Day 22 covered Korrigans and the Morrigan. This piece, from the team at Tyrian Games, covers three Breton fae figures that pillar didn't have room for: the jetins, the groac'h, and the Yannig an Aod. All three appear in HAWKER's bestiary or lore. None have meaningful presence in modern indie gaming. All are public domain and ready for developers to use.
TL;DR
- Jetins are small malicious fae associated with standing stones and ruined dolmens in Breton folklore.
- Groac'h are elderly female fae, often witch-like, associated with islands and sea-caves.
- Yannig an Aod, or "Little Johnny of the Shore," are the souls of the drowned, appearing on coastal paths at night.
- HAWKER uses all three as lore references or bestiary entries, drawing on Le Braz's 19th-century documentation.
- None of these figures appear in modern major indie games, which makes them genuinely untapped folkloric territory.
The jetins
Jetins are small, malicious fae creatures in Breton folklore, closely related to Korrigans but with sharper edges. Where Korrigans are ambivalent (sometimes helpful, sometimes dangerous), jetins lean consistently hostile. They're associated with specific geographic features: standing stones, ruined dolmens, tumuli, and the ancient megalithic sites that scatter Brittany's landscape.
The jetins' relationship to place is the specific thing that distinguishes them. A Korrigan might be anywhere. A jetin is attached to a specific stone or ruin. The folklore often describes jetins as "guardians" of these sites, though the guardianship is antagonistic. Travellers who rest near a dolmen at night may be tormented by jetins until dawn.
In HAWKER's world, jetins are referenced in the lore alongside the Korrigans and bugul-noz as older fae predating the Fall. Our bestiary notes the bugul-noz as "more ontologically related to jetin, Korrigans, groac'h or other malicious fae creatures." This positions jetins as part of the old Ysward stratum, untouched by the akhlotic blight that reshaped the Fallen.
Games using jetins directly: very few. Some Pathfinder and D&D third-party supplements include jetin statblocks. No major indie games to our knowledge use the figure. This is whitespace for developers willing to research the tradition.
The groac'h
Groac'h (pronounced roughly "gwok") are elderly female fae in Breton folklore, often translated as "witches" or "hag-figures" in English rendering. The most famous is the Groac'h of the Île du Loc in Brittany, whose story Émile Souvestre collected in his Breton Legends in the 19th century and which is available on Project Gutenberg. The Île du Loc groac'h lives in a magnificent underwater palace. She lures young men to her island, transforms them into fish, and eats them at leisure.
The groac'h tradition is older than most Breton fae. It probably predates the Christian overlay that shaped later Breton folklore, placing groac'h in the same stratum as the Korrigans and jetins. The figure has adapted across centuries. Some groac'h are pure villains. Others can be bargained with. A few, in particular regional traditions, are ambivalent figures who grant wishes at terrible cost.
What distinguishes the groac'h is the combination of three specific elements that don't always appear together in fae folklore. Solitary female figures, often elderly. Aquatic or island associations, particularly sea-caves and coastal rocks. Bargaining rather than combat as the primary mode of encounter. A groac'h can be outwitted, but she's rarely defeated by force.
In HAWKER's world, groac'h aren't present directly, but we use the name in our lore documentation to position the bugul-noz against a wider fae context. Our Ahès/Mari-Morgen character draws on adjacent traditions, particularly the Legend of Ys (more on which in our dedicated piece).
Games using groac'h: almost none at the indie scale. Some Welsh-mythology-adjacent games touch the tradition obliquely. The Witcher series occasionally lands near the groac'h pattern with its hag and witch figures, though none are named groac'h. This is another significant whitespace.
The Yannig an Aod
The Yannig an Aod, often translated as "Little Johnny of the Shore" in English, are the souls of those who drowned at sea in Breton folklore. They appear on coastal paths at night, particularly in Lower Brittany, and are associated with Port-Blanc and the hamlets along the Côtes-d'Armor where Le Braz collected much of his 1902 expanded edition of La Légende de la mort.
Yannig appear in several variant forms. Sometimes they're childlike. Sometimes they're grown drowned men. Sometimes they call out in voices that sound like their living names. The common thread is the unresolved death at sea, the soul that can't return home because the body wasn't recovered.
The Yannig tradition is distinctively Breton in its pairing of Catholic-overlay folklore with pre-Christian sea-spirit beliefs. The Breton coast, with its tiny fishing hamlets and centuries of maritime tragedy, produced a specific flavour of drowning-folklore that doesn't match the Celtic-inland traditions around Ankou or the Korrigans.
HAWKER uses the Yannig directly. Our Fallen Yannig in the Gwiravon bestiary are the in-game descendants of this figure. The Gwiravon is now a dried riverbed, but the folklore we built into the world imagines that Yannig were there when the river flowed, and their shades remain after the water went. The bestiary entry describes them as "the anaon of the drowned, presumably from times when the Gwiravon still flowed. They appear strangely protective of (yet less hostile than) their younger cousins."
