Cerevash

Cerevash are not demons of wanton destruction but of ledgered exchange. Folktales claim the first Cerevash slipped from a field of sacrifice long ago, born from a pact between a starving hamlet and a nameless, hungry god. Since then, itinerant cults and desperate grainwrights have summoned lesser Cerevash to bless fields in drought years. The bargains are exacting: harvests come abundant, but the creature's hunger must be sated in equal measure. Scholars from the Agronomic Conclave of Haldren have argued that Cerevash belong to a family of lesser fiends bound to soil and seed, and the Conclave keeps a guarded journal — the Faemarc Ledger — describing rites to repel or rebalance a bargain. The village of Wreth Hollow still tells of the Harvest Circle, a secretive brotherhood called the Guild of Grainwrights that binds young farmers to grazing vows rather than bargaining with fiends. Those who ignore such cautions find themselves with golden granaries and hearts growing hollow.

A humanoid roughly 6' tall with elongated limbs, Cerevash's 'skin' is layered with woven straw, brittle husks, and tatters of dyed burlap that rustle like dry leaves. Its head is a hollowed gourd with a carved, asymmetrical grin; thin filaments of rope serve as hair, threaded with seed pods. Wherever its hands touch, faint rootlike veins of dark sap crawl into the soil. Patches of mold and tiny woven talismans cling to the shoulders; a trailing coattail of bundled sheaves drags on the ground. The creature's movement is jerky and staccato, like scarecrows animated for a funeral march.