Jason Weiser

And once again, thank you all so much for your interest, support, excitement.

You're amazing.

The creatures this time are the Dorgar from the Simonside Hills in Northumberland, England.

So we've probably talked about will-o'-the-wisp or ghost lights, lights that might mysteriously appear in the forest, either tempting travelers in or looking like they're leading the lost traveler to safety.

If you can see where this is going, and if you know you should not follow these lights, congratulations, you've listened to this podcast before.

But what if you really want to mess with a mythological creature?

One story of the Durrigar involves a young man who walked into the forest he knew contained a bog and shouted, Tintin!

which was apparently the way to get the duergar's attention and cause them to turn on the lights, or light.

Picking his way carefully through the forest with his oaken staff, he followed light after light until he knew a bog was in front of him, tore up some peat moss and threw it in the water, telling the dwarves, nice try, they couldn't trick him.

If you see the obvious issues with suddenly being alone in a dark forest, surrounded by angry creatures, you have officially thought about this more than he did.

His friends found him half dead and babbling incoherently on the edge of the wood, the duergar having taken turns beating him up and chasing him through the woods.

Anytime he tried to land a blow on them, it was like he was fighting shadows.

The duergar are mythological dwarves.

They are in Dungeons and Dragons, where they're called grey dwarves and they live in the Underdark.

My last character was a duergar bard.

Anyway, the name is said to come from the dialectical variations of the word dwarf on the English-Scottish border.

One other prominent story comes from a weary traveler who found an abandoned camp.

There was a pit with a bunch of fuel, wood next to it, and a tent left up.

Since it was too dangerous to keep going on a moonless night, he stopped and built a fire.

When he was sufficiently warmed by the blaze, he decided it was time to turn in.