Korrigans, the Morrigan, and Celtic Creatures Games Miss
Celtic mythology has gone mainstream in indie gaming. Hellblade made Celtic dread a prestige tone. Dredge borrowed the atmosphere. The Witcher 3 used parts of it. And yet most Celtic-atmospheric games stick to a handful of well-known creatures (banshees, selkies, the occasional druid) and miss the richer roster that Celtic folklore actually offers. This piece, from the team at Tyrian Games, is about the Celtic creatures games tend to miss, with specific attention to the Breton figures like Korrigans and Mari-Morgans that HAWKER uses.
TL;DR
- Celtic folklore includes many more distinct creature types than Western games typically deploy.
- Underused figures include Korrigans, Mari-Morgans, Bean-nighe, Each-uisge, and the Cailleach.
- The Morrigan is relatively well-known but rarely rendered accurately.
- HAWKER uses Korrigan and Mari-Morgan traditions directly. Most indie games could borrow from the same sources, which are all public domain.
- Specificity in folklore signals research. The attentive audience notices when a game does the work.
Korrigans
Korrigans are small magical creatures in Breton folklore, often described as fairy-like or dwarf-like depending on village tradition. They live under stones, near springs, and at the edge of fields. They're tricksters rather than pure villains. Some Korrigans are kind to travellers. Some are dangerous if mistreated. Some are both, depending on mood and the time of year.
Why games miss them: the name is less mainstream-recognisable than "fairy" or "dwarf," and default worldbuilding leans on the recognised names. The result is that games use Korrigan-shaped creatures under generic names, missing the specific cultural flavour that would make their settings feel more lived-in.
Where they appear, honestly. HAWKER uses Korrigan as an in-world category. Ysward's humans initially mistake the Laustic for Korrigans, and the name sticks in rural slang. Some Pathfinder and D&D third-party supplements include Korrigans as statblocks. Scattered indie games with Breton-inspired settings occasionally reference them, usually in passing.
Mari-Morgans
Mari-Morgans are water-fairies in Breton folklore, plural form of Morgen, adjacent to the Welsh Morgan tradition but distinct. They lure sailors and swimmers to their deaths. The Breton tradition emphasises melancholy. Mari-Morgans are often described as mourning rather than malicious. Similar to Slavic Rusalka traditions, and similar in tone to the Greek sirens but without the heroic-adventure framing that made sirens into a standard fantasy set-piece.
Why games miss them: they're confused with sirens and Rusalka. When a game needs a water-dangerous-female creature, designers default to sirens. Mari-Morgans' melancholy character gets lost in the substitution.
The Morrigan
The Morrigan is better known than the Breton equivalents. She's an Irish war goddess, associated with crows, shapeshifting, and battlefield prophecy. She appears in the Ulster Cycle and other medieval Irish texts, most famously in the Táin Bó Cúailnge.
Where games render her accurately or close to it. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice uses Celtic imagery that borrows from Morrigan-adjacent traditions. Assassin's Creed Valhalla has several Morrigan references in its Irish DLC. Bayonetta's eponymous character has design nods to the Morrigan figure, though she's named Bayonetta rather than Morrigan.
Where games miss her: most renderings reduce the Morrigan to "war goddess," flattening the shapeshifting, prophecy, and seasonal-agricultural dimensions that make her distinctive in the Irish sources.
Bean-nighe
The Bean-nighe is the washing-woman of Scottish and Irish folklore, a banshee-adjacent figure who washes the bloodstained clothes of those about to die. She's a death-omen rather than a cause of death. Specifically feminine, specifically solitary, specifically found near rivers at night.
Why games miss her: banshee dominates the "wailing Celtic woman" design space. The bean-nighe's specificity as a washer rather than a wailer is a much better visual and narrative hook that games rarely use. Her role is closer to Ankou's than to a banshee's, which makes her a natural fit for games already using psychopomp patterns.
Each-uisge
The each-uisge, or water horse, is a Scottish water-demon that appears as a beautiful horse near lochs. Anyone who mounts it is carried into the water and drowned. Closely related to the kelpie but specifically loch-dwelling.
Where it appears: occasionally in Scottish-themed indie games. Still underused relative to how well the creature design would translate to interactive media.
The Cailleach
The Cailleach is the divine hag of Irish and Scottish folklore, associated with winter, stone, and mountain weather. She creates landscapes by dropping stones from her apron. Not a creature in the ordinary sense. A primal force with creature-like personification.
Why games miss her: she doesn't fit the hero-or-monster binary that most fantasy games use. Her ambiguity, as creator figure, old woman, weather force, makes her hard to statblock. So she's usually left out. Games that do include her, like a few small-team projects we've seen at Steam Next Fest, tend to find her one of the most memorable figures in their worlds.
