Monster Dissection: Gnoph-keh

I recently re-read my old dissection of the Yugg and thought “you know, it’s been a while since I’ve roasted a bad bestiary entry”. So let’s roast a bad bestiary entry, courtesy of the Malleus Monstrorum for Call of Cthulhu 7e. 

(To be fully up front, I don’t think there’s a single good entry in the MM and I don’t expect to ever feel otherwise: Chaosium has both resources and experienced writers at their disposal, but they seem content to squander both and put out work that is consistently outdone by amateurs. I’m disinclined to give them a charitable read.)

Gnoph-keh

Something like a polar bear monstrosity, with six-limbs and covered in shaggy white hair. From its forehead rose a single horn, while its great mouth was filled with wicked and sharp teeth. Cunningly, it may walk upright on two legs or bear-like on four, other times it uses all six limbs to rip across the ice to find its prey.

This is an okay opening description. I think the last sentence is a bit bloated but compared to some other entries it is at least coherent.

Note: the ghoph-keh race of bear-like terrors is not to be confused with the Great Old One known as Gnophkehs.

Now, the great old one Gnophkehs is featured in the deities half of the Monstrorum, but its origin isn’t cited and the Lovecraft wiki, despite having sections directly plagiarized from this very book, doesn’t mention Gnophkehs at all.

Going back to the 2006 edition of the Monstrorum, however, gives us a citation for a story called - and woof, no wonder it seems to be memory-holed - “Nautical Looking Negroes” written by Peter Cannon and Robert M. Price in 1996. Men whose names appear absolutely nowhere in the modern Monstrorum, including the credits page; the Deep Cuts blog (which I discovered during writing this post and will certainly be returning to in the future, it's a very good read) had a write-up, however, which among other things revealed that yeah, maybe there’s a reason Chaosium didn’t want to include Price’s name. (The reason is active, still very-much-alive racism)

This is all to say that:

1. It’s safe to ignore Gnophkehs the Great Old One.
2. Chaosium failed to credit Peter Cannon and Robert Price, instead listing Scott David Aniolowski’s writeup from the 2006 edition of the Monstrorum as the source.

You know, if someone is nasty enough that you don’t want them on the credits page, maybe don’t use their stuff, Chaosium.

Also: If you thought a credits page can’t possibly have bad formatting, I have bad news for you. Look at this:

Anyway, back to the alien polar bears.

The gnoph-keh are a race of beings who appear to inhabit-

 One cannot appear to inhabit; one either lives in a place, or does not. If that cannot be determined, the verb should be “encountered”. 

-cold places, notably Greenland, northern Canada, and other isolated wintry wildernesses. 

I bet they perform a variety of 80s dance moves, too. 

“Cold places” is a weird vagary here, because the only two territories provided are pretty specific: near or above the Arctic circle, not in Eurasia. Antarctica not being included isn’t particularly strange, but the absence of Siberia absolutely is. Disregarding the Doyleist explanation, I can only think of two reasonable in-universe explanations:

Option A: The gnoph-keh have somehow been prevented from migrating to Siberia (or migrated out of Siberia)

Option B: The gnoph-keh are extinct in Siberia.

Option A lends itself to “...because a Great Old One is preventing them”, while Option B is open to more variety, including “...because the Soviets killed them all” and that is a hook with some bait on it (he said, of his own work)

Legend purports-

Whose legend? Given the territory established in the previous sentence the only real option would be Inuit, but that’s something of an umbrella category and you can get more specific. 

-that the gnoph-keh are the remnants of a lost tribe-

The Inuit migrated from Alaska to Nunavut and Greenland from about 1100 to 1500 AD; the earlier inhabitants of the region we just know as the Dorset culture who (according to Wikipedia article about indigenous Americans, bring a second salt lick just in case) remained in the cultural memory of the Inuit peoples as giants called the Tuniit.

I can understand the desire to keep it vague: The detailed version does entail “make up a fake legend for a real indigenous group about another real indigenous group”, but if you wanted to avoid that you can just not include the history. Or say they’re from the Dreamlands, or make up fictional groups that hold these beliefs, or something like that. Like if you say that they were once the Sannikov Islanders that one’s free because Sannikov Island doesn’t exist.

