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A Red Cap or Redcap, also known as a powrie, is a type of malevolent murderous goblin found in Irish and Scottish folklore.

Aka : Fir Larrig, Dunters

Redcap.jpg

Nature

Description/Morphology

An emaciated man with a leathery body and little or no hair, a Redcap carries a sharp wooden scythe or an iron pike to strike down all who invade the area he has decided to guard for the time being. The Red Cap he wears, and for which he was named, is said to be made of dried human skin, died in blood. He is very fast in spite of the heavy iron pike he wields and the iron-shod boots he wears.

Family

They are border goblins and live solitary

Element

Fire


Behavior

Redcaps are said to murder travelers who stray into their homes, sometimes by pushing boulders off cliffs and on to them, staining their hats with their victims' blood (from which they get their name).


Powers/Weaknesses

Redcaps must kill regularly, for if the blood staining their hats dries out, they die. Outrunning the buck-toothed little demons is quite impossible; the only way to escape one is to quote a passage from the Bible. They lose a tooth on hearing it, which they leave behind. Which means you better know a lot of passages...

Places

The Red Cap moves from place to place on a whim throughout the extreme lowlands of Scotland along the English border. He haunts the ruins of old castles and cairns which he guards with his life.


History/Beliefs

Famous

The most infamous redcap of all was Robin Redcap. As the familiar of Lord William de Soulis, Robin wreaked much harm and ruin in the lands of his master's dwelling, Hermitage Castle. Men were murdered, women cruelly abused, and dark arts were practiced. So much infamy and blasphemy was said to have been committed at Hermitage Castle that the great stone keep was thought to be sinking under a great weight of sin, as though the very ground wanted to hide it from the sight of God.

Yet Soulis, for all the evil he wrought, met a very horrible end: he was taken to the Nine Stane Rigg, a circle of stones hard by the castle, and there he was wrapped in lead and boiled to death in a great cauldron.


Art / Fiction

Popular culture

  • Red Caps are featured in the game Lost Magic as a common enemy along with Purple Caps.
  • Red Cap is Monster in My Pocket #25. They appear in the video game, sliding down diagonal girders in the stage 4.
  • Mike Mignola, the author of the Hellboy comic book series, includes a short story entitled "Iron Shoes" which depicts Hellboy investigating an old abandoned castle in Scotland inhabited by a canabilistic goblin who wears iron shoes and hurls iron spears at Hellboy. This story can be found in Mignola's third hellboy trade paperback volume "The Chained Coffin and Other Tales" following the story "The Corpse".
  • Redcaps are mentioned in the Harry Potter series by British author Joanne Rowling.
  • Redcaps (properly called Powries) are one of the nine types of Shadow Fey or Arak in Ravenloft. They are always of Chaotic Evil alignment.
  • Redcaps are enemies which match their original description of goblins in the MMORPG City of Heroes.
  • Redcaps are one of the basic Kiths of Kithain in Changeling The Dreaming, the RPG by White Wolf. They are strong supporters of the Unseelie court, often to the point of torturing their Seelie members. The redcaps' incredible appetite also figures strongly in the game.
  • Red caps (aka powries) are also some of the monsters in R.A. Salvatore's DemonWars series.
  • The Final Fantasy series, most notably in Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Redcaps appear and they are considered members of the goblin family, often being the weakest members of this family.
  • In the first Mage graphic novel: The Hero Discovered by Matt Wagner, redcaps serve as all-purpose henchmen to the Umbra Sprite, a powerful spirit of darkeness. Though not armed with pikes, they use Elf-Bolts fired from a sling and wear iron shod boots.
  • Redcaps also appear in the game Dark Cloud 2 or Dark Chronical as it is known in Britain. Here the creatures are dwarfed no higher than the main character's knee and wear a red cap which falls over the top of their eyes. Although far cuter than the original folklore, the redcaps are still as vicious, maintaining an annoyance unparalleled by other enemies. Some have names and as you continue through the Forest Dungeon a change occurs and some can have different colours of caps.
  • A Card named Murderous Redcap appears in the collectable card game, Magic the Gathering. It is classified as a Goblin Assassin type creature. It is aligned with the colors Black and Red.

References—related sources and media

External link


Source

Part of this article consists of modified text from Wikipedia, and the article is therefore licensed under GFDL.