Forswelgan

One of the folktales of the world is that small children are taken by evil spirits known as the Forswelgan. They take unwanted children, orphans or those whom parents no longer care for and enter their bodies. Slowly a Forswelgan then devours the child’s soul leaving it a husk. The Forswelgan then uses the human body as its own for a while until the child’s body slowly decays.

The Forswelgan are said to have nests in the sewers of cities, or in swamps out in marshlands. They will gather in the hundreds. So there will be hundreds of slowly decaying bodies gathered together. These children do not blink and their eyes do not appear to have any life in them. The Forswelgan do not speak in an audible language but instead communicate through pheromones.

It is said that the Forswelgan do not always devour the entirety of a child’s soul and that the decaying husk of a body can sometimes be heard murmuring to itself. Often it will call out for parents or loved ones. These ones are especially dangerous as they will go back to their homes, or as orphans, where they feel the safest, thus leading the Forswelgan to more hunting grounds.

A Forswelgan is hard, if not impossible to detect. The reason for this is because only adults that love the child are able to see it. This is why the Forswelgan do not go after children that are wanted or cared for. However, for those adults that do love the child and want to save it they must sacrifice themselves and become the host of the Forswelgan. A Forswelgan cannot survive in the body of an adult as the soul is not as pure. They will devour the soul of the adult but it will not contain any sustenance for it and it will essentially starve to death. For a Forswelgan to survive entering an adult the adult must willingly give it another child that it loves.

After the Forswelgan dies in the adult host the person is often seen going into the sewers or deep into the marshlands. Some say that the adult themselves becomes a Forswelgan trying to sustain what being they have left by consuming the souls of the pure.