Why are these writeups always so obsessed with the origin of the monsters yet never actually doing anything with it?

-who turned from earthly gods to serve the Great Wind Walker, Ithaqua, and in so doing became something other than human. Other tales-

They’re not going to tell us who, where, or when. 

-speak of the creatures as earthly extensions of alien powers, always at the periphery, waiting and watching in the vast wilderness to pounce on those who would forsake the safety of civilization.

This is not at all exclusive with the first option, I don’t understand why they are listed separately. Still no explanation of where this comes from, so I am going to go with “this is what the Soviets believe, there were definitely some GRU paranatural division guys who believed gnoph-keh attacked people for being insufficiently Marxist.”

Some tomes-

I am going to stop asking questions and just mad-libs this: Pnakotic Manuscript 3756-G07.

 -recall the attack of the gnoph-keh upon doomed Lomar. 

This is Dreamlands material, which should probably be mentioned in the writeup.

Whatever their true origin, gnoph-keh are territorial, individualistic, and rarely encountered. 

“Gnoph-keh are highly territorial solitary predators” should be one of the first things in the writeup, because it will be directly relevant to both players and referees: how does the monster behave?

Seemingly, their solitary existence is broken only occasionally,-

How many qualifiers can we add to this verb?

-when two or more gather to form a pack for unknown reasons- 

I can only presume fucking is involved, stay tuned for my upcoming monograph “Courtship Rituals and Mating Practices of the West Greenlandic Gnoph-keh.”

—perhaps when they sense the arrival of Ithaqua or some other manifestation of the Great Old One.

This entire sentence can be reduced to “outside of the mating season, gnoph-keh gather only during manifestations of Ithaqua.”

Especially harsh winters may bring them down into lowland regions and closer to humanity.

Ambiguous sentence, needs clarification on whether the harsh winters are driving The gnoph-keh into warmer regions (which makes little sense) or if they move south with the harsh winters (much more sensible).

Weird, but expected, incongruity with territory, here. They are described as if they live in mountainous environments, which makes sense, but migrating makes less sense if those mountains are in Nunavut and Greenland - I don’t think an especially harsh winter in Nunavut or Greenland is going to have a marked differential on the “It’s Fucking Cold” scale between the mountains and lowlands.

Feared by those who are aware of their existence, there are a few isolated communities who have turned their fear into a form of worship, venerating the gnoph-keh as harbingers of icy fate and, in doing so, some have been touched by the mind of Ithaqua and turned their devotions to the Great Wind-Walker.

There’s a much easier way to frame this: 

• Community is beset by a gnoph-keh.
• Community attempts to placate the gnoph-keh.
• Gnoph-keh uses human sacrifice as a meal ticket, as it’s much easier than hunting a group of humans with rifles and snowmobiles 
• Close contact with gnoph-keh + the whole ritual murder thing and all the social damage that causes opens community to influence of Ithaqua.
• Shit gets worse until community collapses; any survivors either transform into gnoph-keh or wandering parahuman cannibals.

Monster behavior should serve as the framework of a scenario: how does this thing act and what does it do, and how is that currently going horribly for people around it and how will it react to the PCs? 

Such communities soon turn to the terrible delights of cannibalism and consort with the gnoph-keh in blasphemous ceremonies.

Stop beating around the bush and just say they fuck the alien polar bears, guys.

Also, because I am specifically this kind of pedant:

• Blasphemy = Insulting acts / words / etc directed towards sacred subjects.
• Heresy = Belief that is at odds with the orthodox doctrine of a religion. 
• Apostasy = Renunciation or abandonment of one’s faith 
• Heathenry = The religious practices of Those People Over There Who Aren’t Us

So unless ritually fucking the alien polar bear also involves shitting inside a tabernacle or getting real artistic and intentional with your violations of Qaujimajatuqangit, it’s heathen, not blasphemous.

