Nymphlopedia
Entry 31: Dust Nymphs
"Vince, Sonata, you two help them get to safety." Tania said.
"But I'd rather fight the storm!" Said Sonata. "I mean, isn't 'helping people by protecting them' more of your sort of thing?!"
Tania rolled her eyes. "It's easier to blast a dust storm with my magic than it is to cut it with a sword."
"Oh."
"Or shoot it." She glanced at Vince.
So, right, they were in a Human settlement. And yeah, something Vince could argue with Tania with later, they all had weird-looking cubical homes. Sonata complained as she evacuated people - who were all also used to her nudity by then. Vince, to a lesser degree, wasn't fond of playing the role of a passive person.
The dust clouds rolled in, but Tania stayed at the border of the town, standing firm, staff in her hands. She took a deep breath and aimed the staff, shooting a burst of green in its direction.
The cloud was blown back because yeah she helped finish off Cthulhu's skeleton ages ago, and recently a mechanical recreation of it, I mean a harmless cloud of dust was nothing.
She took a deep breath. "I really hope that didn't-"
"Oh thank you!"
A dark orange Nymph, half dusty and half wet with water, emerged from the nearby lake and stretched herself out. Vince and Sonata also came out of the latest home they were behind.
"So we were fucking useless because the storm didn't even hit the town at all!" Sonata complained. "Ugh, we didn't need to do any of that! I hate not doing anything important!"
"You don't feel just a little good for helping people out and helping them not have to fight off a big dust cloud?" Vince asked.
"Yeah blah I do I guess I mean you know I don't just fight monsters you've seen me at the soup kitchens."
"...Where you whine every break."
"Yeah sure." She turned to the Dust Nymph. "...Oh, hello there!"
"I was about to save our Human neighbors myself, you helped me not have to put in that much work."
"You trying to steal credit or something because I do that all the time and I love doing that, hahaha." Sonata laughed.
"No! I... don't know how to prove that, but I could do something in return..."
Sonata whipped out her cell phone and walked over to her.
"See this website? It's the official website of where we're from, the Naked Empire. Maybe you could just check it out. Show it to your friends. See if... anybody wants to move over there and join, maybe?"
"Did you ask any of the townspeople?" She yawned and stretched out.
"I did and they said, 'If our Nymph neighbors show up, ask them.'"
Dust Nymphs.
The daughters and sons of dirt and water mixing together. They have a unique way of looking at how the dry and wet mix. They still hate both the Mist and the Drought.
Preferred Environment: Dust Swirls/Dust Lakes.
Environment Threat Level: Peaceful.
Environment Stats: Dry above water. Average Temperature. Moderate on the Mundane-Fantastic scale. Common. Generally large fields of dirt, with flora and fauna specialized in taking dirt and dust over large quantities of plant life. Prone to dust swirls. Has some lakes, which are usually deeper than one might think they are.
Other Names: "Dirt Nymphs," "Puddle Nymphs," Soil Nymphs, Blinkroot Nymphs.
Affinity: Water.
Color: Dark Orange. (Brown, if you insist.)
Traditional Costume Weapon: Small whirls of dust, usually around one half of them, and small splashes of water, usually around the other half. Aides with commanding both dust and water. Especially underwater dirt.
Vince's Comment: Surviving against them is okay, as long as you can find some nice, solid ground. Their biggest trick is to kick up a dust storm from the dirt, so make sure you can prevent that from happening. All Nymphs are a lot easier to defend against out of their element. Then again, I guess you could say the same for me, put me in the Underworld and I'll start cooking.
Sonata's Comment: Cozy. They're pretty cozy. They have some really good chairs and beds and stuff.
Tania's Comment: Dust Nymphs.
Nymphae Pulvis.
I have a confession to make with this one. I, holding bias of valuing some biomes over others (I still have an innate dislike to the biomes lacking in plants), and... two hundred years ago, I went over to their lands and planted some seeds. The Dust Nymphs that reside there have hated me since. I had tried to make ammends, and I believe I had been making good progress even before Sonata helped - actually, thank you Sonata - with her "Naked Empire" plan to unite the Nymph races. But still, I am ashamed of trying to disrupt the flow of nature to my bias. Their use of flat terrain and prioritizing the soil so as to leave its own unique culture without an abundance of large vegetation taking over it is just as valid as the other Natural Biomes.
...I still have issues even looking at Blinkroot.
Closing AN:
Holy hell for some reason I really struggled coming up with this one. The first one I had issues with. I mean, I roughly planned out 1-25 way ahead of time (but I shuffled some things around, like adding a "normal swamp" one instead of Mind/Psyche, moving Psyche over to where Mushroom would have been, etc), but I managed to make up 26-30 practically on the fly (not "right on the day they were supposed to come out," no, I've still got my "queue" going strong). And I tweaked this a tiny bit when I went to the rough I made several days ago for typing the final version, from being "Dirt Nymphs" with just "Dirt Patches" and I tried reworking it from just "patches of dirt" to a more distinct biome and so that I could give it a different affinity from being two Orange Earth ones. Yeah... spoiler, but I'd like each "hue" to have a different Affinity for each set.
...Also shoot, coming back to the rough after writing the roughs of several other chapters, I realize that this is so far actually the only Nymph with one of the Herbs as an alt name. I mean, leaving off Deathweed was understandable since that's specifically for the Evil Biomes but...
Lastly I don't like how the story doesn't really focus on the Nymph herself very much. Another one for the rewrite pile, I guess.