Most people believe it is the human mind that gives birth to legends. I have come to doubt that notion.

K. Ntuli

Amberley, Sussex: 1981.

Kevin McCabe, 23, returns home after a three-week coma following a motorcycle accident. On the way home, his nurse, Steven Totnes, tells him about the latest sighting of the Red-Haired Dog of local legend. Though Totnes insists that the legend is as old as time, McCabe, himself an Amberley native, has never heard of such a being. That night, when McCabe’s mother visits him, he asks her if she’s ever heard of something called a Red-Haired Dog; to his surprise, she presents him with a photograph taken in 1975, which depicts McCabe himself wearing a Red-Haired Dog Halloween costume.

Vuosaari, Helsinki: 2016.

Anton Rogers, 50. Rogers, an American tourist on a sightseeing tour, encounters what he describes as an ape-like figure while crossing a parking lot at night. He reports the sighting and subsequent interaction to the local police force, who produce an artist’s depiction to present to the press. This drawing of a six-legged, bright red creature becomes a minor meme in Finnish internet communities due to the poor quality of the artwork, and fanart of it soon begins to spread. In 2019, nine statues are unearthed in the Sammallahdenmäki Burial Site; five of them depict six-limbed creatures with shaggy fur, and examination of their surviving pigment reveals that they were all at one point dyed red. Despite suspicions of hoaxing, the statues have been successfully dated back to the Bronze Age.

Cape Town, South Africa: 2020.

Folklorist Kimberly Ntuli, 39, works on her latest paper on the Red Beasts and their role in the Chaoskampf. Following a computer crash, she accidentally restores one of the draft's older saves and loses three months’ worth of progress. She is surprised to find that the retrieved document is a finished paper, ready to publish and far exceeding her current draft in length. It contains no references to the Red Beasts whatsoever.

As of 2022, sixty-three geographically distinct cultures have a Red Beast equivalent in their mythology. This number is expected to double by 2025.