**

So there we have it. Honestly, I like the tweaked version I made enough that I might throw it in somewhere, though it'd need a name change. I have a grammar of West Greenlandic lying around on my hard drive that would help with that.

Harping on the quality of the entry is a diminishing return, especially if I ever get the itch to do another one of these. I was going to end with a somewhat-relevant Horror Fiction Thought, but then I wrote 1320 words that didn't end up going anywhere and decided to shelve it for another day. Some long ramble about the overton window of the unknown and how modern horror often bypasses the first layer of obfuscation by putting the fragments of the cursed tome (or weird VHS tape, or the paperwork of the shadowy organization) directly in the hands of the readers, thus letting the audience fill the role once held by the Lovecraftian Protagonist. Ah well. Maybe another time.

 

The False Werewolf

Inspired by a recent episode of the Maniculum. 

**

To the greater world the faoladh (written phonetically as Fé La)  is a variety of lycanthrope from the Northwestern Isles. Several popular bestiaries describe it as an intelligent and beneficent creature, occasionally acting as a sort of guardian to travelers or livestock and contents itself to live on rabbits, fish, and wild deer when in their lupine form. Travel narratives containing faoladh encounters sell quite well, and have fueled a modest but steady stream of mainlander monster-watchers, scholars, and unclassified tourists in the isles, hoping to catch a glimpse of this rare creature (or for the greater dreamers, a glimpse of the hidden village somewhere in the moors where they can learn mystical combat arts from the peaceful wolf-folk.)

And every year a few more tourists never make it home, because everything in those bestiaries is horseshit. The faoladh isn't even a lycanthrope; it's a mimic. 

See, there's something called a clade-shift event; a population of mimics (from a few individuals up to an entire species) will undergo a radical adaptation to take advantage of an open ecolological niche, and this transformation is performed at such totality that the mimicry abilities are entirely lost and the novel form becomes permanent. CS Events are the second most common source of new and emerging species in the world next to wizard's experiments (see And Suddenly, They're Here (Habimbra, 678) and The Metamorphics (Ilwan-Shaz, 706) for a detailed exploration of the phenomenon), with an estimated 15-30% of the world's non-manmade monster species deriving through this process.

Faoladh retain both the ambush-hunting strategy and mild cognitohazardous properties of their earlier forms: unless they are exercising a significant amount of attention and focus, nearby humans will interpret the faoladh as harmless, allowing the beast to to make an easy kill. Faoladh are solitary hunters, and their area-of-effect is not strong enough to mask their a killing from observers (even those within the field); as such, their targets are primarily lone travelers or individuals separated from their group.

Most monstrumists believe faoladh are the result an extremely recent CS Event - all descriptions of the creature are dated within the last two decades, and the popular bestiaries provide either unsourced (and nearly always fabricated) folkloric traditions or distortions of extant Northwestern lycanthrope stories.

This would, under ideal circumstances, be the end of it. Corrections would be made in the next edition and life would go on. But the faoladh has proven to be remarkably popular among amateur monstrumists on the mainland, and accounts of faoladh encounters have proven to be a lucrative micro-market. The authors are by and large fantasists unfamiliar with the history and folklore of the Isles, not only continuing to proclaim that there are indeed benevolent wolf-men in the Isles, but aggressively shouting down attempts at correction by scholars and naturalists. Indeed, the lead editor of the 4th edition of The Codex Monstrissimus received so many angry letters that he had them bound in leather and put on his bookshelf.

The spread of misinformation is now so pronounced that the faoladh population has begun to demonstrate behaviors wholly invented by the writers of those false accounts, leading to a drastic increase in tourist death. Attempts to stem the further promulgation of misinformation through a public awareness campaign have been unsuccessful thus far, and it is expected that the county councils of Flat Rock, Dolmen Hill, White Creek, and Queen's Tomb will enact a travel ban and dedicated hunting season this upcoming winter to try and bring both the narrative and the foaladh population under control.

The faoladh's legacy is ultimately a case study in how misinformation endures correction. The first major publication to describe a monster, no matter how errant, will shape public perception long after it is released, even if it debunked by later research.

