Billy the Goat

"We learned much from the experiment on Hersey, and hopefully we will be able to avoid the mistakes made there when creating our own small god for the library. Since the team has returned, there have been several small tremors on the island that conicide with the high tide - we may want to make a contingency plan for the possiblity of the entire island being sailed away at some point." - Report on the Hersey project, filed by the Lorekeeepers of Foxbridge

There are many spirits native to the island of Hersey, both of the Ellyll and the Vættir, but the most interesting is the story of Billy the Goat, one of the Godcrafted. Before the Lorekeepers of Foxbridge attempted to craft their personal god (the Librarian of Foxbridge), they made a trial run of the Godcrafter techniques on Hersey. They seeded stories about a god for Bheinn Gaoda, the highest mountain on the island. The name they gave to this god was Belegra, and they sought to identify him with wisdom, healing, and the protection of sailors. However, they failed to take into account the local dialect and accent when they chose the name, and while they successfully planted the seeds for the god, it did not turn out as they had hoped.

What the Lorekeepers didn't realize was that the name would sound a lot like 'Billy-grar' in the local dialect - which roughly meant 'Gray Goat'. Additionally, goat was used as a slang term for drunkard. Their stories drifted wildly from their original meanings once they encountered the local populace, a trend which accelerated rapidly when a local bard was inspired to write a song about the drunken goat-sailor god who mistook a variety of things for his ship and attempted to sail them on the tide, ultimately concluding with trying to sail the entire island of Hersey, calling Gaoda Bheinn his mast. Ultimately, while the Lorekeepers did summon a god into being from The Dream, it was far from the healing god of wisdom they intended. As the song proliferated, sightings of a drunken giant goat-man also proliferated, and many locals started to pour out a cup for 'Old Billy the Goat' and tell jokes about his attempts to sail away on anything and everything.

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This article is a stub, and will eventually be updated with more complete information. Let me know in the comments if you would like me to prioritize it!

This article was originally written for Spooktober 2024. You can find all of my Spooktober Articles at Spooktober Central.
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This article was originally written for Spooktober 2023. You can find all of my Spooktober Articles at Spooktober Central.
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