The Strawman’s Vault began as an archive room in the old headquarters of the Faylinn Defence Group – close to Rochester Castle, overlooking the River Medway and the surrounding marshes and farmland – home to the country’s biggest hotspot of fae activity.
When the FDG moved to their current headquarters beneath the British Library in London in 1998, the entire basement of the old headquarters was given over to the Strawman’s Vault as an archive and research depository of an ever expanding collection of scarecrow-related material.
The vault was left in the capable hands of Hetty May, an experienced FDG operative, when it opened in 1998. The upper floors of the house were converted into meeting rooms for the FDG, and a self-contained flat in which she lives.
Hetty May was the FDG’s scarecrow folklore expert, having been enrolled in the organisation immediately after having gained a PhD in folklore studies at the University of Kent in 1991. She quickly became in important field operative but had been retired from active field service in 1997 after her last investigation had gone horribly wrong. After going missing for three days she had been found with her hands nailed to a post in a muddy field. Crows were pecking around her feet, and her lips had been sewn together with straw leaving her unable to shout for help. Even when the stitches were removed it was weeks before she was able to utter a sound.
Over 25 years later, Hetty is still custodian of the Strawman’s Vault. She seems to have aged very little since the incident, still looking like a woman in her early 30s although she is now almost double that. She has a faint scar extending from her lips, making her look as though she has a permanent smile from a distance. Her eyes are bright but since she was found that day they have been mismatched: her left eye still its original dark brown; her right one has a strange, flowing pattern of browns and golds – as if she has tiny flecks of straw floating in her iris. Hetty always wears white cotton gloves. Her colleagues believe her hands are disfigured by scars from the nails that held her to that post. In truth, her right hand has been damaged in a stranger way. Her palm and finger tips are permanently sprouting small wisps of straw, growing continually from her hands. She needs to pluck them every few days now but has noticed that as the years pass, the growth seems to become faster and the straw thicker. She keeps this a secret, not letting any of the FDG medical staff know about this; terrified this may mean she is slowly losing her humanity and turning into something other.
Faylinn Defence Group 