**

Faoladh (Fé La) 

Appearance:  Wolf-headed humanoid; grey-white or russet-cream colored fur

Defense: Rubbery hide

Attacks: Jaws that bite; claws that catch; lacerating tongue

Motivation: Hunger, territoriality 

Special Properties: Cognitohazardous area-of-effect (pacification, cognition-dulling); may shift between bipedal and quadrupedal forms; limited ability to imitate human face structure, will compensate by obscuring with facial hair.

1d10 False narratives players might have heard: This faoladh...

1. ... saves an infant from an adder that crawled into its crib in the middle of the night.
2. ... directs lost travelers to a hidden spring.
3. ... solves a mysterious murder by discerning the presence of a possessive demon. 
4. ... adopts an abandoned child and teaches them magic and/or martial arts.
5. ... delivers fish and seabirds to the house of a sick farmer.
6. ... disguises itself as a beggar to find a missing clan heir. 
7. ... falls in love with a woman wearing a daffodil-yellow dress.
8. ... rescues a noblewoman from an unhappy marriage.
9. ... guards a cache of pirates' treasure until a worthy inheritor comes forth.
10. ... retrieves a lost prize sheep.

MSF: Dangers of the World

The thought process that goes into these is the same as in my post on the Champawat Tiger - the great dangers in the world of Mother Stole Fire come from a disruption in the machinery of the world.

 

Swine-Things

Feed a pig enough human flesh and it will learn how to hate. Its bones will snap and knit themselves back together in poor imitation of a man. Great tumors will grow in its bowels and buboes and sores will open up its flesh. It will slouch forth in a knuckle-walking gait that mocks the gracefulness of apes. It will learn nothing of kindness, nor love, nor mercy, nor any of those traits that make human life endurable. Its mind will become a whirlwind of demons, swirling around in shadowy legions like a great school of blackened fish. It will hunger, and no matter how much it eats it will always hunger for more.

Swine-things rarely occur on their own - few pigs will eat enough humans for the transformation to take root. Their creation is nearly always intentional; sorcerer-kings and other tyrants looking for a convenient way of translating their pogroms into monstrous hoards that can be unleashed on their enemies.

If an individual swine-thing is allowed to reach critical mass, it will metamorphose into a hive-queen and begin spawning new swine-things on its own. At this point the danger is greatest, as the primary cap on population (the amount of human flesh needed to create each individual swine-thing) has been removed and hive size is now limited only by availability of food.

Swine-things show no signs of higher faculties - no symbolic thinking, no magic-working, no tool use beyond the occasional sharp rock.

Manticores

A tiger that devours one hundred humans will transform into a manticore, often called "the king of monstrous beasts". They retain the black stripes and deep orange coat of their former lives, though they will grow far larger than any other great cat (closer indeed in size to an elephant). Great shaggy manes fall about their shoulders, and their faces are like that of a man, though their jaws are far too wide and bear rows of serrated teeth like a shark. While they possess the ability to speak the languages of humanity they will rarely do so, except perhaps in mockery. They might be mollified through tribute, though treasure will always remain secondary to sacrifice.

The residual souls of the devoured are an irritant to the manticore, and will form pearls in its gut over time. These are a potent reagent, can be crushed and ingested to imbue the eater with a temporary rush of vitality, and are otherwise valuable simply for their rarity. Unlucky hunters (of which there are many) hoping to come home with a handful of pearls are the leading source of manticore-related deaths.

Ghouls

A slouching, pallid, scabrous creature, hardly recognizable as the human it once was. Lank, stringy hair, a long wedge-shaped snout, serrated, yellowing teeth, blind eyes. The stench of rotting meat. They are not the only monsters formed from habitual cannibalism, but they are the most systemic of them all.

Ghouls dine exclusively on human flesh, and so will not only live in those places where food is plentiful, but will encourage, in whatever way they can, the generation of corpses. So they will make deals with tyrants and despots, offering their support from the shadows in exchange for the bodies of the undesired. When there are wars, they benefit. When there is plague, they are pleased. When there are pogroms, they celebrate. When the worker dies in the factory, they are there, claws rap-tap-tapping upon the secret door, to ask for their share. They offer in turn the secrets of the deep crypts, of ages long past, of treasures and rites buried by time.

