Welcome to the BCwPA

Intro by BCwPA Agent Layla

What is the BCwPA? What does it stand for? Only those permitted to know are able to find out...

Transcript

Two large, golden eyes and an upraised nose float to the surface, tearing algae carpeting the bogwater. Unblinking and seemingly inanimate, life thrives around this behemoth. Scum sloughs from its brow onto its eye, causing it to blink; only the fly on its nose notices, buzzing away. 

Sitting on the bank, with my binoculars focused, I see that the creature's black oval pupils are finally stirring. They follow forms flitting between wide-leafed vegetation, reedy grasses, slender trees, but focus on one dipping and diving into the mire: a wayward Teal dabbling for water bugs. 

The duck drifts unknowingly closer; the frog's eyes cross, and its body tenses slightly as the animal nearly touches its snout. The bird plunges back down into the water, its black and white tail pointing upwards and feet splayed; like the snap of a mouse trap, the predator lurches forward, its maw suddenly stretching to encapsulate its prey. Just as quickly, the amphibian's jaws snap closed, crushing its meal with a great splash and muffled squawk. The swamp's peace disturbed, all other life flees the scene in brief, chaotic terror. 

Adjusting, the giant opens its mouth slightly, clamping down at another angle repeatedly, compacting its food. With jerky movements and an undulating throat, its eyes push down, sinking into its skull; the duck is forcefully swallowed. The bog soon forgets the violence, settling into a new stillness. The creature slowly sinks. Its rounded body flattens and settles back into the mud. A lost feather and wavering, black hole in the greenery is all that hints at what lurks below.

Hidden here, deep within the swamps, fens, and bogs, sits the world's largest amphibian. I call it the Great Swamp Frog.

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This entry is from a field journal, documenting an encounter in Ohio in an area once known as the Great Black Swamp. The page includes quick sketches, numerous notes, and detailed illustrations showing off animal behavior, anatomy, and other observations. These are clues to where and when this story takes place; it is a call to go see and verify this account. The journal is ancient and fragile, with brown, tattered, crumbling pages filled with various stains, smears, and debris. It may be 100% factual. Yet, it is just as likely to be completely fictitious - only the author knows. And the author, and others like them, have a complicated track record.

This journal is a book called a BCWPA Field Guide. For the most part, they are personal field journals with observation notes, questions, thoughts, and drawings in a style unique to each individual. Created by a club of naturalists, there are hundreds of thousands in existence, with each member devoted to filling out a page once every two weeks with the things they saw and learned. Some journals are a few hundred pages, others less than fifty; some books are thousands of years old, others only a few months, with new ones always in progress. The journals are collected and preserved by an organization called BCwPA, where they can be studied and referenced by other naturalists.The club’s first tenet, “Be watchful, be curious, be scrawling,” is often etched on the first page of the oldest volumes. 

As with everything, BCwPA books have gone through stages and trends. Image stylings and writing techniques have come and gone, with new ones continually progressing, being created. Three major forms have stood the test of time: the Bestiary Scribe, the Natural Historian, and the Notebook Scribbler. Most BCwPA members create in one of these styles, based on medieval manuscripts, scientific illustrations and study, or an artist’s casual sketchbook. The Bestiary Scribe tends to focus on myths and legends, the Natural Historian on biology, ecology, and anatomy, and the Notebook Scribbler on culture, overviews or general notes, and one’s personal journey.

Not too long after its founding, the organization began to grow excited about animals you would call cryptids; creatures so strange and rare that many were believed to have never even existed at all. While all living things were earnestly studied, a game developed on the side, slowly infiltrating each journal. Called “Muddy Waters”, members would seek out stories of beasts and beings not proven to exist. They would then slyly include them in their otherwise straightforward records. There were a few rules to the game, though. First, to play, one had to do diligent research. Stories and sightings of the creature must be thoroughly documented and collected. Then, the areas where it was encountered must be searched and studied for any signs of life, past or present. If the individual felt they had enough evidence to disprove or deny the creature’s existence, it was fair game for Muddy Waters. 

