You thought a single fly buzzing away in the background could be annoying, how about a few million accompanied by a very disgruntled queen? The reason all your farm animals have been mysteriously replaced by piles of white bone, and all your crops seem to wither and die. They are known by many names. The Godess of Pestilence, the Swarm that Hungers, the Lady of many Children. Or, most commonly:

“Oh Shit it’s her.”

One of the biggest problems when discussing the abominations that are found in our beautiful forest is where truth and fiction begin and end. When reality can be more messed up than the most heated fever dream, it can be impossible to tell which is folklore or fact. Especially in this case when our little lady seems to love adding additions to her folklore menagerie, posing as a god of death, an avenging angel, the dead come back to life. It seems to be a little game with her. The stupider the belief that you hammer into these mortals heads the more cool points you win. Spin around three times, close your eyes and stay perfectly still, and the lady of flies will immediately vanish seriously. Or to place all your valuable belongings in a very big pile and make sure they are entirely unsupervised. And because the Gods can see you are so trustingly naive they will stop the lady of the flies from stealing them. Unless you go and check up on them, in which case you have broken your secret pact with the Gods and the Lady of Flies will have stolen all your belongings because you are so suspicious and untrustworthy. As long as you never check to see if they have been stolen, they will never have been stolen.

One of the more popular beliefs is that the Lady of Flies is a Martyr, who sacrificed herself to trap all the world’s rotten pestilence within them, that way saving everybody else from terrible plagues and illness. So you should give tribute and be humble and respectful, because they have sacrificed themselves to save you. And after all this time I still haven’t described what the Ladies of the Flies are. I just thought it would be wise to inform you of how dubious the information about them can be. So take this all with a grain of salt. The Lady of Flies appears to be a young lady with, black hair, pale skin, a rather bizarre blacky-grey, oddly disturbing ball-gown. Apart from the offence to all fashion which is the ball gown, they seem pretty harmless. If they weren’t always accompanied with a hoarde of minute, hungry black insects that will slowly eat anything and everything in their path], that would make the locusts think they had been overdoing it a little, and our Lady in the centre of them all. I think I will leave you with Lily’s notes: if there is any source I trust when it comes to information about this messed up world it’s Lily. She seems to know more than anyone else.

Lilys notes

Subject appears to be a female, age ranging from seven to mid twenties in appearance. Though after the age of 25, the appearance does not noticeably age. Age of individual specimens hard to determine. Specimens have claimed to be in the age range of 18 to the few thousands, though due to the specimen’s attitude and sense of humour, all claims by then are very suspect. Aka they enjoy messing with people. Appearance consists of black hair, very pale skin and a tattered ball gownesque dress, made out of a fabric of black and light greys. Closer inspection of the dress reveals it is actually part of the subject’s body. And the dress itself is made of a combination of leather formed from the subject’s skin and keratin hair. Theoretically the body is used as a hive for the flies, I cringe at using the term flies since I highly doubt that they are, but I haven’t been able to verify this. Attempting to get an autopsy on one of the ladies, but all previous attempts have been practically suicidal. The reason this specimen is of note is because there’s plenty of messed up weirdos wandering the forest. Why is this one noteworthy? Because the subject is always accompanied by a massive hoard of very small black ‘flies’. They will bite and suck the blood or fluids from any organic life form in line of sight. Due to their relative size it can take a long time for a subject being consumed to die, or notice. Usually plants will begin to brown and wither, and animal life to become emaciated before deaths ensues. But it can take months or minutes. And if the lady of flies moves on, her swarm will follow. And therefore most specimens who were beginning to be consumed by the flies will likely survive with a small amount of recovery time. Individual flies appear to have no digestive system. And appear entirely reliant on the ladies. She acts as a hub for the flies, and theoretically as a hive. But unlike most hives this hive is mobile, can defend itself and is considerably more intelligent. The lady will tend to seek out farmland. As for the high concentration of edible plants and animals, if they mainly inhabit the forest most ladies of the flies are malnourished due to them not being able to consume black oak; subsisting mostly off fungi and small plants eking out an existence on meagre sunlight underneath the nearly impenetrable tree canopy.

The scarcity of farmable land, and land not infested by black oak. Conflict over territory between the lady of the flies, humans and other ladies of the flies is very common. Also due to the large amounts of land needed to support a single one, they tend to be very, very territorial. And the majority of lady of the flies fatalities are due to fighting with others for territory. Their general demeanour when interacting with human beings seems to be mostly bored, detatched, lonely and annoyed. Due them being unable to interact with sentient life for long periods of time without them being consumed by a swarm of flies, they appear to be very lonely with deep-seated attachment issues, with sometimes near psychopathic traits. Due to more advanced testing and research, it seems that these personality traits are purely environmental, brought on by the ladies isolation and rather unique life-experiences. Most ladies of the flies have parasitical relations with humans pretending to be a god of death or of the harvest that if not given tribute of sufficient food will make your crops fail, your animals die and your children sick. I’m very much certain that they are not gods, but due to their abilities they can certainly follow up on their threats. A single lady of flies can be attached to a small village for generations and tends to be seen as a mythological creature of worship. If the lady’s particularly smart, even some sort of benevolent spirit where their guidance is needed on matters trivial or massive. Overall, they are not a threat to the civilian population. Only immensely large amounts of them could cause an apocalyptic scenario but due to their intense in fighting over territory. A large group of them is likely to tear each other apart before becoming a threat.