engage them in conversation. If anyone fails to answer a question or tries to change the subject, she will cut off their head or strike them with illness. She may appear as an old hag, a beautiful woman, or a 12-year-old girl, and she was useful in scaring children away from valuable crops. She is only seen on the hottest part of the day and is a personification of a sun-stroke.

Poludnicas usually claim a few hundred acres of fertile land as their territory, most often centered on a lair that is hidden in plain sight, inaccessible, or avoided by the community, such as a hollow beneath the tangled roots of a tree, the tumbledown barn of a former companion who no longer lives, or an abandoned and supposedly haunted farmhouse. By day, a poludnica prowls crop fields seeking to lure, coerce, or physically abduct an overworked farmhand back to her home where she has built a mockery of a human farmhouse kitchen or bedroom, expecting her abductee to indulge her whims in a pantomime of normalcy, companionship, or intimacy. Sometimes one of these companions might choose to play along with his captor or try to escape during daylight hours, but those that bide their time until nightfall when the poludnica disappears at least have a chance of escape.