Based on what the naturalist learned, and confined to the statements and descriptions of genuine witnesses, club members created realistic fictional field studies complete with notes and data like any other entry. From behavior and internal mechanisms to sensory details and environmental concerns, the goal was to create a case for the animal that was so compelling that others believed it, to generate interest in the natural world, and promote curiosity. In good fun, players of Muddy Waters knew that as other naturalists revisited others’ research, they would eventually come to the truth. Yet, with more eyes in these areas of strange occurrence, if there truly was anything out there, someone was more likely to find it - and, more excitingly, proof. 

Over generations, BCwPA documented new species, watched the end of others, and learned much about the life found all around them. Shockingly, they found that cases of new cryptids were on the rise - independent of their self-contained journaling game. These were not just cases of misidentification, displacement, or originating from strange, ingested substances, but extinction. Once mundane creatures were growing rarer and rarer over time as pollution, habitat destruction, and other unnecessary, unnatural events overwhelmed them. In just a few generations, known animals became cryptids, their appearances and sounds and smells and lives alien, sometimes frightening, and usually exaggerated in recollection. Saddened by the pattern, BCwPA began seeking ways to help prevent these sorts of cryptids from developing. Thus came into being the second tenet: “Be cryptid, be kind,” meaning, be respectful and considerate of the life around you. Reduce harm. Leave so little of an impact on the wild that you may as well be a cryptid to it. They then began using their work to encourage conservation.

Hiding and keeping to themselves, the members, or ‘agents’, of BCWPA are cryptids themselves. The organization was founded by a group of medium-sized creatures known as Ballyravens. A type of fae called a pwca - p-w-c-a - Ballyravens are bird-headed humanoids that can shapeshift into various forms, but not without limits. Like all life, Ballyravens are not a monolith and cannot be accurately defined in a few sentences. However, those tied to BCwPA are unique, gathered together by similar interests and ideals. B-C-W-P-A - the Ballyraven Cryptid Wildlife Protection Agency- is an anagram of pwca with a B at the beginning for Ballyraven and the first word of each of the club’s tenets. Upon joining the club, each new member is issued a field journal. As the group grew, they separated into six smaller teams with similar interests, of which they adventured and journaled alongside. Generally curious beings, BCwPA Ballyravens love to learn about any organism - common or rare, living or long-extinct, real or imaginary or unknown. 

As a rule, fae rarely directly interact with humans and never share their personal name. BCwPA is an exception. You are able to come across this broadcast as members have decided to welcome you into the organization. The BCwPA archives are being translated for your enjoyment and learning; in exchange, we ask for you to consider becoming one of us. You can help keep an eye out for cryptids in your area, so none go unknown, sharing stories of the strange and unknown. You can send us questions and letters, which may be read at the beginning of a new episode. You can contribute your observations of life, so that we may all learn and discover together. You are invited to play Muddy Waters to keep us all on our toes and our minds open. Lastly, your help brings us to the third and final tenet, “Be a BCwPA agent”: a call to educate others and promote being curious, being kind, and being a friend of nature.

There’s a lot of cryptid podcasts out there; we want to give you something different. Which parts of our research are factual, known hoaxes, genuine stories, or Bally-fiction–and can you guess correctly?

Put on your detective hat, practice your skepticism, and let us know how you did at the end of each episode.

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As always, thanks for listening and being BCwPA. You can always find out more about cryptids by reading the Ballyraven archives at Ballyraven.com. You can submit name suggestions for each of our cryptid main characters in the Ballyraven Discord or Patreon chat. You can also send a letter to us via email at ballyraven.folklore@gmail.com, DMing us via Instagram at ballyraven_folklore, the Ballyraven Facebook page, or our website, Patreon, or Discord. We have a physical mailbox at each of our festival and convention shows and love looking through your thoughts, stories and fan art at the end of the day.

Consider becoming a BCwPA agent, visit www.patreon.com/ballyraven. 

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Want to learn to draw like a Ballyraven? Get the official BCwPA drawing guide, Cryptid Creatures: How to Draw Mysterious Beasts from Around the World. Learn how to draw 35 different types of cryptids from all around the world - and pick up a thing or two about their origins as well! For artists of all skill levels, this step-by-step drawing book will show you how to sketch basic shapes and forms, use shading techniques to help your drawings come alive, and teach you how to sketch and recreate any cryptid you’ve come across or heard about. Available at Barnes and Noble, BAM, Amazon, or wherever you buy books.