Update and Monsters

UPDATE

The STORE is now open again with all the postage costs updated. E.U. postage has had customs charges added on my side.

Now for some GooseWorld monsters, or as I have taken to calling them; Dangerous Strangers

XANTHIC MEN

Xanthic Men are a seasonal danger, appearing in Spring and remaining until around Autumn.

They grow near hedgerows, up in distant copses, on the borders of things, always hidden away. If a farmer sees Xanthic Men growing they will tear them up by the root of course, not that it does much permanent good, they just re-grow next year. The Xanthic men grow in comforting spots, sheltered places where one might rest or hide away.

They come it two sorts, the Herbaceous Man and the Ambling Man.

The first sort are Herbacious and thankfully they rarely walk, and if they do, they do not get far, having no bones and little remaining memory of the act.

Imagine them as huge woven-together piles of Dandelions, growing and crawling around each other like vines till they form the shape of a man, with flowers at his fingers and roots at his toes. There the Herbaceous Xanthic men murmur quietly to each other, slowly releasing seeds and pollen into the wind, beckoning to anyone who passes by.

The pollen of the Herbacious men is soporific, it makes one woozy and sleepy. As well as this, the Xanthic men gesture and murmur half-words and reassuring noises. 

Here lies the greatest danger, that a lonely or desperate traveller, or one ignorant of their ways, accepts their gestures and beds down with the Xanthic men, lying in their comfortable bower, surrounded by their nodding heads. When this happens, in the night the seeds of the Xanthic men drift down down down into the sleeping mouth and open nose.

Thence is born and Ambling Xanthic Man. 

Such a person starts out largely normal. Their veins are replaced by dandelion stems and they grow flowers at their fingertips and roots at their toes, but otherwise they can get about well enough. They also no longer need to eat, drinking sustenance from the earth.

The first horror of the Ambling Xanthic Man is not in what they do, but in what they will not do, which is; anything.

A Xanthic man will slowly but steadily seek to do nothing at all. They will just hang around, maybe on street corners, or at the bottom of the garden, or behind a wall. Sleepy, slow, deeply resentful of anyone the find doing more than them, which is everyone, and eager for recruits.

All Ambling Xanthic Men think everyone would be better off if they just become Xanthic Men, its more natural or whatever, and why work and torture yourself, and the earth, if you can just become a peaceful, enlightened Xanthic Man? 

If anyone foolish or weak-minded agrees with them, they can convert them to their cause by feeding them seeds, creating another Ambling Xanthic man who will hang around doing nothing, staring at people passing by and reluctantly, slowly, moving on if someone throws sticks at them.

They don't directly harm people, or force them to do anything, they just lie around staining the grass and resenting everyone. They talk to each other, but as they come to share a kind of loose hive mind, all they are doing is passing back and forth the same repetitive thoughts they had yesterday, repeating old arguments or dull stories. Xanthic men can't really come up with anything new, or think any new thoughts, though they believe that they are pretty wise and deep beings.

They just want you to relax, but if you do, you won't be able to stop relaxing, ever.

They do sometimes cause accidents, getting jammed in large machines or going under the wheels of carriages, their caustic sappy interiors crushed like wet dandelions, spraying trickly alkali-tasting sap everywhere. 

The Ambling Xanthic men seem to take this in their stride, not really accepting responsibility for anything, but not really being angry, or even shocked if one of them dies. Even deeply wounded ones will simply say that  "this sucks" and stagger off with the rest. They can't really feel deep hate, or desire, or anything to any strong degree. It is like they are half-asleep, but still wandering around.

When the end of summer comes and the winds of Autumn touch the air, all the Xanthic men begin to moan and clutch their heads. By this point their skulls are just as slender as leaves which open out revealing dandelion-seed brains while their toe-roots stick them to the earth.

As the wind comes the mind of the moaning Xanthic man is blown away on the breeze, whirling away to a thousand different places. The body left behind turns dry, collapses and rots into the ground like mulch. 

You would hardly know it had been there.

A few seeds will reach the safe and sleepy places where the Xanthic men prefer to grow, and next spring a new crop of Herbaceous Men will grow forth, muttering to each other in half-familiar voices of half-forgotten memories of the men they used to be, waving their flower-tipped fingers and releasing soporific pollen on the wind.

CONSPICIOUS SQUIRRALS

(Thanks to K Yani who invented this phrase in the comments)

Squirrel-People about three-feet high, Conspicuous Squirrels always look as if they are up to something.

They are.

Not many people know this but the favourite food of the Conspicuous Squirrel is human babies, they steal them in the night, carry them off to the tops of large trees and eat them alive.

They are always carrying out EXTREMELY SUSPICIOUS actions, like leaping out upon you from behind a bush, Carrying expensive goods out of a shop in the night while wearing striped shirts, digging holes near the bank

eyeing you through the window, climbing walls. Their hands are always moving and their black eyes always shifting and darting, through you never really know where they are looking. Their bushy tails, almost the size of their bodies, twitching and shifting in a fractured mirror to their movement.

If you complain about these things the Conspicuous Squirrels always reveal that they had a PERFECTLY INNOCENT reason for going into the bank with a mask, a sack and a gun, or meeting that unmarked truck in the middle of the night or whatever it was and they are shocked, SHOCKED that you would think there was anything SUSPICIOUS about it! Such prejudice we deal with!

Then they go back to their plans to steal and eat babies.

Furtive, creeping, juddering leaping creatures, dashing for the door then coming back, neither doing one thing or the other, but back and forth always, in and out, up and down. Glancing side-on (though to be fair with them they look at everything side on), eating secretly things held cupped in their hands... hiding what it is.

TRASH GOBLINS

Invaders from the Trash Dimension, the Trash Goblins are the disembodied spirits of mischief, banished from the GooseWorld by the GooseGod for their rubbish schemes. But, if the signs be right, they can emerge, formless, into our reality and take form from Trash, if enough trash is left available.

They come forth from out of the bin, bodies made of cans and newspaper with eggshells for eyes, dripping bin juice everywhere. Yes, they are held together by mould and dirty napkins, their guts are uneaten leftovers, their main enemy is hungry dogs. They cough dust, some are made of old rug with tongues of congealed porridge and string-bean toes "bleeghhhh". Birds may live in them, are twigs trash? sure, why not?. They have deep rasping voices and try to cook breakfast in the night. They get into the hard liqor and soak themselves in it, becoming drunk and aggressive, stinking of booze, stumbling into lanterns and fires, screaming and dying, racing around, "I'M BURNING! I'M BUUUUUURRRRRNNNNINNGGG AAAAAAAA", setting everything they touch on fire. This does kill, or banish them though, so that's a plus.

The first thing Trash Goblins will do is make more trash so more Goblins can come through from the Trash dimension, so YOU BETTER NOT HAVE LEFT A LOT OF TRASH LYING ABOUT. The more of a mess there is, the more goblins you will get.

What do the Trash Goblins really want?

To open a portal to the Bin Dimension, and make everything trash, emptying the GooseWorld into a universe of crap. 

The seas will be of plastic bags, the mountains of out of date ready meals, the rivers will be of broken bottles. For when all is trash, nothing shall be!!!