Dominique Curry

Love these goofy goobers.

Expanding on this and changing a little lore.

I wrote a whole page of fun information about them below – – –

Called Moorland monsters, moor monsters, or bog nessies, these guys are different from Johnnies. (I know I named the previous one Johnnie. I messed up, knowing fully well that I had a creature also called a Johnnie).

Moorlands and Johnnies are classified as mimics. Both use the faces of humans to get closer to people. All Johnnies have fully developed human faces. Most Moorlands have the same, few develop animal heads, and even fewer do not develop faces at all.

Moorlands and Johnnies are similar in appearance, the main difference being that Moorlands are generally twice the size of Johnnies, have more reddish skin than pale, and have a prehensile tail while Johnnies have no tail.

Contrary to original belief, their facial mimicry is not used to prey on people, but rather to work alongside them as foraging and hunting partners or for tradework.

They are assumed to be the start of the uncanny valley phenomenon. They have been documented to coexist with early humans. Populations of Moorlands remain small and uncommon to find.

With no notable accounts of Moorlands affecting humans and their history, history books are only starting to recover paintings and early depictions of Moorlands as they slowly gain international recognition for their friendly and useful nature. Moorlands have not participated in war as human fear incites fear in them and they refuse to dabble in human matters.

There are three classifications, all non-threatening to humans. Feral, denoting living far from human civilization. Outskirt, living close to a populace, but not inside of one. City, living amongst people. The farther they live from people, the less language they share with them.

Ferals also tend to act “doggish” according to people who interact with them, specifically like dogs that rear up to play or get excitable. Cities behave more humanly. Outskirts can exhibit both or either characteristics.

Their human face perfectly recreates human muscle and emotion. This is not their real face. The eye on the neck indicates where the real face is. They can see out of the human eyes when their real eyes are closed or half closed. They can limit their mouth to just the human’s face, though if starving, will extend their whole mouth.

Moorlands may “drop facade” and cease control of their human face (which looks like a person sleeping) if they are in deep thought, dissociate, sneeze, feel ill, distracted, or use their real eyes.

The human face never denotes the actual gender of the Moorland monsters. The face can reflect whichever human gender the Moorland chooses, but their actual bodies do not. There is no physical difference between males, females, or intersex Moorlands and the only way to identify their gender is by looking at their well-hidden genitalia. I will not be drawing these, please and thank you.