Phooka Mythical Options

[Wind Totem]

How about a Phooka Mythical? According to legend the Phooka can transform into a demon horse, so maybe it could do that, like the Gryff can become an eagle? Anyway, tell me what you think.
If you don't know what a Phooka is, they look something like this: http://www.furry-critters.com/phooka2.jpg :3

[Mredria]

I don't think that phoukas are different enough from avatars that we already have. I mean, it could be a dog, a horse, a rabbit... hey, we have those things!
I think they're super special, but they're not physically different enough, like kirin and dragons and gryffes.

[Justin StinCoy]

Don't listen to me. Rat explains it better.


Harvey!

Traditionally, púkas appear as sleek, black horses with luminous yellow eyes although, as shapeshifters, they can take on other forms like dogs and rabbits. They're mischievous faerie creatures who love to give unwary travelers wild and scary rides before leaving their victims frightened, but otherwise unharmed. Púkas are considered benevolent creatures and sometimes will advise and help people, especially if they show it proper respect.

Púkas are associated with the Celtic holiday Samhain (known as Halloween nowadays) and the following day, November Day (November 1), is the one day they can be expected to act civilly.


To lead back to the main topic, I'd have to agree with Mredria. A phooka avatar by itself probably wouldn't stand out enough to justify making one. However, I think this would make an excellent gimmick for a November Day Sale in the Digo Market. Buy a Ferian Equien, Wolven, and Rabben for only $XX.xx!


P.S. Thanks for the idea, Wind Totem. I've been looking for creatures like this for my stories.

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[Vilo Targas]

Maybe a super-expensive yearly-recurring digo that's normal form is a black Horse, but allows you to use any digo?

[Rat The Unloved]

Traditionally, púkas appear as sleek, black horses with luminous yellow eyes although, as shapeshifters, they can take on other forms like dogs and rabbits.

Not exactly, they're said to appear (in folklore, not modern Neopagan waffle) as knobby, deformed, horses. Black in color, with -burning- eyes. The shapeshifter aspect often suggests other forms of shadow, and movement... usually quad######al, and some suggest modern sightings of Brittish "Big black cats" are actually the Phouka.

They're mischievous faerie creatures who love to give unwary travelers wild and scary rides before leaving their victims frightened, but otherwise unharmed. Púkas are considered benevolent creatures and sometimes will advise and help people, especially if they show it proper respect.

Beyond incorrect in terms of Folklore, the Phouka is a malevolent being. It's a demon horse which, whenever possible, lures travellers onto it's back and -drowns them in the nearest body of water-. That's about as far from "unharmed" as you can get. They have never, until the modern Neopagan fairy belief revival, been considered anything but another of the very nasty, very malevolent, fair folk that it is best to avoid at all costs. Things which are not human do not hold to human morality, period. They do not see the physical realm as importantly as we do, and some of them just, flat, don't care about our wellbeing. What is a fun trick to a fairy may be deadly to a human, and they -still- find it funny while you're pushing up daisies...or kicking wind. There are long lists of fey whos entire lives center around luring humans off, killing them, and consuming them in some fashion.

Púkas are associated with the Celtic holiday Samhain (known as Halloween nowadays) and the following day, November Day (November 1), is the one day they can be expected to act civilly.

Halloween, or rather, the Fall Harvest Festival occurring at the end of October, was the last day you could hope to reap your crops before the Phouka spat on them, ruining the remainder. Attempting to harvest after that time would anger the Phouka, who had claimed the crop, and set him (or her) after your family. In addition, because the crop is thereafter "poisoned", it was thought that your entire family would die from consuming it, regardless. Probably arising from mold spores settling into the dry grain in the wetter times, leading to fungal poisoning, horriffic hallucination, and death. Point of fact, the experience of Ergot poisoning may be the entire basis for the Phouka. A plough horse looks pretty scary when you're tripping gonads on LSD.

