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Post your favorite mythological beings/creatures/cryptids in this thread. I'll go first.

1- Fearsome critters

This covers a few different ones but I feel I can lump these together. Fearsome critter stories stared within American logging camps as a way to haze new members and as a way to explain natural phenomena (loggers going missing late at night, strange sounds in the forests, having to be drunk on the job).

Some of them are maneaters and some of them mostly harmless but all are super wacky looking.

The hugag is my favorite

https://i.rdrama.net/images/17102639356786754.webp

He's like a moose-camel-duck

2-Selkies

Selkies are creatures that can shapeshift between human and seal. Stories of this legend come mostly from Scotland, Ireland, the Faroe islands, and Iceland. A Selkie sheds their seal skin when they turn human and can only turn into a seal again with it. A lot of stories revolve around creepy moids waiting for selkies to turn into a human so that they can steal their seal skin and forcefully marry them. Real moid moment :marseyill:

https://i.rdrama.net/images/17102639359097173.webp

I like the theory that the story of Selkies started when Finnish, Sami, and eskimos :marseyeskimo: came into contact with the Scottish and they simply believed them to be a whole other species.

3- Set animal

The Ancient Egyptian God Set was identified with this guy

https://i.rdrama.net/images/17102639360412908.webp

There's not much else to say other than that they made up a whole new kind of animal.

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My favorite is the kelpie because it's an absolutely r-slurred idea for a cryptid. For those unfamiliar, it's some sort of eldritch demon horse that appears as a normal horse and tempts and entices people (usually children) to go for a ride on its back. Once they're on, it jumps into the bog and drowns the riders, who have somehow magically become stuck to it.

I never liked horses so it's a very funny image to me that someone would come across a strange horse, loose in the wild, and would ever consider a fricking pony ride on that thing. How does a horse even tempt you to ride it?

More from wikipedia

The creature's nature was described by Walter Gregor, a folklorist and one of the first members of the Folklore Society,[21] as "useful", "hurtful", or seeking "human companionship";[22] in some cases, kelpies take their victims into the water, devour them, and throw the entrails to the water's edge.[23] In its equine form the kelpie is able to extend the length of its back to carry many riders together into the depths;[24] a common theme in the tales is of several children clambering onto the creature's back while one remains on the shore. Usually a little boy, he then pets the horse but his hand sticks to its neck. In some variations the lad cuts off his fingers or hand to free himself; he survives but the other children are carried off and drowned, with only some of their entrails being found later. Such a creature said to inhabit Glen Keltney in Perthshire is considered to be a kelpie by 20th-century folklorist Katharine Mary Briggs,[5] but a similar tale also set in Perthshire has an each uisge as the culprit and omits the embellishment of the young boy.[25] The lad does cut his finger off when the event takes place in Thurso, where a water kelpie is identified as the culprit.[26] The same tale set at Sunart in the Highlands gives a specific figure of nine children lost, of whom only the innards of one are recovered. The surviving boy is again saved by cutting off his finger, and the additional information is given that he had a Bible in his pocket. Gregorson Campbell considers the creature responsible to have been a water horse rather than a kelpie, and the tale "obviously a pious fraud to keep children from wandering on Sundays"

Artist's Impression

https://i.rdrama.net/images/17102702897505229.webp

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That's not a normal looking horse 🐎

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That's the demonic form revealed after you've already been trapped. According to some myth, it otherwise appears as a normal looking horse with a black coat and mane, and no signs of anything weird except maybe having some pond weeds or a marsh-y smell on it. According to other myth, Scottish children are so r-slurred they'll ride the horse that has snakes for hair and a 12 foot long back. They just all clamber on top that thing like it's the cat bus from Totoro.

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Maybe in ye olden days riding horses was a super special thing for scottish children :marseyshrug:

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