World: Alfheim
Diet: Decaying plant and animal matter, fungus
Height: 11’3″
Lifespan: 300 years
Habitat: All forms of forest, swamp,
Activity Cycle: Does not sleep
Even in Alfheim, where many folk live comfortably in the woods, there are places most species know not to tread. To their children, they whisper “do not go to that dark place, or the danu will take you away”. These are not idle threats. Most comfortable in the dank and dark, danu prefer heavy canopies and deep undergrowth to scavenge in. There, they mostly live inoffensive, solitary lives, not going out of their way to interact with those around them until they hear the cries of a lost child in their territory.
In their churning innards made to write nutrients from poisonously rotten plants and animals, a danu also prepares a form of thick, syrupy milk that it eagerly feeds any child it encounters with. Even those initially frightened by its monstrous appearance enjoy the liquid’s exceptional taste and mild high it brings, and soon children accept their new mother. Children under a danu’s care grow up quicker and larger than ordinary children, but their minds dull and they become dangerous, feral creatures of the night, with atrophied eyes and horns growing at random from their skulls. And always, they remain loyal to their mother. One in a dozen individuals mutates beyond this base and is buried in a mound of rotting vegetation, emerging a year later as a new danu.
A danu cares deeply for its charges, and makes for a fearsome defender. Mostly plant matter, they are remarkably difficult to injure. Their claws can pierce chain mail, and their strength is outrageous even for their size. Their horns are solid as stone, and their deep bellow can twist the stone of the earth into similar horns that pierce and entangle, erupting from the earth itself. Danu are infinitely kind and patient with children, but instinctually hostile to adults to all species.
Despite this, some tribes of satyr have managed to create a bizarre relationship with individual danu, drinking only selectively from their mother-wife. Tribe becomes family and family and family becomes cult, creating something more dangerous than any danu could be on her own. The dark mothers of Alfheim may not speak, but their will is known throughout the darkest forests nonetheless. Blessed be their children, and woe to all others.