This is the kind of folklore-plus-setting logic that we think pays off in playtest. Players who notice the bestiary entry have a question: why are the drowned Yannig here when there's no water? The answer is that the river used to flow, and the folklore knows it. That's a small thing, but it's the kind of small thing that makes a world feel coherent.
Why these three figures are worth using together
Four reasons we'd recommend developers consider all three when building Breton-adjacent worlds.
Geographic specificity. Each figure is tied to a specific geographic feature: jetins to stones, groac'h to islands and caves, Yannig to coastal paths. Using them together lets a designer build different in-world regions that feel folklorically distinct from each other.
Tonal range. Jetins lean hostile and sharp. Groac'h lean old and bargainable. Yannig lean melancholy and lost. Using them together gives a designer three tonal registers to deploy across a single folk-horror setting.
Era range. The three figures represent different strata of Breton folklore. Jetins and groac'h are older, probably pre-Christian. Yannig carry the Catholic overlay of later Breton sea-folklore. A world that uses all three gestures at the layered depth of the actual tradition.
Public domain clarity. All three are documented in 19th-century public-domain sources. Le Braz and Souvestre between them cover the territory. No licensing required, no copyright risks, and the scholarly record is rich enough to ground a creative interpretation.
A first-hand Hawker design note
When we were building the Gwiravon's bestiary in 2024, we had a design debate about how many folk-figures to include. The temptation was to lean hard on recognisable names: Korrigans, Ankou, Banshee, Ghoul. That would have been easier to communicate to players unfamiliar with Breton folklore.
We chose to go deeper instead. The Fallen Yannig, the bugul-noz, the references to jetin and groac'h in the lore, the Fallen Harvester as a Ramzel-adjacent creation, all of these are specific rather than generic. Players who recognise them get a specific pleasure. Players who don't get a world that feels researched rather than sampled.
The playtest data suggests this was the right call. Testers who looked up terms after sessions reported that the research felt rewarded, because the names lead to real folklore rather than invented words. That's the Le Braz effect. Using real folk terms backed by real research gives a world authority that invented vocabulary can't match. We owe the choice to the folklorists who did the primary work a century ago.
How to research Breton fae for your own game
Four starting points for developers wanting to go beyond the Wikipedia tier on Breton folklore.
Anatole Le Braz's La Légende de la mort chez les Bretons armoricains (1893, expanded 1902) is the canonical source. Available free in French on Wikisource. Derek Bryce's English translation, Dealings with the Dead, is on Internet Archive. Start with the chapters on intersignes for the omen figures, then the sea-folklore sections for Yannig.
Émile Souvestre's Breton Legends is on Project Gutenberg. More approachable than Le Braz, translated into English, and richer on the groac'h and jetin material than Le Braz's death-focused collection.
Walter Evans-Wentz's The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries from 1911 covers Brittany alongside the other Celtic regions. The interpretive frame is dated but the field notes are invaluable.
Pierre-Yves Lambert's 20th-century academic work on Breton language and folk-terminology is the most recent scholarly layer. Harder to access (some paywalled) but useful for linguistic specifics and etymology.
FAQ
What are jetins?
Small malicious fae creatures in Breton folklore, associated with standing stones and ancient megalithic sites. Related to Korrigans but more consistently hostile.
What are groac'h?
Elderly female fae in Breton folklore, often witch-like. The most famous is the Groac'h of the Île du Loc, collected by Souvestre in the 19th century.
Who are the Yannig an Aod?
The souls of those who drowned at sea in Breton folklore. They appear on coastal paths at night, particularly in Lower Brittany.
Does HAWKER use these figures?
Yes. Yannig appear directly as Fallen Yannig in the Gwiravon bestiary. Jetins and groac'h appear in lore references that position other creatures within the wider Breton fae tradition.
Are these figures public domain?
Yes. All three are documented in 19th-century public-domain sources including Anatole Le Braz and Émile Souvestre. No licensing required for creative use.
What's the difference between Korrigans and jetins?
Korrigans are ambivalent, sometimes helpful. Jetins are consistently hostile and bound to specific stones or ruins. Both are small-fae in the same broad tradition, but the behavioural registers differ.
Spoiler wall
Everything above keeps to the demo-line bestiary for Hawker. The Fallen Yannig and bugul-noz appearances in the Gwiravon are shown in the first seven days. Specific post-demo lore and later-game Breton creature appearances sit behind this wall.
Closing
Three Breton folk figures games rarely use, all public domain, all documented, all tonally distinct. HAWKER uses them because the game's world is richer for the depth. If you're building a folk-horror game and want to go past Korrigan and Banshee, the bench is much deeper than the tradition's surface suggests.
Wishlist HAWKER's September 2026 launch.
Next read: Breton folklore in modern games, or Korrigans and the Morrigan.