Superstition and Warding Tales:

Warding Tales are cautionary myths passed from mouth to mouth like prayers made of smoke, stories not to entertain, but to preserve. These are the grim fairytales whispered by wet nurses, muttered over coals by dying blacksmiths, or etched into the back pages of grimoires to be read only once. They teach lessons through fear, often moral, practical, or spiritual, shaped by the teller’s culture and the listener’s danger. Children hear them to keep away from deep woods, alchemists memorize them to avoid fatal errors, and even hardened mercenaries keep them close like silent charms in hostile lands. Recurring figures, like the Lantern Man, the Thorn-Mouth Woman, or the Backwards Singer, appear in various forms across the continent, their traits shifting from one marshland to the next. In one version, a creature lures the foolish into bogs; in another, it punishes oathbreakers or those who insult the dead. But the core remains: Warding Tales are armor stitched from fable, protecting the living from repeating the mistakes of the damned. Most are only half believed. And that’s usually enough.