The Shadow Creeper

Validx Illustration, parchment version by Zeta Gardner

-Grandpa Valdix, elderly gnome farmer.

"It is dangerous for anyone to go out alone at night, and it's especially dangerous for children to do so. Most gnomelings don't properly understand the word "dangerous" but if you tell a story about a long clawed monster made of the shadows of trees that snatches at children who wander too close, children understand this.   When our children become adolescents, we parents (or the child's older siblings) explain that the "claws" of the Shadow Creeper is just the natural shadows of twig covered tree branches swaying in the wind.

  A young one survives childhood knowing not to go out alone at night, no long term harm is done. The Shadow Creeper is not real, but the idea of the Shadow Creeper is quite real. Any accounts of a child claiming to narrowly escape from the Shadow Creeper are the results of terrified children not understanding what they endured while alone in the dark."

Carcelli, Parchment Background by Zeta Gardner

-Carcelli the Arcane Priestess

"Most gnome elders are ignorant of the fact that the Shadow Creeper is quite real indeed.   I don't want to bore you with the metaphysics of it, but essentially generations of gnome elders have unconsciously birthed the Shadow Creature as a real entity. It is actually a spirit loosely affiliated with Greymoria. Because of the way it was created by gnomish stories, the Shadow Creeper does not bother human, dwarf, or elf children. Only gnomelings.   It is not as bad as it sounds. There are millions gnomes living in every corner of Scarterra and there is one Shadow Creeper stalking the entire world and it doesn't go out hunting every night,

  The odds of a lost gnomeling running afoul of the Shadow Creeper are pretty low. Also, if there are no survivors, there is no one left to tell the story. More than half the time the Shadow Creeper does not physically harm the child. The adults find the child in a day or two, a little cold and hungry and very scared, but not suffering any permanent harm.   More gnome children are lost to exposure, drowning, falls, and other dangers of the forests and hills at night. Fear of the Shadow Creeper ultimately saves more children's lives than it harms."