PEEPERS

The Halloween Bestiary starts extra early this year, with one of its most popular requests from years past! The simple image of a flower with an eyeball in the center has been around a very long time and has more recently exploded in popularity as Halloween iconography, but it still carries no particular "lore" of its own. Perhaps it doesn't necessarily need to - sometimes, a flower with an eye is just a flower with an eye - but maybe other times, a flower with an eye can actually mean something.

Why just "peepers?" Singular "peeper?" Truth is, I don't like to make the names for these entries too creative. It doesn't feel "authentic" for a basically "generic" Halloween entity to be given some elaborate pun or portmanteaeu or melodramatic D&D monster kind of name. I try to find the simplest, most unoriginal name I can for these things, and I think calling these "Peepers" works fine for that.

If you've read a lot of these, then you may know I also really like to tie as many Halloween beings as possible in with witches, and it seems natural that putting eyes in flowers is totally something a witch would get up to. The spell itself would likely require a real eyeball as its starting point, magically transforming it into the unnatural seed of an equally unnatural plant.

The actual type of flower could vary with the witch's preference, but roses would be the easiest to conjure, and their thorns a convenient extra level of defense. The eyeball's origin wouldn't matter, either; humans would be preferable, but animals would do just as well.

A Peeper would begin with only a single eye, but would add more to itself as it feeds on passing creatures, wrapping them up in life-sucking foliage and reducing them to only bones over the course of a few days. Of course, it's a given that an eyeball flower wouldn't be JUST another man-eating plant.

Whoever created a Peeper would obviously be able to see through its eyes at any time, allowing witches to keep tabs on just about any location, and whatever they can see, they can probably also afflict with a few select curses. The Peeper is the witch equivalent of a security camera with a gun turret.

The one problem with a Peeper is that, through repeated use, some of its creator's power and intelligence might rub off on it. Over time, a large and old enough Peeper with enough eyes might develop quite a bit of personality and even a number of spells all of its own, most of them revolving around eyeballs, eyesight and plant life, obviously. Some might remain loyal to their witch, while others might find a way to turn the tables on them, taking over their whole operation. Others still might simply outlive their own creator, and carry on their guard duty or begin to pursue interests all their own.

Maybe everything I've said about these things is just plain obvious. The bare minimum of what a flower with a spooky eyeball on it would do. But, like I said, that's basically our goal! We're just putting a broad story to a broad concept without going too overboard, so I called an eye thing a peeper and had it do eye stuff.

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