#drude

My attack on Janae_sibleyart 🗡️

Mythtober Day 3

Drude

In Germanic folklore, the drude is an evil spirit comparable to the alp and the mara. They are sometimes said to be demons, and participate in the Wild Hunt.

Druden will possess virginal maidens, but leave their bodies at night, taking on the forms of animals, people or simply mist. They will enter homes, where they take on their true form, sitting on sleeping victims' chests and causing nightmares.

Image source.

Monster master list.

I haven’t drawn my OC Jonathan in a while... and didn’t show you all my drude (german harpy) Rosalie before. That won’t stand!

~The Doomed & Stoned Podcast~

Time once again for the monthly new doom rundown! There's no other way to put it, this episode will make your ears bleed with one punishing track after another. I've selected 20 of my favorite tracks for 20 bands, many of them fresh faces that you'll be glad you met. This two-hour trip 'round the world takes us to Australia, England, France, Madrid, Poland, Russia, Scotland, and Sweden, touching down in The States for visits to Chicago, Fargo, Indianapolis, Iowa, Madison, Portland, and San Jose.

Featured:

Fange - "Agapes" 

OHHMS - "The Magician"

Altar Of Betelgeuze - "New Dawn"

Two Headed Beast - "Valley of Skulls"

Montezuma's Revenge - "Day of Saturn"

O.D.R.A - "Motłoch"

Without God - "Bad Seeds"

Egypt - "Cracks And Lines"

Wolf Snake Sun - "A Vision In White"

Alastor - "Enemy"

Telekinetic Yeti - "Stoned and Feathered"

REZN - "Wake"

Forge - "Drifter"

Drude - "Barbelo"

Archarus - "Erebor" 

Thorr-Axe - "Battle of Five Armies"

MotherSloth - "Shadow Witch"

Psychotic Depression - "Screams of the Demented"

IRON WIZARD - "Drunk In Space"

Bereft - "We Wept"

Wölflaut - "Parallel"

*Also streaming on Mixcloud, where you'll find a three years of past shows.

Art from Iron Wizard's new album, 'Eschatonaut' (2017)

Listen to The Doomed & Stoned Show live every Sunday at 3 pm PST / 6 pm EST / 11 pm GMT on Grip of Delusion Radio.

Another major source of these stories is a now almost extinct family of birds from the clade strisores, called the maraformae. These crepuscular insectivores form three geni: alpae, incubi, and mara. All of them are medium to large birds with very short and wide beaks. They resemble their close relatives, the potoos, but are significantly chubbier. This comes at a significant detriment to their ability to fly. Where potoos are apt hunters that ambush prey mid-flight, maraformae do not possess the necessary maneuverability.

Alpae are the smallest of the maraformae, with the sayaa (alpa pasikdhar) reaching a body length of only twelve centimeters and a weight of 200 grams. Their feathers are dark grey to almost black, often with intricate patterns on the backs of their wings, most prominent in the korean alp (alpa gawi).

The incubi are larger and much heavier. The common metal presser (incubus kaneshibari) is almost entirely round, and reaches weights of up to 1.6 kilogram, at a body length of only twenty-five centimeters, while the wood presser (incubus batibat) grows to a length of twenty-nine centimeters and a weight of 1.7 kilogram.

The largest member of the family is the greater night hag (mara drude) at a spectacular sixty-five centimeters body length and up to 20 kilograms in weight. Another noteworthy mara is the singing nighthound (mara pesanta), which has large feather “ears” and an excellent ability to mimic sounds.

Maraformae in their modern forms evolved around 1.5 million years ago, and developed symbiotic relationships with the megafauna of the time. Similar to modern-day oxpeckers, they would perch on large mammals and feed on ticks, insects, and insect larvae. This lifestyle allowed them access to large amounts of nutrition, and provided them with an additional benefit that allowed them to thrive even during the ice ages: they used the mammals on which they perched as natural heat sources. It is suggested by some scholars that they might even have built simple nests in the thick fur of wooly mammoths.

This put them in a very comfortable situation. Not only did they receive food and warmth, their role as parasite removers provided them relative safety from most large predators, as these, too, relied on their services.

The extinction of most terrestrial megafauna eradicated this comfortable position. Maraformae populations dwindled, as they struggled to adapt to the new world. With most of the megafauna gone, only few animals tolerated birds of this considerable size and weight perching on them for most of the evening and night.

Over time, this led to a unique change in behaviour: instead of seeking out large mammals to form a mutualistic relationship, they would approach sleeping animals that were just large enough to not immediately notice the additional weight, and hunt for parasites while they slept.

It is easy to see how this contributed to the myths of demonic beings intruding into a sleeper’s home to sit on their chest while they slept - indeed, there were creatures that sat on the chest of sleeping people, but not to steal their soul, only their lice.

This strategy was far from perfect. When the animal a maraforma perched on woke up, it would often attack the slow and immobile bird. The circumstances only got worse with time. Humans were, initially, a somewhat comfortable host due to their weight and size, but with the advent of glass windows that kept the birds from intruding, and the gradual extermination of many parasite species, the Maraformae lost one of their last major hosts.

Today, all Maraformae are either critically endangered or entirely extinct in the wild. Most species survive only in select zoos with little to no hope for an eventual reintroduction into their former habitats.