The Lady Fair

The Lady Fair is a Bogeyman who first appeared in pre-Grand Conjunction Dorvinia. She works in tandem with her mate, the Barrow-Man.

Origins

It is possible that the Lady Fair's legend and that of her mate originates with a pair of murderers and resurrectionists, Bram and Leila Stovich. The Stoviches would murder specific victims to the specifications of medical researchers, necromancers and the like by poisoning them, then steal the corpse in the dead of night and bring it to the customer. Even after the Stoviches were caught and executed by hanging in 717 BC, the tale of the two killers persevered and mutated into a dreadful fairytale -- especially because many of their victims had been young children. In 730 BC, the telling and retelling of the Stoviches' story as a cautionary tale caused the Lady Fair and the Barrow-Man to be spawned from a Sinkhole of Evil in the Ziyden Woods.

Appearance

The Lady Fair usually cannot be seen by adults. To children, she initially appears as a beautiful woman with hair the colour of fresh wheat and eyes like molten gold, dressed in bespoke dresses of golden silk stitched with pearls. She endlessly braids and re-braids her hair in amazing fashions. The Lady Fair wears long skirts that drag on the ground in an deliberate effort to hide her weak, twisted legs.

Once the Lady Fair has found her victim and made a deal with them, offering some treasure the child covets above all things for a price, she next appears to the victim in a far less pleasing guise. The child will discover either a golden spider with a human face, lurking out of its reach in whatever room the child sleeps in, or else a golden drider-like creature will come crawling from places it should not possibly fit in, such as out of a closet or out from under a bed. Even in these monstrous arachnid forms, the Lady Fair's legs are frail and have clearly been broken in the past, only to heal wrong.

The Lady Fair's legs may be a holdover from the execution of Leila Stovich, whose legs were broken on the rack before she was executed.

Modus Operandi

When a child openly displays ingratitude for its blessings in life, and openly envies another child what it perceives to be their good fortune, the Lady Fair and her mate the Barrow-Man stir from their lair. She climbs atop the cart her mate drags behind him and perches there, waiting for him to bring her to the place the child resides in.

Once they have arrived, the Lady Fair will seek the child out and speak honeyed words to the prospective victim. The Lady Fair will whisper flattery in the child's ear, acknowledging its desire and its 'right' to whatever it wants. She presents herself as a great sorceress and offers to grant the child's wish, in return for 'a trifling thing', something the child 'does not want anyway'. If the child agrees to the deal, the Lady Fair uses her powers to see to it that the child receives exactly what it had wanted. Toys, riches, fancy clothes, forbidden knowledge, more. All of it appears in the child's possession and all but the most alert adults are blissfully unaware that this is unusual.

However, the Lady Fair's powers do not come for free. A child that has wished for a magnificent toy to play with soon discovers itself wracked by epileptic attacks, and thus incapable of play. The child that wants beautiful dresses receives a closet full of them, but soon discovers debilitating skin rashes that prevent it from wearing them. There is not a wish that does not come with some painful, debilitating medical condition.

Worse yet, as soon as night falls, the Lady Fair descends on her victim in one of her arachnid guises and kisses their neck or wrists with her honey-sweet venom, which starts to dissolve the victim's muscle tissue over a course of days. Every time the Lady Fair sinks her fangs into a victim, she slurps up a bit more of that muscle tissue and injects more venom, leaving the child a little weaker and in a bit more pain every time it wakes up again.

The Lady Fair's game ends only when her mate decides the balance of suffering has compensated for the initial ingratitude. When he does decide this is the case, the Barrow-Man will present himself to the child and offer it a clean death. Regardless whether the child agrees or not, the Lady Fair will scuttle onto the Barrow-Man's cart and he will start the long journey home.

Powers

Once a week, the Lady Fair can grant a child a Limited Wish, but only if that child agrees to her deal. If a child accepts a wish, the Lady Fair can automatically saddle it with Contagion and Bestow Curse, with the target not allowed a save against these powers. The Lady Fair can use Contagion and Bestow Curse twice a day. She has a venomous bite that deals Strength damage.

Bane

Like her mate, the Barrow-Man, the Lady Fair is vulnerable to a victim showing contrition and doing its utmost to make amends for its earlier ingratitude and envy, but only so long as this is truly selfless and heartfelt. A child trying to make amends for the purpose of surviving the attention of the bogeymen would not affect her. If the contrition and amends of her victim are genuine, however, the Lady Fair immediately becomes sickened as the dissolved tissues she has sucked out of the child become toxic to her. Once sickened, the Lady Fair is completely reliant upon the Barrow-Man to take her back to their lair, so she can recover.

Lair

The 'Dark Woods where shadows grow like brambles' is not a location recorded on any map penned by mortal hand, though it does feature in some particularly nasty fairy tales. There are secretive whispers that the Shadow Fey and some of the more intelligent Bogeymen know where it can be found, but neither the Lady Fair nor the Barrow-Man is a particularly gregarious host. Those same whispers claim the two of them have upholstered their lair with the skins of any intruders they managed to capture.