Creature Feature: The Swamp Shambler

 Sightings of this mysterious creature have been reported often, both by the Rangers of the Southern March, and more frequently, by herdsmen courageous (or foolish) enough to let their animals stray near the edges of the Tulgey Wood.  The figures here depict a sighting by the Ranger Karl Langfusch, in which a Shambler was accompanied by what appeared to be an immature member of it's species. 

  All reported sightings of Shamblers collected by the sage Olorro describe a large, roughly man-shaped creature, apparently composed at least largely of lank, often rotting and putrid-smelling vegetation, leading Olorro to describe the thing, in his treatise Bogies and Beasties of the Black River Country, as some sort of earth or plant elemental.  Though large and seemingly powerful, and menacing in it's aspect, there are no reports of a Shambler actually attacking a man. There is a passage in Olorro's book however, in which a herdsman claims that he once saw one of the creatures in the process of devouring a lamb, seemingly not in the conventional fashion, but by smothering the young animal in its sodden folds, and absorbing the lamb's substance into its own body.

 The creatures are evidently not shy about showing themselves to men, but invariably retreat when approached, disappearing without leaving so much as a track or a bent blade of grass to betray their passage.  Consequently, we still know almost nothing about them.