In other words, as recent news stories have told us, Wikipedia is -crap- for accuracy. Anyone can change anything they like, and until someone fact-checks and fixes it, it spreads like a virus. Any llewellen devotee can plunk themselves down at Wikipedia, and edit articles on fey folk strait out of this month's craptastic "puppymill" style book on the topic. I suggest that if you're interested in the TRUE information on what is called "fairy faith" you research in folklore, not wiki. If you find that Wiki jives with other,folkloric and historical, sources -then- cite it.

Here's a story for ya: About nine years ago I was driving back from Scarborough faire to the place I was staying in the DFW area with friends. There were three of us in the car, myself, Hez and our mutual friend Chris.
We took a shortcut through the backwoods of Waxahatchie rather than dealing with Scarborough let-out traffic. The more we went down our "shortcut" the more we regretted it, because it had that "Texas Chainsaw Massacare" feel that you can only get in the bum-frick middle of nowhere.
About ten minutes in something looked like it was reflecting off of something in the woods. I kept thinking I was seeing the jeep in a shallow stream. Then I realized there was a horse, but... that didn't seem quite right, seeing as we were moving a bit faster than I'd expect out of a horse. I told my companions about said shadow, they agreed it was probably a reflection.

I watched it for a few more minutes and the trees tapered off to an open area. The thing bolted up out of the ditch onto the roadway. It -was- a horse, big, bulky, and black. It very solidly resembled a very arthritic Shire. I commented, offhandedly "Hey Hez... that shadow I kept seein? It's a draft horse following us... how is a draft horse following us?" Hez checks the rearview, screams, and floors it.

I look behind us again and see that the thing looks like it's eyes are literally on fire, as in flames crackling up and over the brow. Her Jeep was doing nearly 90 down this mostly-wooded back road, and the thing managed to keep up with us. At one point when we slowed for a curve it overtook the car, and bit at the side of the car.
The other friend in the car, a descendant of the MacLeods, began screaming bloody murder and shouting "It's a Phouka! It's a ****ing demon-phouka! ****ing Christ we're all dead."
My contribution to the situation was shouting "sh**" over and over while attempting to osmose myself into the front seat with Chris. Our speed starts suffering because the road is doing a lot of serpentining, and this thing is taking every oportunity to try and sideswipe us. Each swerve nearly takes us into the ditch.

We're about three minutes into our wild-ride by now, and Chris screams "STOP THE CAR". Hez, obeying out of instinct, slams the breaks and Mr. Horseything goes -through- the car. Not "moose-on-a-canadian-highway" style... but like smoke. It gallops on for a second, stops, turns, whinnies-and-rears, then takes off down an enbankment... into a good sized pond.

We make it back to our crash space, Chris is muttering like something in their brain kinda broke, mostly centering on the phrase "it's real" and "gram was right", Hez isn't speaking at all, and I'm paranoid that a giant smoke-horse is going to eat our faces off. Hez refuses to talk about the incident to this day. They'll admit something happened, and that they saw something... but that they don't want to talk about it.

What happened? I have no idea. I know what all three of us saw, and how events played out. In another time we would've been in a cultural framework to understand what transpired. We aren't. I still say a Phouka horse chased us down on a backwoods road. Other people might say all three of us managed to have the exact same hallucination at the exact same time with no apparant cause. At least, I don't think they're handing out LSD in the chicken sandwiches at Scarborough.

I really do like the idea of a Phouka Digo. One could make them have a catlike form (a sleek, lovely, but scary anthro-panther) and as an alternate form have a knobby phouka-horse. Or as something inbetween... fanged and terrifying as carnivorous deer.

[Justin StinCoy]

Well, I stand corrected (or sit as the case may be). The one time I don't check my own reference books...

Quoth Rat the Unloved:
I suggest that if you're interested in the TRUE information on what is called "fairy faith" you research in folklore, not wiki.

Any books you would recommend?

[Koolpin]

This seems like something to decide on fairly soon, before the horse ferian comes out

[Shayde]

So... a Phouka is the same as a Kelpie?

