The Dry Man
A legend has started to circulate around the salt mines of Salzburg, and in the city itself. It seems related to the disappearance of a miner after a cave-in in a section of the mine. What they found disturbed them.
When clearing out a section to open it up further for mining of the salt, some of the miners fell through into a small strange cavern. On parts of the walls, floor & ceiling were strands of what looked like dried out creeping vines. Each of them were dried out and what remained of leaves seemed to be shrunk & puckered up like suckers. The miners that fell through disturbed these and those that came in contact, noticed the sucker-leaves started to try to attach to them.
A couple of miners stayed there to keep it from being entered. One had fallen in and had noticed that there was no way that any type of plant or animal could have entered or exited the cavern at any stage before it being broken open. The other though, didn't believe that it could have been cut off at all, and so he entered it while waiting for the authorities to arrive.
Looking around and trying the crumbling dried out plant material a sucker-leaf touched the skin of his left wrist. It stuck to his skin and started to plump up from the moisture of his skin. Trying to get it off couldn't be done, and even using the salt wouldn't remove it. Not knowing what to do he hid it from his colleague looking to deal with it later.
When the authorities arrived, they gave the order to burn the cavern, and to seal it back off getting them to mark it as dangerous. They never noticed the miner with the sucker-leaf and went away.
The miner went home and had started to feel ill. Living alone as a young man who moved to the area for work, he wasn't well enough known to attract enough attention and the city had its problems. After waking up in the morning, he noticed that thin vine-like growths below his skin moving up his arm. Taking the day off he tried what medicines he could to get rid of this effect to no avail.
At the same time, he noticed that he was thirstier than normal and his left arm seemed to be drying out more. After a few more days getting thirstier and thirstier, he noticed the growths more & more of his body and drying out more no matter how much he drank. During this time he lost his hair and he felt the need to move to other areas to try to get access to water. Also, his hair fell out and some of the growths started to push through his skin looking like hair growth.
Disappearing into the mountains he started to attack the wildlife and travellers sucking out their body fluids , and leaving dry husks behind. This satiated the thirst for a time but it always returned. All this occured when the authorities had noticed him missing and tried to search for him. They soon worked out what had happened after finding the first couple of bodies. They are now seeking him and news started to get out about this 'dry man' that feeds on others for moisture.
So far his path has kept him to the mountains slowly working his way towards the town of Eschbach.
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