Other underused Celtic figures
A quick roll call. The Pooka is a shape-shifting trickster who often appears as a horse, and usually gets rendered too cutely in mainstream work. The Dullahan is a headless rider, more serious than the Sleepy Hollow version. The Merrow are Irish sea creatures similar to Mari-Morgans but distinct in temperament. The Grugach are Scottish solitary spirit guardians of herds. The Gaunch is a Welsh giant-dog that rarely appears in anything. The Cat Sith is the fairy cat of Scottish folklore. Each of these figures could sustain a whole game's worldbuilding, and most of them haven't been mined at serious depth by anyone except academic folklorists.
Why this matters for game design
Two reasons using less-recognised Celtic figures instead of defaulting to banshees and leprechauns gives your game an edge.
Specificity signals research. Players who know folklore recognise when a game is doing the work. Korrigans show up in your world and someone on the team read Le Braz. That's visible to the attentive audience and they respect it. The broader audience doesn't notice consciously but responds to the coherence. A game that uses Korrigans feels more distinct than a game that uses generic fairies, even if the underlying mechanics are similar.
Less-used figures give the designer room. A banshee comes with associations. A Korrigan doesn't, for most players. That lets you decide what the creature is in your world without fighting prior knowledge. HAWKER's Korrigans function differently from any specific Breton retelling because we blended several traditions, and players come to them with no preset expectations to work against.
A first-hand Hawker example
One of the most specific design decisions we made around Celtic folklore in Hawker was with the Mari-Morgans. In our early worldbuilding, we were going to call them sirens. The name is familiar. Players would know what they are. Development time saved.
Then we talked to a folklorist friend during a playtest in 2024. She was polite about the sirens. Then she asked why we weren't using the Breton term, since the setting was explicitly Breton. The sirens were doing work the Breton tradition already had a word for.
We changed it. The Mari-Morgans kept most of the design language we'd built for the sirens, but the name change rippled through the worldbuilding in unexpected ways. Players who noticed started asking questions about the mourning tradition, which led to lore entries we hadn't planned to write, which led to a small set of dialogue scenes about loss that wouldn't have existed under the "siren" name. The word changed the world. That was the lesson. Specific folk terms bring their cultural weight with them, and a game that uses the right name often ends up richer than one that uses the lazy one. We owe that folklorist a credit when the game ships.
FAQ
What is the difference between a Korrigan and a fairy?
Korrigans are a specific Breton tradition of small magical creatures, often associated with stones, springs, and the edges of fields. "Fairy" is an Anglo-Germanic umbrella term that covers many similar creatures across European folklore. Korrigans share DNA with fairies but have specific Breton characteristics that fairies in the general sense don't.
Is the Morrigan the same as the Mari-Morgans?
No. The Morrigan is an Irish war goddess. The Mari-Morgans are Breton water-fairies, the plural form of Morgen. They share the "Mor" root, which refers to sea or great, but they're from different folkloric traditions and serve different roles.
What Celtic creatures appear in HAWKER?
Korrigans are referenced as an in-world category that humans use to describe the Laustic. Mari-Morgans appear as creatures the player may encounter. Ankou is the main antagonist. Specific named figures trace to Breton folklore as detailed in our pillar piece on Breton folklore.
Are Korrigans dangerous?
Varies by story. In some traditions Korrigans are kind to travellers who treat them well. In others they lure people to drown or die in the forest. The Breton folklore consensus is that they're neither purely good nor purely evil. Their behaviour depends on how they're treated.
Can indie developers use Celtic creatures without licensing?
Yes. Primary Celtic folklore sources are all public domain. Specific modern novels or game settings that include Celtic creatures are under their own copyright, but the underlying folklore is free to use.
A reading list for Celtic folklore beyond the creatures
If the creature-level detail interests you, the scholarly context rewards the wider reading. Lady Augusta Gregory's Gods and Fighting Men from 1904 is the Irish mythology starting point, and is in the public domain. James MacKillop's Dictionary of Celtic Mythology is the academic reference for anyone wanting to sort the traditions cleanly. Marie Heaney's Over Nine Waves retells the key Irish cycles in accessible prose. Anatole Le Braz's La Légende de la mort is the Breton starting point for death-folklore specifically. Evans-Wentz's The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries from 1911 covers the whole Celtic fringe, is in the public domain on Project Gutenberg, and is still one of the best single volumes in English. Reading even two of these gives you enough context that the creatures above will feel like parts of a larger living tradition rather than freestanding monsters.
Spoiler wall
Everything above keeps Hawker at the level of worldbuilding and public lore. Mari-Morgans as a creature category and Korrigans as a naming convention are both shown in our trailers and store page. Specific late-game encounters with named Mari-Morgans sit behind this wall.
Closing
Celtic folklore offers a much larger roster of creatures than games typically deploy. Korrigans, Mari-Morgans, the Bean-nighe, the Cailleach, the Each-uisge. Each has enough specificity to give a game a distinct flavour. The public domain sources are free. The fields we're grazing in are under-grazed. The games that take advantage will feel more specific than the games that default to banshees.
Next read: Breton folklore in modern games, or Ankou in games.