Fae: Lady of the Husk

"A shining example of how one should never take a fae's gifts for granted. The Lady of the Husk, initially, appears to be downright beneficial for a member of the fae. She grants her chosen lands with vibrant growth and excellent soil. Naturally this will attract farmers, and without fail a small but productive community will grow up around her territory.

After several years of incredible harvests, the Lady then makes her desires known to those closest to the land, appearing to them through dreams and visions. Always those desires revolve around a need for sacrifice. The identity of the victim is not important, so long as the level of emotional torment they go through before spilling their blood in her fields is sufficiently extreme.

By this point the community has grown rather insular and xenophobic thanks to the Lady's subtle machinations, and it doesn't take much to convince them the lives of a few complete strangers is a worthwhile price to pay for incredible harvests. Thus a few travelers a year end up mysteriously disappearing around these communities.

Sometimes, however, the community resists. If a year goes by without sacrifice, the Lady of the Husk makes her displeasure known. The next harvest is even more vibrant than before, but this time the field produce crops with strange, unsettling deformities, tastes and colours, the wind whispers almost malevolently through rows of stalks, and many community members suffer horrible nightmares.

Most of the time this is enough to whip the community back into shape, as few are unwilling to leave by this point, insular and tied to the land as they are. Exceptions do occur, however, and when that happens, the Lady of the Husk gives the community up as lost. In one horrifying night, she turns the land against nearly everyone in the community, resulting in a horrific bloodbath during the hours of darkness, but leaving almost no evidence behind when the sun comes up, just an abandoned down and maybe a few inexplicable bones.

Strangely enough, the Lady of the Husk tends to be slightly more merciful towards children. This isn't due to any goodwill on her part, however. Children are simply more malleable than adults, and with the proper motivation can be turned into near perfect servants, viciously defending her and rounding up sacrifices. It is from this, most likely, that certain urban legends concerning 'children of the corn' originate."