Chimera (CTL)

Chimera is a species of Hobgoblin that inhabits the Hedge. They stalk the Thorns devouring those who cannot answer its riddles.

Overview
The Chimera is the creature that stalks the dark, winding, solitary paths of the deepest Hedge. It is the monster that must be vanquished or assuaged with riddles before it can be passed. It is the dragon, the manticore, the Blatant Beast or the sphinx. However you choose to portray the Chimera, its aspects always represent something decidedly local. The Chimera is usually intelligent but feral, and represents the duality of man and beast, of civilization and wilderness, of changelings and the fae.

The creature’s torso and head resemble a lion, replete with mangy mane, but its eight arachnid eyes are perched in two rows on its head and its ant-like mandibles protrude from a gaping maw. The beast’s tail is that of a scorpion, slowly curling above its head and slick with some goblin poison, while its scaly arms and legs owe their appearance to the great lizards of past and present. The beast seems unaffected by the Hedge, silently prowling through the Brambles and Thorns like an enormous house cat. When it speaks, its voice is a low roll of thunder and its breath fetid bog gas.

The creature that stalks the meandering paths of the deep Hedge believes it is older than it remembers, if only because it does not remember being born. And the Chimera remembers quite a bit. The matter of its inception is a tangential concern at best (it does not think it began as a changeling, and the fear that the Gentry strike into it when they ride forth from their demesnes leads it to believe it was never among their number either), but one that it is not uncomfortable ruminating on. Sometimes it wonders if it began as a nightmare given form and thought, and other nights it suspects it is the result of the sundering of some ancient pledge between the Fae and the Wyrd. With the secret unlikely to be revealed any time soon, The Chimera is content to preside instead over a Court of lesser goblins, a hunting party that secures for it the flesh of goblin, Hedge fruit, and changelings alike.