Threadmire owl

ENTITY FILE: THREADMIRE OWL

Overview
Threadmire Owls are navigational predators native to the Briar Reaches, often employed by the Path-Collector to hunt, unravel, or redirect lost travellers. These spectral birds are composed partially of stitched feathers and memory-thread, and their presence signals the erasure or rewriting of paths. They do not hoot—they whisper time backwards.

They are not birds. They are spools of misdirection with wings.

Appearance

• Wingspan: 2 to 3 feet.
• Plumage: Ash-grey to bone-white, often visibly stitched in places with black thread.
• Eyes: Iridescent and shattered-looking—like compass glass after impact.
• Feet: Grasping, talon-like, often carry thread loops or thorn-twigs.
• Sound: Produce a rustling-hiss or backwards ticking in flight.

Behaviour and Abilities

• Path Unpicking: Can erase the memory of paths taken, turning trails into mazes.
• Night-Vision Through Time: See not only in darkness, but through the residue of decision—following regret like scent.
• Memory Tracking: Hunt those who stray from chosen paths, especially oathbreakers, doubters, or those searching for someone lost.

Signs of Presence

• Clockhands spinning erratically on analogue watches.
• Forgotten objects left at known locations.
• Feeling like you’ve “walked this way before” when you haven’t.

Folklore and Signs

• “Feather of Forgetting”: A single white feather in a traveller’s bag is seen as a warning that an owl has marked their route for erasure.
• Spindle Blessings: Superstitious wanderers carry small spindles or skeins of red yarn to guard their paths from being unwound.

Effect on Earth and Human Minds

• Mild Exposure: Disorientation, route retracing, misremembering origins of journeys.
• Prolonged Exposure: Partial memory collapse around physical navigation. Victims may forget why or where they are travelling.
• Long-Term Contact: Path amnesia, verbal loop traps (“I was going to… I was going to…”), and temporal misplacement.

Summary for Field Operatives

Trait	Detail
Threat Level	Moderate to High. Extremely disorienting.
Signs of Presence	Memory loss, temporal loops, altered trails.
Containment Risk	Medium. Can pass through maplines, portals, or dream-walks.
Engagement Advice	Use braided yarn wards and compass stabilisers. Mark trails with
	symbol-anchored objects, not memory. Do not travel alone.

Quote from Field Report #301:

“It flew straight into my lantern and vanished. After that, I couldn’t remember where the firebreak was—or which hand I’d lit it with. I had to scratch my name into my own arm to stay present.”
—FDG Navigation Log, Operative D., Nettlepass Hollow