[Mredria]

As a lore creature, I would think that it's probably many different things to many different people. There's many different kinds of dragons described, good and bad, there's many sorts of kelpies, and kirins, and faeries. There's no set dogma, there's no biological pictures with organs and shapes mapped out. That's what makes them lore, and that's what makes them fun.
For the record, when I was told stories of faeries as a kid, they were presented as mischevious sorts of creatures that you should not offend or else they would do tricking things to you. This was a crafty ploy on the part of my mom and grandmother to keep me from pulling up saplings, skimming leaves off of wild flower, climbing on fences(thus ruining them) and otherwise being a terror on the ranch they ran.

[Rat The Unloved]

For the record, when I was told stories of faeries as a kid, they were presented as mischevious sorts of creatures that you should not offend or else they would do tricking things to you. This was a crafty ploy on the part of my mom and grandmother to keep me from pulling up saplings, skimming leaves off of wild flower, climbing on fences(thus ruining them) and otherwise being a terror on the ranch they ran.

The majority of fairy tales are just that, morality and kiddie-control parables. However, some metaphysicians (ain't that a word!) think that our thoughts, as a collective, can make something a little bit more real than we might like. That ghosts and monsters, nightmares and terrible beasts are given a slim foothold in our reality by the very fact that we think they're there.
In that car ride all three of us had heard of the Phouka, for example. The prevailing belief in a thing is what creates it's shape. So, the phouka is amorphous, but generally something four-legged, and generally has bright eyes, and generally does something involving fear and water. The specifics varry by region, teller, and accuracy of transmission.

I could, for example, pass on stories I was told... of wicked beings ("too small to be real demons") being puked up by a possessed man, they topped off their appearance by running down the sidewalk and melting into the cracks in the pavement after an exorcism. To my grandfather, tiny spirits (with very physical forms), invading a body of someone while they slept, or wandered too far out into the woods, was very real. By leaving out the details of the hideous exorcism, or the man's actions against his family and pets previous to it... it might sound quite cute. If I leave in those details, it does not. I could tell the MULTIPLE accounts of someone doing yard work, and suddenly valuable jewelry starts to go missing. That the jewelry only returns when someone jokingly says 'Maybe we ticked off some fairies', and formally appologizes. That story isn't mischevious, it's vengance. "You took something of mine, I'm taking something of yours."

Having authored material on vampires, fairies, mythical beasts, gods, demons and the belief and practice of magic (as in "physical copies, pick it up at Barnes and Noble"), I've also done a lot of research and listened to a lot of first-hand encounters. The effects some of these events have had on people is heart-breaking, especially when new-age books are telling them that this thing that terrorized them is really wise and beneficient, just a little mischevious. When the information is corrected, they feel a lot better. Mind you, I'm not taking this all uber-seriously... I just have a hate-on for "everything in nature is sweet and kind" idealisim/bs that's gotten spread in the last twenty years.

[Kamose]

So... a Phouka is the same as a Kelpie?

Phooka

The Phooka is a harmless Irish kobold who appears in a great diversity of animal shapes. He can be seen in the shape of a dog or horse, usually pitch-black with fiery eyes. As an apparently tame and shabby pony, the Phooka offers careless travelers a ride on its back. But as soon as the traveler mounts the horse, he is in for a hell-ride through marshes and thorn-bushes. Then suddenly, he is thrown into a ditch or mudpool and the chuckling he hears is the Phooka galloping away.

Sometimes he appears in the form of an eagle and carries people away on his back.

References used for the Phooka-article:

Elfen, De.
Froud, B. ; Lee, A.
Van Holkema & Warendorf, Bussum: 1979
ISBN: 9026948093

Kelpie

In old Scotland, the Kelpie is a treacherous water devil who lurks in lakes and rivers. It usually assumes the shape of a young horse. When a tired traveler stops by a lake to rest or to have a drink, he would see a horse, apparently peacefully grazing. When he mounts the horse, the Kelpie dives into the water and drowns its victim. Occasionally it has helped millers by keeping the mill-wheel going at night.

References used for the Kelpie-article:

Brewer's Book of Myth and Legend.
Cooper, J.J. (editor)
Helicon Publishing, Oxford: 1993
ISBN: 0304340847

[Rat The Unloved]

Then the source material I'm dealing with may've been a conflagration of the two myths, possibly regional. I stand semi-corrected, but also stand by the information as I received it.