 

Wizards

Phenomenal cosmic power has a tendency to corrupt phenomenally. Not because the practice of magic is inherently corruptive, or inherently addictive, or anything of that nature - it's simply the fact that if you give a human being an easy means of fulfilling their desires and exerting their will over that of others (that is to say, give them power), it is often an arrow-swift shot right to the bottom.

It's not very useful to think of good wizards and bad wizards: there are wizards that currently pose an active threat, and those that pose only a passive one. The safest are those that become so consumed by their personal projects and their solipsistic distractions that they lose all interest in - or even awareness of - the world outside their tower. History is peppered with the others, those wizards who sought to conform the world to their visions. A cycle of would-be sorcerer-kings, emerging as if from nowhere, starting a war, carving out a personal fief for a time, and then dying. Only the ruins, again and again.

Regardless of the incredible power available to wizards, death remains unconquered. Thousands have tried and failed in the quest to overcome the end - and many will become monsters themselves in the process. They have tried and failed to create the Magnum Opus, they have tried and failed to develop a means of extending the life of the body, they have tried and failed to transfer the soul to another living body, and they have failed still in their efforts to create an artificial eternal soul, or to kindle their own eternally through the consumption of other souls. Yet they continue, and the death tolls rise ever higher - for the wizard's mind is fueled by the unquestionable belief that this time, it must certainly work.

Of the monstrous beings created by wizards there are a great many, and they include:

• Swine-Things - See above.
• Chimeras - Any creature that has been transformed from its natural state by a wizard's magic.
• Miles Agnotes - The "unthinking soldier", a human modified for equal parts docile obedience and unthinking violence. In the past, it was seen as good sport among the wizards around the Mare Interregnum to engage in intentional breeding programs of their miles, as some might do for their hounds.
• Teratoma - A wizard who has attempted to extend their life indefinitely through endless growth of the flesh. The body swiftly deteriorates from an ordered whole into a mass of muscle, bone, cartilage and half-shaped organs, eventually growing so large that it is rendered sessile.
• Vitabibor - A wizard who has attempted to extend their life indefinitely through absorbing the souls of others. Their bodies wither with the ravages of age, but they will not die. They will swiftly become dependent on their servants, and will eventually become unable to move or speak.

Of the Magnum Opus, much has been written but little needs to be said - it is the dream of something from nothing, and wizards seek it firm in the belief that no cost is too great.

 

Devils

The heart is the seat of the soul; the lungs keep it kindled and the stomach keeps it fueled. If the heart can be removed without stopping it, and it is properly sealed away, the subject might remain alive while divorced from their soul: a devil.

To devils, there are no people - only objects. Even their own persons are mere matter to them. So separated from human connections, they are greatly skilled in the calculus of risk and resource, of gain and loss. They are without empathy and possess only the barest remnants of internality. They may be bound and set to a task, which they will perform with speed and precision, but if the binding be loosed they will be cut adrift, and resort to the trace memories and desires left behind when their soul was taken.

The art of devil-making has been developed only twice: once in Atri-Tun (from where it passed to the sorcerer-priests of Wend and from them taught to the wizards of Tanniclen), and again in Pelai. Of Atri-Tun, nothing can be said. In Wend, devils are used as part of mystery cults but we know little more. In Bensael-Tanniclen, they serve in the dual city's bureaucracy, with their hearts safely sealed away in a great vault carefully monitored by both wizards and non-wizards alike. In Pelai, the Adzat and Obet councils keep a legion of war-devils as a means of deterrence.

 

The Restless Dead

The dead shall forever outnumber the living, and in solemn procession their endless shaded ranks march silently down to the dark places below the world. And while they are beyond all thought and memory, they shall still rise up in anger if their places of rest be desecrated.

