Vodnik
RARITY: ★★★☆☆ | THREAT: ★★★☆☆ SIZE: Can reach saltwater crocodile sizes.
HABITAT:
Any body of freshwater, from lakes to rivers and even pools and puddles.
OVERVIEW:
These squat fae can sometimes be found in freshwater pools, ponds, lakes, and even puddles. Resembling a crocodile crossed with a rotting log, they’re often described as “ugly” due to how covered in slime, mosses, and scales they are. Their six pairs of legs don’t help. Vodnik often drown anyone they dislike (which is, honestly, most people). While they prefer to live in more pristine or swampy environments, many have needed to adapt to living in puddles that form after a rain due to their wetland homes degrading. It’s these puddle vodnik that can be especially problematic when they appear in towns and cities, though the more rural ones can also occasionally be the reason behind people going “missing”.
Vodnik can live in even shallow puddles, as their elemental magic allows them to dissolve into it, joining with the water itself. However, they do still prefer roomier options, and are known to migrate from puddle to puddle trying to find one they prefer. Once comfortable, they use subtle glamours to make the water shimmer, which draws people in. Victims will find that shallow puddles become as deep and treacherous as an oceanic abyss when they step into it. That’s when the vodnik strikes, devouring all but the aglets on the ends of peoples’ shoelaces.
ABILITIES:
Vodnik have superhuman strength when in their puddle, and their elemental magic allows them to become water themselves as well as control the depth of their home.
While inside puddles, they cannot be harmed by conventional means and are able to easily overpower humans and drag them into unexpectedly deep puddles.
Water that homes vodnik take on some interesting properties as well. The water of their puddles becomes influenced by their magic and becomes impossibly cold for most humanoids causing a hypothermia-like affliction that often takes magic to cure – if the vodnik decides not to simply eat them.
Puddles containing a vodnik don’t have anything unusual or suspect about their appearance, other than scattered aglets potentially being spat out around it.
WEAKNESSES:
Vodnik can be harmed at any point when they’re outside of their puddle.
While in their dissolved puddle form, they cannot go beyond the perimeter of their puddle.
Causing the puddle to quickly evaporate can destroy the vodnik hiding inside of it (normally, they’d migrate back into another body of water before that can happen).
Like other fae, vodnik are harmed by iron, especially cold iron.
VARIANTS
VODRICHOR:
It can be hard when you’re in the middle of the town with perfectly paved streets and sidewalks, with few suitable puddles to call home. So some vodnik make do even without a puddle. Vodrichor wait until a nice, flat sidewalk gets coated with a layer of fresh rain. From there, it slips into the thin layer of liquid and “merges” with the sidewalk, appearing to be a 2D (ugly) image of the fae. When they don’t wish to be perceived, they slip into the cracks between the sidewalks, staying there until someone haplessly steps on the crack. They don’t like that, and will pull you in with them and devour you. It’s very difficult to get a vodrichor out of a sidewalk by brute force. The best way to be rid of one is to do battle with it using sidewalk chalk.
