SchNGrBTwM

[1] See what's up with the hair-face-eyes combo (and if it comes with a snack attached).

[2]

"Uh, hey," you venture.

The whatevertheshit blinks, and bares its teeth at you. The rest of it rises from the mire, and you balk at not having made the connection until you see the flutter of gills at its jade-slick throat.

A merfolk. Great*. Awesome.

The mer is thoroughly swaddled up in sea-green brocade**, enveloping them from throat to whatever's going on at the ambulating end. (You'd guess legs just based on how they're standing, but there's too much cloth going on to really figure things out.)

Apparently done with telescoping out of the water, they finally stand tall enough to cut quite the imposing figure if a) you weren't a freak beanpole of a vampire yourself and b) your boardwalk didn't give you an extra foot or so of elevation on Meir slimy Majesty.

"Don't y' ahey at me, y' grotty legger," quite un-royally says the mer. "Ah'm Crown Princess Pepperstrelle an' nominal ruler o' these waters and the above-bits like what you're begriming with your slimy grey legger-feet."

You gesture at your "legger-feet", conspicuously less damp than everything else in this swamp (thanks, boots!). The princess waves a dismissive fin-arm-thing before crossing her arms.

"Listen, legger. Yeh'r in my surf, and that means yeh'r in my surface. Service! I meant service. F'shore, yeh may be 'bout as good to me as a gule in a gyre if yeh don't have some dry to prance on, but ah'm sure I'll find a use for yeh."

All-ternatively, an' lemme make it clear for yeh I ain't got high hopes yeh can, but y'pay yeh tolls an' clear outta my jurisdictings."

She shrugs. "Yeh'r clearly not from around here, 'n by that dint ah'd be doin' yeh a disservice to jes' send yeh off to yew wouldn' have the first clue where. Ah mean, if yeh'r that despritt to make yehself Kat-fodder then traipse to yeh heart's content. Or!"

With a swish and a splash, she's leapt upon a tree branch, a good nine feet up with no running start. She plucks a glossy green fruit, tosses it down***, and picks another for herself.

"Y' stand aroun' me, look pretty and all menace-like with yeh sword there, an' I'll make sure yeh know m'Gulespoor like the back of yeh fin!"

*For more information, check out Vagrants in Transit - Chapter 2, Evangeline Exploits, Iconoclasm Publishing House

**Richly detailed in metallic threads and shining silks, marsh-water falls off it like grimy pearls, leaving the cloth spotless.

***"tha's poisonous," she warns, as you go to take a bite out of it.
[/2]

>Eat the fruit
>Go fish