The restless dead come in too many forms for categorization to be worthwhile. Each is unique, shaped by the manner of their death or the manner of the desecration, though patterns will emerge. Some will take physical forms, animating the bones or bodies they once possessed in life, or forming bodies out of spirit as the Folk and sagani do. Many remain only as ghosts, unable to interact with the world of matter and energy and thus limited to attacking the spirit with curses and maladies of the soul.

The most common form of the restless dead is the angry shade - either acting on their own, or possessing an improperly-prepared corpse and forming an ambulmorte. Either might be dealt with through a simple exorcism and restitution - cleaning the grave or making one if there had been none; naming the dead; recovering the remains and interring them properly; a sacrifice - incense, libations, paper charms, food. And so on.

However, this becomes increasingly difficult with greater forms of the restless dead - those formed from grisly murders or great tragedies. With these more powerful dead it is often necessary to combat them directly. This will not solve the problem - the shade will simply form a new body or possess another, or redouble its curses - but it might buy the living the time they need for the sanctification.

The Angered Spirits

Not all spirits of the world are friendly to humanity. Indeed, it is only those who have agreed to the Compact (or are at least neutral towards it) that we call the Folk. Many of the rest bear us no mind, and there are those opposed to us no matter what offerings we might make.

But even friendly Folk may turn against us if the Compact is broken, if we mistreat their holy places or seek to dominate the world that is rightfully theirs. Their memories are long, but they understand innately the great cycles of give-and-take. Even if the damage is severe, it is still possible to make repayment - but repayment must be of equal measure to the damage made. The spirits of the world will not be shorted what they are due, and their patience will not last forever. Sooner or later they will take their due.

Fighting an angry spirit will accomplish little, for they live as long as their loci lives, and further desecration of their holy places will bear only greater retribution. Thus it is best to begin the work of healing, and to begin it now.

Demons

A shadow cast by the fire of the soul. A parasite of the spirit. Evil deeds given form. Fears given flesh. Reflections of the worst parts of ourselves.

In the end, definitions do not matter. They are as varied as the depravities and terrors of mankind, but you will always know them by their works.  

Hell, and the Lords Therein

There is always more to say about Hell.

Two thrones sit in the great palace at the center of Dis. The greater throne remains empty, save for the sacrifices thrown to the furnace in its belly. The lesser throne is that of the Tyrannos Pangaea, head of Hell's civil government and chief priest of Moloch. As it was in the Maid's day, the Tyrannos of Hell is the sorcerer Kouros - previously court wizard to the Tribune of Coreolana. He is the Speaker for Moloch, interpreter of the will of the Devouring Machine.

Below the Tyrannos there is the Lordly House, consisting of all the many barons, marquises, and dukes of the city-nation. Here they quarrel and scheme and war amongst themselves in a great game with no end.

Below the Lordly House, there is the vast edifice of the military. Without a war to be fought, those legions that are not stationed on Hell's side of the DMZ remain in the city and enforce the laws of the Lordly House on the rest of the populace.

Below the military, there are those who are called freemen - not because they possess freedom, but because they are not legally enslaved. Most of Hell's population, even the ever-suffering commonality, would call themselves free if asked - it is a most fervently-believed lie. False-freemen serve as much of the bureaucracy of the city, though they cannot own any property of their own. They more than all the others believe that the great Dispaterian machine is necessary - necessary to drive back the chaos of the outside world, necessary to ensure the survival of humanity. They live in terror of the mad goddess Lu and her barbarian hordes, fearing that at any moment the walls of Dis might crumble under the onslaught of the savage world beyond.

Below the false-freemen, at the very bottom of Hell's crushing hierarchy, are the enslaved masses. Here they toil away their lives and die in their droves for the profit of those who hold the whip and chain. But even at the very bottom of the pits of Dis there are whispers of the promise made long ago: the gates shall be torn from their hinges, all chains shall be broken and all yokes shattered.

The Lords of Hell - Darvatius, Mammon, the Forge Baron and others - do not directly influence the day-to-day workings of the machine as much as one might expect. They might pull men and institutions into orbit around their vast masses, but they slow to break the inertia of their solitude - Darvatius, despite being the lord of conquest, took to the battlefield only hours before the end of the War of the Bull.

