Lorcha (pronounced the same for singular or plural) remain shrouded in mystery. Do they exist? Don’t they exist? No one can say for sure. Some claim to have actually seen these… creatures? Entities? Others believe they only exist as a tool to scare little children into doing what their parents want them to do, as in the case of the tale above used to scare children into staying with their parent instead of running off on their own. While some empirical evidence does seem to exist to suggest the Lorcha are real, the lack of pictures, bodies, body parts, or other tangible evidence makes the debate continue between believers and non-believers.

The Legend:

The first recorded entry of the Lorcha dates back to the year 2 AP in the journal of Hugh Gabilshatush. In his journal Hugh wrote about hearing a tale told to him by an Ainslough Fairy named Jennifer, in which two young Fairy children went into a nearby cave to play. After hours of being inside the cave, their mothers began to worry and went looking for the children. The cave was not very large, so there weren’t many places the children could have gone, but yet after an extensive search, the children were still never found. What was discovered was a fine powder floating through the air and settling on the cave rocks. Through the use of the Fairy’s magics, they were able to determine that the dust was what remained of the skin of the two young children. What had happened to the rest of the body wasn’t documented, but the Fairies then attributed the children’s loss to the Lorcha.

Since that time Lorcha have appeared over and over again in stories and supposed “eye-witness” accounts. One such eye-witness account seems more credible than most, as told by Princess Carmel Feralia many years after the disappearance of her sister Marta:

“Marta and I were playing in the Royal Study. It was a place father had told us many times to avoid, but of course that made us want to be there all the more. We were playing Fengaks and Oolacs?, a very popular game at the time, and were sitting near the Obvious Studies section of father’s books. Suddenly the room went absolutely silent and a chill permeated my bones to the core. Scared and confused I looked at Marta and her eyes were as wide as Tachyderm ears. Turning and looking in the same direction I saw a young girl in a green uniform that I didn’t recognize. In her arms was a Girasol-shaped cookie tin. As she approached she started opening the tin. I was so scared that I could think of nothing but getting away and ran for the study door, but it was locked. As I fumbled to unlock the door, I looked back to see Marta paralyzed with fear. The cookie tin was open and the smell of mint filled the air. I couldn’t help but continue watching as I finally fumbled the lock open and opened the door, and as I watched I saw a mist coming out of Marta and being sucked into the cookie tin. Of course the room was still deathly quiet so I couldn’t hear her scream, but I could see the agony on her face, and as the mist continued to flow from Marta to the tin she aged in front of my very eyes, becoming an old woman in the short span of my exiting the room and closing the door behind me. I ran and ran until I finally found my father and sobbingly told my story. I never did enter that room again, but when father went there he said all they found was a fine dust floating in the air and slowly settling over the room. Marta was never seen again.”

The Facts:

If Lorcha are indeed real, then from the various stories told about them we can find the similarities and assume these commonalities to be factual. In an effort to make a complete entry, I have done just that, and from these stories we can assume the following facts are true:

It is this last quality that continues to fuel the debate as to whether the Lorcha exist or not. Scholars of a scientific mind dismiss the Lorcha as story boogey-men because of the lack of any tangible evidence. But it was the Spiritual scholar Juliwen who first proposed that the Lorcha could indeed be real and that the reason they leave no evidence of their presence is because they are beings of spirit from the Void of Tranquility. This, of course, opened a whole new debate since the Void of Tranquility is also often debated as a non-existent place.

Regardless of whether one believes in the Lorcha or not, it is perhaps the mystery that is most intriguing of all. It is this… wait, is that the smell of

The last journal entry of Klaus Unker, 2101, written just before he went missing

Citations

• Ainslough Fairy
• Carmel Feralia
• Dorniala
• Fengaks
• Gelts
• Girasol
• Hugh Gabilshatush
• Juliwen
• Obvious Studies
• Oolacs?
• Tachyderms
• Void of Tranquility
• Category Events

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