Talking Mythology: Little People

Humans have loads of myths and legends of supernatural otherworldly beings; we called them fairies, elves, goblins, djinn, and even more names than I care to mention. Do other races have legends like theses?

Amused: Little people? We have many such tales. Elcor speak of small, quick-footed creatures, incomprehensible beings who scuttle forth on two skinny legs. Some are soft and fleshy, others hard and inflexible; all are strange beyond measure.

As though in confidence: My countrymen speak of their oddities in hushed tones, low mumbles of shock and speculation. Disbelief: Barely any sense of smell; broad and unsteady in their mannerisms. They move quickly; one moment they are there, the next they are gone.

Hushed significance: As if by some dark magic.

Lofty tones: Their language, if language it is, is a rapid, high-pitched trilling, or gasping, growling static. They also have terrible taste in music.

Primly: I refuse to believe in them, myself. Such unlikely and ridiculous beings must be imaginary.

I'm not sure if you are joking around or...mmm...you're joking around, aren't you?

If he were joking around he would have said 'jokingly' before his statements. Don't you know? They have to, actually. It's part of their laws.

My mistake. It's just that what SlowAndSteady described sounded familiar.

Back on topic...I read in Hanar mythology about a supernatural beings that dwell in deepest depth of the ocean that covers Kahje. I think scholars are saying that these beings were once deities of a prehistoric Hanar animistic religion that was replaced by the worship of the Enkindlers. This reminds me of certain myths from Earth. I know the thread is titled "Little People," but I also read about interesting legends of giants in Turian folklore.

And I reading these right?

Do Quarian and Krogans and other races have legends of these kinds of mythical beings too?

When I was very young my gran would tell me stories of little creatures that would steal my teeth if I misbehaved.

Really freaked me out when I lost a tooth.

Krogan don't really need to make up creatures

I mean, have you ever been on Tuchanka? Everything we could make up is already there.

It is sorry to correct you, but there is no such thing as a 'prehistoric hanar' - our written history is as old as our intelligence. But there were those 'cursed' in the early days of the Old Primacy for the ridiculous notion that the Enkindlers did not exist. Cast out from the light, into the crushing depths.

There they were changed into countless forms. Not all of them lost their intelligence, and were reported to have climbed up from the depths to attack outlying settlements. However, this was more likely to be some sort of animal.

These days, the creatures of the Dark And Murky Waters are most likely to be used against children, a warning for them not to swim too deep on their own. Or go anywhere on their own - "Creatures foul lurk beyond the swarm."

Come now Urdnot, you make us seem all to be such dullards. Did you never have the Old Stories when you were a whelping? The Epic Cycles and the Champions and the Races of Demonkind?

And here I thought you southerners prided yourselves on culture.

To the author of this fine thread I fear you may have asked for more than as was intended. The canon of many northern traditions (Clan Glas included) is a many tongued, sprawling thing. Tales of heroes and villains, battles and weddings, feasts and lovemaking (many of the aforementioned concurrent in their appearance in any given recitation). Though I must say above all else we do love our monsters. The Elder Serpent Angra Bozahk; He-of-Ten-Thousand-Jaws and with an appetite to swallow the world. The Performers of Adan; minstrels and jesters, bards and skalds, troubadours and trobairitzes with masks of bone and shadows 'neath their robes who would help and hinder champions and villains as they saw fit. When asked from whence they came they would always reply "Adan"; the west, the land of the setting sun and growing night.

My personal love was the Fomóairath; The Storm-Dwellers who lived beneath the ashen waves of the Luathwaters. They were said to dance underneath the hurricanes and winter typhoons, shepherding an army of monsters and deep dwellers to attack their enemies.

Amazing! Your people have a very rich and truely unique lore.

These are interesting stories. I know next to nothing about human mythology so far, an area I might want to do some reading.

I think the most commonly known (and most misunderstood, thank you, glactic media!) mythological asari figure is the Ardat Yakshi, not to be confused a rare medical condition that shares the same name.
The mythical Demons of the Nightwinds are creatures that come and take your soul at night. There are many variations of tales, sometimes they appear bodyless, like the wind itself, sometimes they come in the form of begging maidens or in the form of long missed lovers, to be let into a house in good faith and do their abominable deed there. Their stories come in wide variety.

