A couple from Oasitê Folklore:
The
Fê-fê-fê (
) is a beast that has the body of a bear, the humps of a camel, the stinging fur of a caterpillar, and eight legs like a spider, though the first and last pairs end in the paws of a bear, and the middle two end in those of a snow leopard. It is so dangerous that nobody has seen its face and lived to tell about it; in art, it is often depicted with a human skull in place of a head.
The Fê-fê-fê is believed to live in remote mountain caves, where it spins a web that is made of the finest fabric in the world. In the Oasitê national epic, the
Setêho ʻia Wiyui, even the folk-hero Nanai-wa-Nanai (who needed the web for a net to catch a rampaging wind god) was unable to defeat the beast using strength or skill, and had to resort to trickery, first luring it out of its cave to attack a puppet, then causing an avalanche that sent the beast tumbling down the mountainside and stealing the web before it could dig itself out and climb back up.
In later folktales, the Fê-fê-fê serves as a warning against letting greed get in the way of prudence- it is said to live off the flesh of fortune hunters it attracts by hanging bolts of the fine cloth it spins outside its lair as bait.
It's name, incidentally, is derived from the soft shuffling sound its eight paws are said to make against the mountain rock.
The
Iyengi (
) are the ghosts or spirits of the malignant dead. Often invisible, they lurk along roads in the wilderness and prey upon passers-by at night. Sometimes they attack as an unseen force beating and clawing at some unfortunate traveller. Other times they choose to show themselves, appearing suddenly with a roar and a flash of light. Gaunt giants wearing fine priestly robes and surrounded by flame, with bulging, bloody eyes, rotten blue skin, and long tongues lashing out of fanged, grimacing mouths, their appearance alone is said to be so grotesque and terrible that those who see them (especially unexpectedly) can fall into a fevered delirium. On rare occasions, they are believed to enter settlements, spreading fever, causing poltergeist-like activity, and occasionally possessing people.
Though they are immensely strong and invulnerable to any sort of physical harm, the Iyengi do have one easily-exploited weakness: they are extremely vain and prudish, and are deeply offended by nudity. As such, one can easily dispel them by undressing- or, more commonly, convincing a hot, gullible friend to do so. Should that fail, the Iyengi's identity in life must be determined, and its body disinterred, stripped of any remaining flesh, and publicly displayed in an area the Iyengi is believed to frequent. Upon seeing its own naked skeleton (and realizing that others have as well), the Iyengi will be deeply mortified and sink into the earth out of embarrassment, never to return.
The Oasitê wear amulets of skulls or crude figures with exaggerated genitals as charms against the Iyengi.
The
Isisi to Pama (
) – the 'Father of Fishes'- is a glowing, beautiful. silvery creature resembling an ornate fish with a human face, believed to bring good luck to any who see it. It inhabits the Monowe river, but is believed to emerge on nights in early spring and swim through the air above the riverbank, causing fish to spawn as he goes.
One evening long ago, so the story goes, an old Oasitê fisherwoman caught a fish with a human face. This alarmed her at first, but she was hungry, so she put it in her basket and carried it home. As she prepared to cook her catch, though, she was shocked to see its lips moving, as though it was trying to speak- though of course no sound came out. Thinking quickly, she filled the pot in which she was going to cook the fish with cold water, and held the fish beneath it so she could hear its words.
The fish warned her that he was the Isisi to Pama, the Father of All Fishes, and that if she were to cook him, the fish of the river would no longer be able to spawn, and she would soon starve. She agreed to free him, and he offered her a further deal: if she and her people would refrain from eating his children, the fish of the Monowe river would no longer lay a single egg at a time (as they had up to that point) but would fill the waterways with countless thousands of incomparably delicious eggs when they spawned, and the fisherwoman and her people would be entitled to a fourth part of this bounty.
To this day, the Oasitê do not eat the flesh of fish; and their children try to catch a glimpse of the Father of Fishes through the trees on the cold spring evenings before the Spawning Feast.