The Wailing Croc

The Wailing Croc, formerly known as Kazuya, is a malevolent spirit that roams the swamps around Pantano and spirits away children who wander too far from home after dark.

## Background

*Like most villages,* *Pantano* *has it share of legends and folkore. The most famous is the tale of the Wailing Croc, the vengeful spirit of a man who lost his wife and daughter and now wanders around the swamps, spiriting away children he 'likes'.*

## Biography

### Losing his Family (& mind)

One night, Kazuya and his family returned home only to find it ablaze; his wife had unknowingly left the stove lit. In his desperate attempt to save the house, he failed to notice that the boat in which his family was had drifted away from the shore until it was too late.

The entire village fruitlessly searched the swamps for days until someone found the dead bodies in the river. Mad with grief and feeling responsible for their deaths, Kazuya fled into the swamps, slowly losing his will to live.

### Death and Haunting

Unable to cope with the loss of his family, Takuya eventually committed suicide by stabbing his chest with a sharp blade. As tradition dictates that suicides cannot be buried in the graveyard, the villagers reluctantly buried him away from the graves of his wife and daughter in the swamps.

But this was a grave mistake, as they unwittingly denied him the chance to ever reunite with his lost family. Kazuya returned from the grave as a vengeful spirit that wanders around the swamps at night; children who wandered too deep into the forest on nights of full moon or heard sobbing in the middle of the day even when no one is around vanished, never to be seen again; people claimed to have seen a pale Scaleling with messy black hair and wearing the white yukata meant for funerals roaming naerby before the disappearance.

With time, people started called him the Wailing Croc.

The Shaman was the only sorcerer capable of facing the vengeful ghost via the use of ancient magic, but he found himself unable to permanently put him to rest; Kazuka's anger and grief was too powerful. Eventually he came to the conclusion that Kazuya will only be able to rest in peace when he truly comes to terms with the deaths of his wife and daughter.

## Personality

As a vengeful ghost, Kazuya has been consumed by resentment and grief over the deaths of his wife and children, desperately wanting to erase the pain via finding a substitute for his lost family. He cannot be reasoned to, as he's far too lost in his ghostly delirium. While seemingly calm and somewhat stoic at first glance, Kazuya's now-volatile temper is bound to show up eventually. According to the Shaman, those who get in Kazuya's way will meet horrible, tragic deaths at the hands of the spirit.

Kazuya has shown a high adaptability and cunning, learning to trick his victims instead of recklessly trying to snatch them away at once. He'll stalk his 'prey' for a few days beforehand before making his move, often imitating the voice of a family member to lure the child away from the safety of the village and into the swamps. In the few instances where the child caught on, Kazuya directly snatches him away. He's also quite stubborn and determined (traits he had when he was alive), as he'll never give up on his prey even when they manage to escape his grass.

Despite his hostile behavior, Kazuya is not an evil entity. He's acting out of a twisted fatherly devotion and guilt over not protecting his family, desperate to regain what he lost. He never brings any real harm to the children he spirits away other than imprisoning them in his realm and keeping them under hypnosis so they will not escape; in fact, he's unknowingly saved a few children from abusive or dysfunctional families and given them the closest thing to a father they've ever had. Kazuya is protective (and possessive) of the children, constantly monitoring as they sleep and entering a wrathful frenzy if one is being taken away.

Kazuya still has some good inside him. The most evidence instance of this is that he spared Rose Darktail the fate of all of his other victims upon witnessing her father Toboe, who is also a widower, coming to her defense with or without the Shaman's help and willing to die for his daughter. Feeling sympathy for a fellow father who has too suffered a painful loss, Kazuya gave up on a prey for the first and only time ever, something the Shaman previously thought impossible.

## Abilities

* Curse inducement
* Immortality: being already dead, he cannot be killed nor harmed.
* Mental inducement
	+ Fear inducement
	+ Hypnosis
* Astral Projection
* Illusion
* Flight
* Ghost Phisiology
	+ Intangibility
	+ Telekinesis
	+ Imperceptibility
	+ Electromagnetic interference

* Shapeshifting
* Life-draining

## Weaknesses

* He's bound to Pantano and its surrounding area.
* He cannot step on sacred ground such as temples and cemeteries
* Obsessed with children. While hostile to adults, the Wailing croc doesn't harm children
* Excorcisms: this only vanquishes him temporally, however.

## Gallery

Kazuya in lifeKazuya finds the body of his familyUnable to bear the loss of his family, Kazuya commited suicide.

## Trivia

* His story is inspired by La Llorona from Mexican Folklore; the only difference is that while La Llorona intentionally drowned her children, The Wailing Croc's loss was an accident.
* His appearance is based on Yurei from Japanese lore, though his behavior is more like an Onryo.
* He doesn't distinguish between species; he'll take Scaleling, Furling or Featherling children he 'likes'.
* Those who have been 'liked' by the Wailing Croc (whoever spots him and hears him sobbing) can only escape him by moving away from Pantano, as the ghost is bound to the swamps and cannot follow them.
	+ However, the person in question can never return because the Wailing Croc will finish what he started.
* He was many similarities to the real-life lore of *Hachisakusama*.
	+ Both spirits are clothed in white
	+ Both take children
	+ Both have a distinctive sound that alerts people they've liked a child (Po po po for Hachisakusama, sobbing for Wailing Croc)
	+ Both are cunning and rely on deceit to trick their victims
* Nobody knows what the Wailing Croc does with the children he takes.
	+ According to the creator, he takes them to a parallel realm and keeps them there to take care of them in an attempt to fill in the void left by his loss; however, as soon as he realizes that the child is not his daughter, he goes to search for her again and the cycle repeats endlessly.