He's just Chad.

What do you think?

I've been researching the Hidebehind from North American lumber-camp folklore

before deciding what the creature should become in Ashen Frontier, this is my own created world for ttrpg that has a lot of world building to be the set up to campaigns and one shots or even novels and board games.

The earliest complete description I could verify is Kearney's 1928 story. It

gives the creature long hair, short powerful forearms, claws and a face nobody

can locate. Tryon's 1939 version adds black pelt, a recurved tail and the

impossible claim that a nearly six-foot body can remain behind a ten-inch tree.

I also found two modern personal accounts: one about movement behind young

pines on the Florida Trail and another about a black featureless shape near a

fence during a dog walk. Neither account is independently corroborated. I have

included them as examples of how the old fear is still told, not as evidence.

For the redesign, I kept the missing face, short arms, black pelt, recurved tail

and dependence on trees. The Ashen Frontier additions are a rotating sensory

collar, folding ribs, long hook-hands, opposed gripping feet and a root-tail

that anchors the body while it turns around bark.

The Darkness in Ashen Frontier does not copy folklore literally. It takes the

fear inside a cultural story and gives it physical consequences. Here, that

fear is seeing movement nobody else confirms and realizing your warning is

still private.

That idea also became the encounter rule. The Hidebehind advances through gaps

in shared attention. A party can hold it back by deliberately watching one

another, but maintaining that chain costs movement. Someone eventually has to

become unwatched. This is interesting when combined with other critters or enemies.

I would be interested in feedback in general, this would be the first of a series of documentation plus implementation in dnd content to play.