Gloam Cats: Watchers of the Wood

Project Type

Creature & Folklore Development

Tagline

An original folklore project exploring the mythology, behavior, and firsthand accounts of a shadow-born creature known as the Gloam Cat.

Role

Writer | Illustrator | Worldbuilder

Skills

Lore Writing, Environmental Storytelling, Visual Development, Creature Development, Worldbuilding, Short Fiction, Illustration, Progressive Narrative Revelation

Overview

Gloam Cats: Watchers of the Wood is an original creature and folklore project developed as part of the mythology surrounding The Keeping. Gloam Cats are shadow-born creatures said to gather beneath moonlight, appearing most often at boundaries and transitional spaces.

Rather than defining the creature through a single established mythology, the project builds its folklore gradually through illustration, firsthand encounters, traditional warnings, observed behavior, and archival-style accounts recorded by the Mythkeeper S. Rowan. Each new account adds another piece to an incomplete record, allowing the mythology—and the reader's understanding of the creature—to evolve as more encounters are documented.

Creative Approach

The Gloam Cats were developed through a naturalist approach to worldbuilding. Rather than beginning with a complete explanation of the creature, I approached them as something that had been encountered in the wild: observed, documented, interpreted, and passed between travelers before anyone could fully understand what they were seeing.

Their mythology is constructed through fragments of evidence. Firsthand accounts establish recurring behaviors, traditional warnings reveal what people within the world believe about them, and illustrations provide a visual record of encounters that cannot always be explained. S. Rowan serves as both Mythkeeper and observer, collecting these fragments without necessarily having the authority to determine which interpretation is true.

This structure allows uncertainty to become part of the worldbuilding itself. Details repeat across otherwise unrelated encounters, interpretations conflict, and established folklore changes as new evidence is collected. The Gloam Cat initially appears ominous—a creature associated with shadows, watching, and the warning that it should never be followed—but each account is designed to complicate that assumption and gradually reveal that the oldest stories about a creature are not always the complete ones.

Status

Ongoing

Year

2026