Splitting Headache: The Meandering of the Monstrous Guardian Umfula; Or, Where There’s a Will-O’-Wisp, There’s a Way; Or, Five Heads Are Better Than One; Or, Formerly Standing at Death’s Door
Rising from the sodden muck of the fog-veiled Anrel Swamp is a gaping cave mouth said to lead to the personal underworld of the death-god, Neophron. Until recently, Neophron had stationed a monster in front of the cave to keep robbers, adventurers, and malcontents from either trying to deprive the realm of its vast riches, or make off with the meager supply of souls Neophron received. This was until
recently, however, as the hydra Umfula seems to have disappeared from the face of the world.
Umfula was created to be the ideal guardian to Neophron’s realm. Hydras are known for their regenerative abilities, and Umfula is no different. For every head Umfula loses, two more grow in its place, making her a more fearsome opponent for every defeat she suffers. Even if an intruder manages to remove one of her heads, the hydra’s toxic blood is lethal at the barest touch. Neophron also was certain to make Umfula immune to the usual hydra weaknesses of crushing rocks and cauterized wounds. There are no tall rocky cliffs in Anrel swamp, and lighting a torch isn’t possible thanks to the humid air, but it never hurts to be prepared.
Yes, Umfula was the perfect defense for the doorway to the underworld. So what exactly happened that caused her to go missing?
The truth is that it was Umfula’s own incredible hydra abilities that led to her going missing. For all his forward thinking, Neophron had failed to foresee that, while Umfula was very resilient, she was also very
easily distracted. Umfula was originally instilled with an unwavering loyalty to the death-god’s realm, but became more and more unfocused with each subsequent defeat; each new head to spring up left the creature with less ability to remain stoically fixed to its place before the cave mouth. The hydra would become enamored by a colorful patch of marshland flora, or chase some wading animal halfway across the swamp. It was never too much of a problem, at first. Umfula rarely strayed from her post, and no one trying to access the underworld ever survived long enough to exploit her poor attention span.
Unfortunately, some beings care more about pulling pranks than they do actually breaching death’s door. The members of the fairy courts, with hearts full of mischief, laid a trap for Neophron’s champion by lighting the Anrel Swamp with a path of will-o’-the-wisps. The hydra Umfula was so transfixed by the fairy lights that she followed them through the swamp, snapping at them in an effort to catch one. Each time she tried, though, the wisp would disappear, forcing Umfula to travel further along the luminous path to try and catch the next one. The monster didn’t realize that the fairies lured her over one of their infamous mushroom rings. Once in place, the hydra was whisked away to another world, away from her station in the swamp and unable to be retrieved by her grim master.
The hydra Umfula now wanders each world trying to find her way back home...when she isn’t getting one of her heads stuck in a hollow log or something. The fairies occasionally light a new path to move her to some new world. Someday they might send Umfula back home, but not until they’ve had their fill of fun watching her get into trouble.
Curiosity Stranded the Hydra; Or, Quintuple Vision; Or, Hydra and Go Seek; Or, Additional Information
The hydra Umfula was formed from the underworld’s shadows by Neophron’s own hand. Despite this, she certainly emits a lot of light. Filtering out from the spaces between her dark scales is a fel purple glow. This same inner light is emitted from the hydra’s eyes as well, to the point that they appear totally featureless from far away.
If one were unfortunate enough to be swallowed whole and alive by the hydra Umfula, one would discover that her insides display the same brightness noted above. The entirety of her esophageal tract(s) and her stomach walls give off an intense purple light. Some think that the light is produced by the souls of those she has swallowed in the past, that her master allows her to claim each victim instead of taking them for himself.
Hopefully no one out there in the multiverse is snapped up by the beast. That would be just
ghastly, wouldn’t it?
The hydra Umfula comes from a world known as Lathyrus. On Lathyrus, each god is capable of creating and maintaining their own personal afterlife for their devoted worshipers to enjoy when they die. The reason Umfula was created was in large part due to the fact that Neophron, as the god of death, has a really hard time gaining a followership. He’s the god of death, burials, and decay, yet he isn’t allowed to claim any of Lathyrus’s honored dead unless they’ve pledged their devotion to him, and no one really wants to do that when there are more attractive options. Why commit your life to
death when you can give praise to the god of the sky, fertility, or the hunt? The few souls Neophron
does receive are precious to him, so he created Umfula to make certain that no one gets them back.
Since Umfula’s disappearance, the death-god Neophron has taken the liberty of simply collapsing the cave mouth at the entrance to his underworld. It’s not as if
he needed it to enter and exit his realm; he’s a
god.
The Hither and Thither Expanded; Or, Drawing Back the Curtain!
Umfula is the alternate universe analogue of the magi-scientific automaton, Danielle. She is not her former life, her “blood” relative, or a close acquaintance. She's the Obrove if Obrove were an underworld guardian tricked into aimlessly wandering the multiverse, while
the machine is Obrove in the form of a fully sentient mechanical construct born from a marriage of past sorcery and future technobabble.
More Obroves can be found on their alt list,
here.
There are more "Danalogues" to come, eventually, so we kindly ask that you...
STAY TUNED!