The Shmig
The Shmig is a devious creature from Heralyan folklore, said to reside within forests near the edges of towns and villages. It is described as having the body of an old woman with long gray hair, but with cheekbones far too high and a perpetual half-grin on its face. It has the hooves of a goat in place of feet, and it wears dishevelled rags for clothing.
It is said that the Shmig appears outside of a home when a child is left alone inside of one by their parents. It will unlock the door and make its way inside, before revealing itself to the child and beginning to converse with it. The Shmig will remark on the child's weight, stating regardless of how heavy or what size they are that they look underweight, and that they need to eat more. It will then begin producing food, seemingly from nowhere, and insist that the child eat it. If the child does so, the Shmig will seem pleased, but will then produce even more for the child to eat, continuing to do so no matter how much they consume. If at any point the child refuses the food offered to it, the Shmig will attack them in order to try and force them to eat it.
It is possible to ward a Shmig off in a number of ways: Firstly, if any food is left at the perimeter of a house, it will be distracted by it when it approaches the house and eat the food, causing it to forget why it came to the house in the first place and leave. Additionally, the Shmig follows the same rules that it attempts to enforce upon children, and must eat any food that it is offered. It is therefore possible to trick the Shmig by offering it 'food' that is poisonous, such as hemlock or wolfsbane; if one points out that these plants are eaten by some animals, the creature will be compelled to consume it, and die shortly thereafter. It is also possible to simply overfeed the creature to death, in the same way that it tries to do to children, although most consider this a rather significant waste of food.
Despite the creature's ill intent, the ease with which it can be staved off has lead to it being regarded as little more than a nuisance within Heralyan culture. The Shmig has become synonymous with an individual which means to do harm, but is so woefully incompetent that they cannot accomplish it. In addition, the comedic value of a monster that tries to feed children to death has come to be explored within certain Heralyan plays in recent years, leading to the reframing of the Shmig as something of a trickster, rather than actively malevolent. Some of these plays depict it as stealing food from a family's larder rather than materialising it from thin air, and depict it instead as trying to play pranks upon the child's parents by using up all of their food. The most famous Shmig depicted in Heralyan plays is that of Old Waresha, who is a recurring character that often appears in plays about the Heralyan royal family. She tries to steal the food from the royal larder, but is horrified when she realises just how much is stored there, and ends up running away. Alternatively, she is sometimes cornered there by the children, who offer her the entire lardar; causing her to eat so much that she begins bloating, and eventually explodes.