The Milkmaid

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   <default>The Milkmaid</default>
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The Milkmaid is a Bogeyman from the Abattoir.<ref>So... you open a door or tap a door you've already made, you venture into The Abattoir, and you find a clearing big enough to open a discourse with the embodiment of that specific region of the Abyss. Chances are this conversation is going to happen with a very hostile, intractable, abrasive personification of this very hostile, intractable place. It may happen with a time limit, a horror movie deathtrap slowly setting itself up around you as you try to establish terms and talk, or it might be that Others are on the approach, reacting to unconscious signals from the Abattoir personification- the Ram-headed Man, the Milkmaid, the Calfbone Child, and the Font of Meat converging on your location while you talk. - More Abyss Questions (Wildbow, Reddit.com, 2018-10-23)</ref>

Personality

She's nocturnal, but enjoys watching sunrises before going to sleep.<ref name=":0">Other Bogeymen resemble living people, but fall more into the realm of heavy carnivores, dining on fear. Like heavy carnivores, they don't need to eat often. Finding other things to eat helps fill the space between, so they'll do that a lot, and beyond that they tend to patrol or wander. If the Milkmaid locates herself in the abandoned farmhouse and the surrounding fields, then she might get to know the ins and outs of the property, where the fence is reliable, where the holes in the ground are, and she'd find the

things to alter the property.  A whole day can be spent on one window,

so it's ajar but closes when someone slips through. A week can be spent

on the floor, so that the window closes when someone comes running

along the shaky floorboards of the house, directly toward the opening. Two weeks to a month to have the window close just as someone puts their

hands or head through the opening.

This

might be stretched out over long periods, the Milkmaid going through

her routine of sleeping until evening, waking up, kicking at a floorboard here, adjusting a window there, getting her things and then going out to check the traps in the nearby woods for any caught foxes, deer, or coyotes. If any are caught, then a few hours are spent stripping the animal, the meat eaten with some glasses of milk (a little

bit more strength, a bit more time before she needs to eat real human

fear instead of trapped animal fear), the offal strewn in strategic locations, the bones added to the collection in a key location of the home (like in the cellar one will fall into if they run too hard along that one stretch of breakable floorboards). While passing through the home at the later half of the night, she'll adjust a door, move some curtains so that one hook isn't on the rod but is at a level to catch on

some clothes, stomp at a floorboard.  She fixes up her milking machine

for a few hours, feeds and milks the cows, then goes for a walk, touring

the outer edges of her territory, familiarizing herself with that

ground, expanding her territory out a fraction, maybe moving a rock so a

tire might pop on the road or breaking a branch or three so the

farmhouse is more clearly visible for anyone passing down the dirt road.

 She watches the sunrise, then returns home and dozes off. - What Do Most Others Do All Day?

</ref><ref name=":1">When she does get a victim, it becomes about milking them for fear, literally. They get snagged, caught, the exits turn out not to be exits, the fields have holes in them that don't seem to trip up this one-hundred-and-twenty pound woman with the cow-skin hood and wrapping, but do twist the ankles of the unwary. One victim is chosen, the rest killed off, and she drags her victim off to the barn, where they're summarily chained up. A cow is skinned and the skin is sewn onto and around the trapped man or woman. Then she starts up the rusty old milking machine, places the first three

glass tubes with the suction going, holds up the fourth with its

shattered edge, and then places it- the suction rhythmically pulls the glass edges in deeper, releasing, over and over, the blood flowing in with inexplicable milk and other bodily fluids the machine is pulling in, to join her collection of regular cow's milk. She'll have something

to drink with her next meal of fox or deer, she has her supply of fear

and pain for the next few days or weeks until her victim passes or slips

into the Abyss, she gains some power, and she buys her continued

existence in a world where she has quiet days and can watch sunrises. - What Do Most Others Do All Day?</ref>

She enjoys a quiet life.<ref name=":1">When she does get a victim, it becomes about milking them for fear, literally. They get snagged, caught, the exits turn out not to be exits, the fields have holes in them that don't seem to trip up this one-hundred-and-twenty pound woman with the cow-skin hood and wrapping, but do twist the ankles of the unwary. One victim is chosen, the rest killed off, and she drags her victim off to the barn, where they're summarily chained up. A cow is skinned and the skin is sewn onto and around the trapped man or woman. Then she starts up the rusty old milking machine, places the first three

glass tubes with the suction going, holds up the fourth with its

shattered edge, and then places it- the suction rhythmically pulls the glass edges in deeper, releasing, over and over, the blood flowing in with inexplicable milk and other bodily fluids the machine is pulling in, to join her collection of regular cow's milk. She'll have something

to drink with her next meal of fox or deer, she has her supply of fear

and pain for the next few days or weeks until her victim passes or slips

into the Abyss, she gains some power, and she buys her continued

existence in a world where she has quiet days and can watch sunrises. - What Do Most Others Do All Day?</ref>

She's capable of a degree of inhuman focus which helps her in preparing her lair (see Abilities, below).<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5" />

When trapping a victim, she'll kill off anyone they're with to focus on just one person.<ref name=":1" />

