Overview
The Web-Set Bugbear is a hulking, club-jawed swamp-ambusher of Mirehollow, a great creature of the web-laced thicket who sets the trap and plans the kill, considering the swamp a debt the water owes them. It stands well over two meters tall, patient and cunning, with the kind of certainty that comes from a life measured in set kills rather than years. Where the goblins of the warrens read the dark and the goblins of the ring tend the light, the Web-Set bugbears of the mire set the trap, and they have been setting the first trap in the first mire for a very long time.
Habitat
The Web-Set Bugbear keeps to the web-laced branches of Mirehollow, a swamp thicket of standing water and low, web-laced branches, its silence broken only by the web and the kill. Its dwellings are woven into the low branches over the standing water, hollows of woven web and lashed branch coaxed into a home that catches the pale water-light on its inner face and the shelter of the thicket on its outer. It favors the older stretches where the water is deepest and the web is thickest, the places where a trap can be set without the mire's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
A Web-Set Bugbear stands about 1.94 m tall, hulking and mire-bound, with muddy-olive to grey-green skin that reads as dark in the mire's own light. Its hair runs dark umber, worn long and bound so it does not catch the web, and its eyes are pale muddy-amber, bright and patient beneath the brow, the color of the water-light's own glow at dusk. Its left claw bears the trap-notch, a deliberate mark in the olive-green skin, the color of the trap it has set for years, and the notch is the map of every trap it has laid. It wears lashed mire-leather and a single set-stone at its belt, set with a single trap-loop at the brow, the loop of a setter.
Behaviour
The Web-Set Bugbear is patient, low, and profoundly certain, a creature of long kills and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It observes before it sets, often for days, watching a thicket or a person or a path until it understands the shape of the trap, and only then does it set, and then with a patience that feels rehearsed over years. It is not unkind, but it is not easily moved, and a debt made to a Web-Set bugbear is a debt the mire will take long after the maker has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Web-Set bugbear is no open-water fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the trap and the web itself, not force. Its primary defense is the thicket, for it knows every branch of the web and can lead a pursuer through the mire for days until the pursuit loses its nerve and its balance. Should it be forced to act, a Web-Set bugbear is low and precise, 9 m/s through the thicket and quick, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, cutting a web, dimming a light, or setting a trap until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Web-Set bugbear has no magic of its own, and it does not want any, and the not wanting is the whole of its way of dealing with the world, for a bugbear that has a trap and a word and a web does not need a spell. It is not attuned to any art, and it is not bound by any word that is not its own, and the not being bound is the whole of its way of being free. Its one signature thing is the setting, which is not a magic but is a thing that the bugbears of the mire have set for a very long time, and the setting is the planning, and the planning is the whole of its power.
Society
The Web-Set Bugbears live in Mirehollow in small, patient, and web-bound packs of perhaps four or five, bound by the traps they set together rather than by blood or by place. There is no elder and no ruler, for a bugbear that has set the most and planned the most is simply the one the others listen to, and the listening is a setting and the setting is the whole of their society. Decisions are made in the thicket, by a company of amber-eyed setters that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a bugbear that breaks a trap is a bugbear that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Web-Set Bugbear is a culture of the set trap, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is patient and web-bound is the only honest word in the mire. They keep no records, for a bugbear that has set a trap does not need a record, the setting is the record, and the setting is patient and web-bound and does not fade. Their stories are slow and patient, told in the thicket at the dusk, and they are stories of traps set and kills taken and the patient, web-bound difference between them, told in a voice that is low and means every setting.
Home
Mirehollow is the Web-Set bugbear's home and its setting, a swamp thicket of standing water and low, web-laced branches, its silence broken only by the web and the kill, where the bugbears set their traps and their patient, low words. It is a strange and patient place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Web-Set bugbear has learned to live inside that web rather than against it. The pale water-light that runs up through the branches is the mire's own, a soft green glow that the bugbears have come to read as the color of a set trap.
Relations
The Web-Set Bugbear keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of Mirehollow, a truce of set traps that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the mire. To the pale water-light of the standing pools the Web-Set bugbear is a patient, web-bound, and absolutely certain presence, an amber-eyed setter that is at home in the thicket and in the web, and the water has learned to glow wide and let the settings pass, for a bugbear that has set you has decided you are a keeping and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the mire, the Web-Set Bugbear is the patient, low edge of the tale, the place where the traps are set and a trap is laid and a planning is laid. It is the figure that sets a new trap in the dusk and holds the web very patient and very certain, and the figure that, when the truce with the surface goblins grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old trap patient and web-bound and absolutely certain.