The Carronoch

What is the Carronoch? I wish I could tell you with a firmness in my mind that I knew the answer, but alas, I cannot. We have all heard the famous poem by Frywold Sede, told to us when we are just children to scare us from going out into the moors alone.

      “Do not speak to me of the Carronoch,

For in Dunneland hill and Dunneland vale

There walks a beast from darkest dream,

With eyes of gold and skin so pale.

Feathered black, his talons crack

He soars above or creeps beneath.

Wings of night with teeth so bright,

He’ll drag you down into his heath.

Traveller beware, for he is there.

Look twice over shoulder and then twice more.

You will not see him, you never will,

Until you hear his deathly caw.

Do not speak to me of the Carronoch, 

A creature born in Dunneland vale

Who one should never hope to meet.

Heed my warning, hear my tale.”

 - ’The Carronoch’  by Frywold Sede

But how much of this is truth and how much is flowery, exaggerated verse? There have been other fragments here and there, across the Wester Lands. Old scrolls and yellowing parchment, sometimes decorated with crude etches of a nightmare creature: tall, feathered and black. There are others that read that it can change from his humanoid form to a crow and then back again at will.

There is no proof that the Carronoch exists, but there is also no proof that it does not, and that scares me more than anything. There have been many sightings over the years, but no one can be sure if it is just the imagination of the drunk or the crazy or something much more. In an old Forktown watchman's log from the early fifth age, there was written a siting, where the man describes it as "storming across the hills like a shadow to feast on an unfortunate traveller". There is little more after this as the pages have been torn out.

However, recently, there has been little written about the Carronoch. Has this creature disappeared forever? Did it even exist in the first place? Will it return to haunt the moors again? We can only wonder.

~ Oskar Arulis, Foreword to his book 'Creatures of the Night'