White Maned Moonfolk

Several Juru horror stories Undying revolve around the myth of the White Maned Moonfolk that lives on the Capensis moon. These fictional demons are said to be accountable for the immortality of the Undying due to a broken promise that the Juru had given.

1. Attributes

The depiction of the Maned vary from story to story and from narrator to narrator. Some stories say that they descended from the Impatient Peaks, others depict them as moonfolk from the beginning. However, some attributes are more or less paralleled in every narration:

• There are eight of them, just as many as there are mountains and valleys in the Impatient Peaks mountain range.
• The Maned envy the living. They are as dead as rock, therefore they long to devour that which has being.
• Their incorporeal bodies can not be seen nor touched. Those beings are named after the only visible parts of their bodies, namely their long, white hair.

2. Origin Story

The story says that the Undying were normal humans once, with families and graveyards like any other folk. But one night, right before the seasonal Wave, something sinister descended from the cold Impatient Peaks, something so greedy and eager for life that it made the trees nearby convulse in agony.
Incorporeal demons, invisible to the blank eye in spite of their long, maned hair, pressed ahead from the heights and overran the whole country within hours. The people heard nothing but fast and hollow steps, rushing through their houses like gusting winds. No one could grasp what happened, until it was too late: Those bodiless manifestations of the Impatient Peaks had killed every single newborn in Perah(Teel) over night, carefully picking the youngest child from every family. Their grief-stricken relatives had no time to mourn, because one Wave later, the incorporate White Manes returned and again, they took the lives of the youngest.
The disastrous attacks recurred again and again, always costing the lives of the youngest. A desperate gunsmith from the north could not stand the thought of losing his children, who could have been the next victims as measured by their size. So he came up with a plan: He forged two iron statues of his children, resembling them in every detail, and other families did the same. The statues were heat up in the fire one night before the Capensis Wave appeared and the dark moon was already in view.
When the White Manes came from the mountains during the night, they stepped over these deliciously looking, warm children in their beds. Greedy, hasty, they devoured the offspring, only to realize that they got trapped. The heavy, pain-inflicting iron statues in their stomachs left them unable to move or to harm anybody. Some Teeleans believe that this was the day when the Juru had defeated death and became immortal, for the Manes swore to let them live eternally if they were allowed to go. The Juru agreed and eventually made their unbodied prisoners promise to leave the country and never come back, just to throw them into the flood when the Capensis moon sank beyond the horizon that night.
Many Juru horror stories revolve around the return of the White Manes from their lunar refuge, presuming that their revenge for the deal break could be even worse than the original attacks. They believe that the White Manes were manifestations of the mountains themselves – several typical northern rituals are geared towards the appeasement of the Impatient Peaks to prevent them from striving after the quick and living ever again.