The storm came down off the ridge like a judgment. Lara tightened the straps on her pack and peered through sleet at the shattered monastery clinging to the cliff. Locals whispered of a guardian who had once been man, now a mass of twisted flesh and metal—Podgey, they said, a name half-laughed, half-prayed.
Inside the monastery, prayer wheels had been pried from their axles and stacked like teeth. The air tasted of iron. Symbols—half-Buddhist, half-foreign—were etched into the walls, their lines converging on a single dark chamber beneath the altar. Lara’s headlamp carved a path through the gloom; water dripped, and something moved.
Podgey rose from a litter of relics: a hunched figure encased in a lattice of alloy and bone, its one good eye milky with age. Where flesh met metal, runes pulsed faintly. It did not speak. It had no need. Its story was written in the relics it guarded—scrolls, talismans, and a single brass reliquary, swollen with age and the scent of cedar.
Flashbacks came in shards: a monk who traded his freedom for a promise—protection for his village—then greedier men from beyond the mountains who sought power, and a device sealed with blood that bound mind to machine. Podgey had stayed, willingly at first, then as a prison. Its humanity had flaked away.
Lara’s approach disturbed more than a sleeping guardian. A private security team, their corporate sigils bright and new against the monastery’s weathered stone, surged up the stairs—guns, flash-bangs, and the practiced cruelty of men who believed profit trumped sanctity. Bullet casings clinked like tiny bells. lara croft vs the hideous hermit podgey 2021
The first clash was close and brutal. Lara moved with precision, using the monastery's angles; she disarmed, redirected, and turned the team’s aggression back on itself. But the real danger was Podgey. When the reliquary broke open—touched by careless hands—an ember of cold energy unfurled into the air. It vibrated into metal, whispered into bone. Soldiers convulsed; the lattice around Podgey fluoresced, knitting wounds.
Lara hesitated. Killing the hermit seemed desecration; letting the artifact be transported was worse. She dove into the history encoded in the relics: the device was a sentinel meant to protect sacred sites by fusing with a host, but over centuries its directives twisted. It demanded guardianship through domination.
Lara’s choice was surgical. She used the monastery's bell—hollow, resonant—to shatter the reliquary’s external casing, then threaded a specialized EMP shard from her kit into the lattice’s seam. Podgey screamed, not a human noise but something like metal grinding against tide. For a heartbeat, when the device's hum dipped, Lara met an exhausted, human face beneath the shell—eyes that recognized mercy.
She activated the EMP. The lattice collapsed like a rusted cage. The reliquary killed its last spark and went dark. Podgey sagged, vulnerable and finally small. Lara offered water. He looked at her, a question forming, then closed his eyes. The monastery exhaled. The storm came down off the ridge like a judgment
In the aftermath, Lara sealed the reliquary fragments with local priests, insisting they remain in place under watch. The corporation’s van was left in the snow, its men nursing bitter pride. As she left, the villagers gathered at the ridge, neither fully grateful nor forgiving—custodians of a site that was healed but marked forever. Lara watched the valley fall away and felt the old ache for discovery, knowing that some things required protection, not possession.
Lara Croft is the iconic protagonist of the Tomb Raider series. She's known for her:
The reception was split down the middle. Here’s why “Lara Croft vs the Hideous Hermit Podgey 2021” became a flashpoint:
To understand the 2021 confrontation, we must first understand the antagonist. The "Hideous Hermit Podgey" is not a creation of Crystal Dynamics or even a rejected Eidos villain. Instead, Podgey emerged from the depths of a now-defunct Tumblr blog called Degenerate Dungeon Delves, run by an enigmatic Scottish artist known only as "Morag." Inside the monastery, prayer wheels had been pried
Between 2018 and 2020, Morag posted a series of grotesque watercolors depicting a bloated, fungal, hermit-like creature—Podgey—who lived in the flooded boiler rooms of abandoned British manor houses. Podgey was described as "neither man nor mushroom, but something that forgot its own name 300 years ago." The character gained a small cult following for its tragic backstory: a Victorian botanist who fused with a carnivorous lichen after a ritual gone wrong.
By early 2021, Podgey had become a niche meme. Then, Lara Croft entered the chat.
On April 1st, 2021 (a date that would later cause endless confusion), an anonymous user on the r/TombRaider subreddit posted a single grainy screenshot. It depicted Lara Croft, rendered in the realistic style of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, standing on a rickety wooden bridge over a bioluminescent swamp. Below her, half-submerged, was a massive, fleshy, vaguely humanoid shape with too many knuckles and a face like a melted candle.
The title of the post read: "Exclusive: Lara Croft vs the Hideous Hermit Podgey 2021 – DLC cancelled by Square Enix."
The internet exploded—well, the corner of the internet that cares about both AAA stealth-action games and grotesque fungal hermit lore.
For 48 hours, no one could verify the leak. The image had no metadata. The lighting was consistent with the game’s engine. Fans analyzed the pickelhaube-like fungal growths on Podgey’s head. Was this a cut boss from the Season Pass? A scrapped horror-themed level where Lara, stripped of her weapons, had to outsmart a pitiful yet hideous creature in a derelict sanatorium?