But there are other more amiable people out there, populating the woods like the Woyadee. They live under roots of large trees and help the lost ones find the right way again. Or intentionally lead you to your doom if you are nasty to them or their tree.

Another quite popular mythical figure is the Nemyx, a water dwelling creature, found in wells and obviously it has ocean dwelling sisters too, depending which republic the particular tale comes from. Nemyx are a folk with great biotic abilities and amazing singing voices. They have asaroid bodies, but with fins instead of arms and legs and bioluminescent skin of varying color. Therefore they be seen and heard in the depths of the ocean or other deep waters. In a particularly interesting tale they are said to have shared wisdom with the mythical Goddess Athame even before she gave the asari the gift of speech. seeing or hearing one is considered a sign of luck.

Shush human, you will frighten the other aliens with such talk.

Well, I will admit no one told me about that.

Probably has something to do with me leaving tuchanka before anyone I ever asked.

We've got the daevas, which are like smaller cousins of the great Spirits. Basically they're energy beings who inhabit the land and nature - field daevas, tree daevas, crop daevas, etc. Some are powerful enough to fill a forest; others may inhabit a single tree.

Incidentally if you ever want to see a Hierarchy Turian flip out on someone about religion, just try to explain about the daevas and watch 'em start yellin' that the Spirits are abstract ideals.

Interesting. So your people always had a strong animistic tradition. If I remember correctly, Turians once worshiped Titans, and they still have plenty of myriad legends of giants and ogres of all sorts.

Back home - I mean Attena, not all of Thessia - we've got a kind of folklore creature that I believe is all our own, albeit based on/influenced by the Nemyx Lady T'Veda spoke of; there's really no way of knowing which story started where or got associated with what, you know how ancient folklore goes. Anyway though, ours are called Rivergirls - they still have the associations of wisdom (and good luck, of course) of the more widespread tales, but they're strongly imbued with what I suppose I'd call a kind of childish impishness, mischief almost, although always with friendly intent. They're like miniature asari, invisible most of the time, but they love to bathe in the sunlight that reflects from the top of the water, and it's said that if fortune favours you and you watch the water at the right time, you'll see the reflected light move on its own, quite independent of the water. They're fond of children to whom they appear most often, and they're said to ward off misfortune from any child swimming. For an adult to see one is regarded as a sign she still sees with the eyes of a child.

(That's a good thing - a part of a lot of the folklore I grew up with, that of the Rivergirls included, is that nobody should ever consider themselves so 'grown up' that they forget even the wisest of us are young women in an old cosmos.)

I got to ask, which Aradt Yashi came first? The myth or the condition? Because, I'm ashamed to say, some humans took to calling asari with the condition "space vampires," after the undead creature that rise from the grave the night to drink the blood of the living.

Ardat-Yakshi.
Hm, given that the condition in it's various degrees of severity is as old as the asari, it seeped in many myths. Before it was understood in a medical sense it must have been just something supernatural for our ancisters. They added shapeshifting and disembodiment as attributes and put the entities outside asari society in their tales. Unfortunately this is how the name mostly gets transported by the media, through exaggeration and sensationalism. They do also not drink any blood, an analogy that sounds pretty awkward to me. But maybe we should not derail this into a medical discussion about an unfortunate condition. This is more about myths after all.

Out of curiosity, where does this Vampire you mention originate from?

While there are plenty of bloodsucking monsters from around the Earth, the most recognized image of the vampires came from the eastern parts of the European subcontinent. Vampires used to be monstrous corpses who would rise from the grave at night to prey on the living. but after publishing of various vampire novels in the 19th century, such as The Vampyre, Carmilla and, most famous of all, Dracula, this bloodsucking undead creature came to be viewed by popular culture as alluring and seductive and, eventually, sexual. Though personally, I don't understand the connection between sex and drinking blood though biting a person's neck with fangs. I also think there are a form of hopping hopping vampire in east-asian mythology that consumes the life-force of it's victims.

Quarians have the Dejids for one. Small, annoying people (I assume humans would call them fairies) that were supposed to sneak into homes and start drinking any and all water they could find. Water and shade is very important in ancient quarian culture (our homeworld having a lot less of both compared to a world like Earth) so you can see why this is significant. If you were traveling on ancient Rannoch and some creature snuck into your camp and stole your water reserves you would not last long.