Invaders from Russia and the East are targeting our forests, but they’re not bomb-throwing Reds: they’re the Leshi. Yes, the Nymphs and Hamadryads of storybook and legend are real and they’re invading woodlands all across the country, from the peaks of the Blue Ridge and the Smokies to the Ozarks; even the shade trees on your pastures. And each of them poses a grave danger to our nation’s thriving agriculture.
Don’t be lulled by any ‘wait-and-see’ moonshine. These are the same devils that have menaced the Czar’s lands since 1925, and they’ll do the same here if we let them. Leshies destroy tractors, sabotage orchards, mills and dams, and murder lumberjacks with brute attacks. They represent the single greatest threat to the modernization of our farms and lumber industry.
Are you taken by the pretty face of one of these ‘green ladies?’ Don’t be! Fair features hide a malicious heart. Wood nymphs have taken children and destroyed marriages!
If you bag a Dryad, or even suspect one, report it to your sheriff or Justice the Peace right away. They’ll get in touch with B.A.R.D. and we’ll assess the infestation. The C.S. government offers a bounty of $3 per head and your local authorities may offer more.
Remember: we’re relying on YOU to defeat the Invader!
-Pamphlet from the Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Development, Confederate States of America, circa Summer 1941
This wood nymph is from one of the early Reaper Bones lines, probably the first Kickstarter. It’s a cool looking miniature, but the soft pliable plastic leaves a lot to be desired after painting. Details are too soft and, in troublesome places like the hair and face, jumbled. It was a guessing game to paint her eyebrows and even after all kinds of blending and lacquering I can’t get her to stop looking like plastic. Ah well. Hopefully the base makes up for it.
Another useful general purpose miniature that would be at home on an ancients or medieval fantasy battlefield, a Silver Bayonet or A War Transformed table, I have incorporated the idea into my Weird War at the Earth’s Core alternate history.
The Leshy infestation may have begun as part of the general revival of High Strangeness in Eastern Europe after the Great War, but by the late ‘30s and ‘40s, nymphs and woodland elementals have begun appearing in North America, too. Were they imported or are they just manifesting on their own? No one knows for certain, but they do pose distinct dangers to the modern way of life, not to mention Southron familial stability. Imagine an overworked sharecropper spying one of these nubile babes springing out of the mulberry bush, casting her come-hither eyes at him. The little lady back at home isn’t going to like that!
Like most elementals, they begin to change the land in ways that are not always desirable, although the sudden burst of fecundity that presages their emergence has inspired some farmers and orchard-keepers to offer them protection and untended strips of land, commonly called ‘the devil’s croft’, in exchange for improved crop yields. This is a fool’s bargain, however, as the fey are notoriously fickle and never stick to contracts. Fruit-bearing trees are soon choked with vines and plowed fields overgrown with preternaturally fast growing brush and wildflowers. The mere presence of fey makes modern farming a difficult proposition, as they ‘jinx’ complicated machinery, like internal combustion engines on tractors and irrigation pumps. As a result, it is a crime to knowingly harbor fey in most places.
Although the huge, burly male Leshy can be tough to put down fey, like most other supernatural creatures, are not particularly durable against modern weaponry. The problem is that killing them is a temporary solution. As soulless beings, they reincarnate, and usually in the same place. A nymph killed in the Spring will be back next year, if not by midsummer, and she will come back more wily and destructive. The only permanent solutions are to eradicate their source vegetation (a difficult proposition at best, unless you have a good dowser or a psychic on hand) or to turn them human.
There are two known ways to transform a nymph into a demi-human. The more fun, albeit more perilous way, is marriage — which is a nice way of saying impregnation. A nymph that mates with a human inevitably becomes one herself, though they are always a little bit strange, psychologically speaking. The quicker and more tasteful option is Christian Baptism, although this requires that the creature be willing, and really, have you ever tried arguing with a fairy? In any event, Leshy captured in the CSA are, by law, offered baptism in lieu of relocation or extermination.
Orion