I thought it be fun to share stories of various mythological/fantasy monsters.

Submitted for approval of the midnight society...The Tale of the False Hydra *throws a handful of sugar on the campfire*


TL:DW; the false hydra is a monstrous abomination (not a true hydra like yours truly, hence its name) that stalks a city, preying on people.  Why don't people run in panic or destroy it?  In between meals, it sings a song that causes everyone to no longer be able to perceive it, forget any memories of it, and forget any of its victims.

It could be right in front of you and you'd never know it except when it eats someone right in front of you.  In that instant, you're aware for the first time (or maybe not the first time) of its presence.  But before you can do much, the false hydra resumes singing and you're right back to cluelessness.  Wives forget husbands, kids forget their parents and siblings, etc.

This disguise isn't foolproof - maybe a deaf citizen knows what's up but has had to play along lest he/she be eaten too, maybe the town artificer has invented a wondrous new machine that takes pictures and used it in the town square and had a hell of a revelation in the dark room, maybe an unusually perceptive person figured out that things weren't quite adding up (how come we have a church but no priest?), maybe someone wrote down some horrible nightmare that they were having and mailed it to a friend in another town who asked the adventures to check up on him, maybe a cleric communed with her goddess and the goddess commanded her to leave the city and thus the sway of the false hydra, etc.

At any rate, the false hydra will feed and grow until the city is almost totally depleted.  That's when it sheds its disguise and sings its song of domination - controlling the minds of nearly everyone within miles, creating its own army which captures or kills any who resist and follow it to the next city.  Rinse and repeat.  Left alone, the false hydra will consume whole empires, perhaps even all intelligent life on the planet.

How did such a creature come to exist?  My theory is that person of great magical talent, embittered by a city's lies and deceit, cast a magical curse to cause such false talk to eventually coalesce into a monster within the earth underneath their feet.  Whoever did it must have been extraordinarily vengeful and cruel, and this is probably not their only creation...