She watched Goblin Game (a horrific reality show featuring low-karma prisoners) with some goblins.<ref name=":2">A gaggle of goblins stood at the fence, peering down. An Other was looking down as well, a woman with a calf’s hide draped over her head like a hood, horns resting near her brow, with a stained dress that reached her bare feet. The gaggle gave her a wide berth. Bogeyman, Ben was pretty sure. There was a way of telling, sometimes: the stains on the woman’s dress and skin had a way of moving like dark clouds against the sky might. Blooming, widening, taking different shapes. - (Third) Poke</ref><ref>“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Daily recording of Goblin Game. Used to be a game show, now it’s reality TV. Because of course goblins have their own reality TV show. Your, uh, friend there can probably find the channel to watch it, but you shouldn’t. Give it a pass and trust people who know more to handle it.”
“That’s a person down there? A human?”
“Three. Mom and two kids,” Buttsack said. He smiled, and it was an especially mean smile. “You can hear the brats crying if you listen close enough.”
“Ben,” Mags said, to get his attention. “It’s a karmic trap. These are- they’re the preliminaries?”
“Quite fucking so,” Turdswallow said. “Northeast.”
“They’re the northeast preliminaries, meaning the goblins from this area scoured the northeastern corner of North America, found some of the absolute worst people, people who deserve whatever happens to them as part of the competition, and today they introduce them. If they make it through they go on to be part of the show’s next season. Thousands of practitioners out there are probably going to hear about this or come across it, and there’s a chance one well-intentioned person tries to save ‘em and suffers for it.”
- (Third) Poke </ref>

She drinks a lot of milk. It seems to be all she drinks.<ref name=":3">Even the Milkmaid sat at a corner table alone, glass of milk in front of her, staring at him with empty, dark eyes. - (Third) Poke</ref><ref name=":0" />

Relationships

Friends with Deedee and Sir Toadswallow.<ref name=":4">Deedee twisted her head around until she started squealing, her leg involuntarily kicking in a way that suggested spinal damage. “And that gal over there with the cow hat, that’s the Milkmaid. She’s a pal too-”
Ben looked at the bogeyman with the calf skin draping her head, who looked back at him with dead eyes.
“-Got the idea for the milk for Stray Baby from her.”
“Uhhh, sure,” Ben said.
Dee managed to get an arm free to wave. The Milkmaid waved back, then turned back to watching whatever was going on beyond the fence. - (Third) Poke </ref> Unlike most goblins, they're OK with Deedee's strange attraction to a human.<ref>“Boyfriend and girlfriend,” Ben said, at the same time Deedee said, “Fuck-buddies.”
Ben glanced at Deedee, who conceded to add, “With some girlfriend shit too. I still think fuck-buddy sounds way cooler.”
Ben looked back at Mags, and saw her expression had twisted, even as she tried to hide it. Suppressed disgust.
Buttsack’s too. And some bystanders. It was actually easier to count the people who hadn’t reacted in some way. The calfskin bogeyman and Deedee’s two friends, Turdswallow and the nameless goblin. - (Third) Poke </ref>

Appearance

A 120lb woman.<ref name=":1" /> She wears a calfskin with the head serving as a hood, a stained dress, and no shoes. If you look closely, the stains on her and her clothes move slowly, like clouds.<ref name=":2" /> Her eyes are dark and empty-seeming.<ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" />

Abilities and Art

She has the power to "tune" an area to a superhuman degree, filling them with little traps and quirks,<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> with some of the Abyss soaking into the things she works on - especially her cows and milking machine.<ref name=":5">It's not really a Crone Mara style adjustment of territory over decades or centuries - more that obsessive focus, memories of the Abyss, and the influence of the Abyss itself staining reality can help make this work. The places she visits and the

things she does serve to taint areas and things.  The milking machine

is a big one for this particular bogeyman, as are the cows of her barn, which might start to end up more abyssal (mutated, with special properties, potentially with skins that transmit sensation after being sewn on). For Bogeymen of this type who aren't the Milkmaid, it could be something like the house being bigger from the inside, or hallways that look different when you revisit them. - What Do Most Others Do All Day?</ref>

To "feed", she will sew a victim inside a cowskin and milk them (of blood, fear, and magically-extracted milk) until they die.<ref name=":1" /> This will serve to sustain her for some time. She also gets a small amount of strength from consuming animal meat/fear.<ref name=":0" />

She has some way of getting into the Warrens.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":4" />

Tools

A rusty milking machine, one of the glass milking tubes broken so that the suction digs it into flesh, capable of extracting what she needs from humans.<ref name=":1" /> Infused with the Abyss.<ref name=":5">It's not really a Crone Mara style adjustment of territory over decades or centuries - more that obsessive focus, memories of the Abyss, and the influence of the Abyss itself staining reality can help make this work. The places she visits and the

things she does serve to taint areas and things.  The milking machine

is a big one for this particular bogeyman, as are the cows of her barn, which might start to end up more abyssal (mutated, with special properties, potentially with skins that transmit sensation after being sewn on). For Bogeymen of this type who aren't the Milkmaid, it could be something like the house being bigger from the inside, or hallways that look different when you revisit them. - What Do Most Others Do All Day?</ref>

References