• Of the Tyrannos Pangaea, we have already spoken.

• Darvatius the Eternal - The man who once ruled the world, or perhaps only the demon wrought in his image. Status: Uncertain. It is unknown if he survived his battle with the Sable Maid, though his sworn legions remain active in the city.

• Mammon - Keeper of the accounts. His appearance is akin to that of an enormously fat spider, shining and golden, thousands of arms perpetually busy at ledger and abacus as he feasts lavishly on the spoils of Hell. A traitor of the Hundred-Handed Ones. Status: Active. In the wake of the War of the Bull, it seems that Mammon has become the favored Lord in Dis.

• The Forge Baron - He is such a small man, such a weak-looking man with his reedy voice and hacking cough, his dusty suit with tattered coattails, his decrepit silk hat. And yet it is his factories that fill the sky with their burnt offerings to steel and sword, lead and labor. Status: Active.

• The Butcher - A warrior from an ancient people long-lost to the wheel of years. Enormous beyond even the greatest of humans today. Mindless from long centuries - millennia - of endless violence. The spears and swords of countless failed slayers rust where they are lodged in his body, from which he will tear their broken and corroded blades to make new mountains of the dead. His wounds sew themselves back together, but the pain does not cease. From, it is thought, an ancient civilization that suffered its own emergence event. Status: Uncertain. Last seen wandering the wastelands of the far north over fifty years ago.

• Agrimas - A demon firm in the belief that they are an abandoned child of Lu and Tubalkhan, they travel the outside world in disguise, offering false visions and committing acts of anathema while wearing the form of the true gods. Status: Active, though their influence is small in scope.

• The Sun-Eater - Intends to do just that. She never got on with the others, never even pretended to willingly cooperate. Status: Unknown.

• The Worm - Thirty cubits wide and much longer still, it is a thing of soft, segmented flesh - cherry red - with mashing, grinding mouthparts at one end. Thought of some nature churns inside it, unknowable to the outside. Status: Complicated. The Worm spends its days in the sewage-flooded tunnels deep beneath Dis, and has always seemed more kin to an animal than the other Lords. It feasts upon attempted escapees and those others exiled to the depths as punishment, but otherwise does little.

• Barbarlares - A ghoul grown so fat on corpses that it has taken to moving about with the contractions of a slug. Absurd, enormous powdered wig, useless limbs like little twigs, twitching and sputtering. Chief of the slave markets and the business of corpses. Status: Active.

• Harastra, Queen of Heaven - The remains of a true dragon, animated by a legion of demons so great that not even the Tyrannos knows their number. Status: Inactive. Harastra saw battle during the War of the Bull and was damaged to such an extent that it can hardly keep itself together. In any case it has no coherent mind

There are, of course, others, who sit neatly in the box once belonging to Schrödinger that I have labeled "Narrative Convenience".

Dracolarii

The Dragon Cults have already been written about at length, and so instead I will focus on these notable members. The dracolarii - typically drawn from the wealthy of the Dracon Republics - are those who seek to transform their souls into those of dragons, using certain rites and methods derived from the mysteries of An-Hehm.

A problem arises: humans are omnivorous social primates. Dragons are solitary apex predators. To become dragon-like is to reject human bonds and human kinship, to view those who were so recently your brothers and sisters as a cat might see mice. And so often the dracolarii sow the seeds of their own undoing in rivalry with each other or cruelty to their servants. 

 

Deep Powers

There are forces beneath the earth and under the earth, in the black deepness of the waters and the deepness of the sunless sky. Distant powers, nameless powers, unknowable powers; vast beyond measure, greater than belief. Of them we say only that it is best for us to leave their places of power well alone, for they are not ours to worship.

 

Leng-Men and Moon Beasts

Every so often, one will hear tales of some poor soul abducted by the black ships with fuligin sails: A man or woman is caught unawares, bound and gagged up by a band of masked assailants, and carried out into a desolate place. Then the Leng-Men come down in their ship, and they will nod their head yes or shake their head no. If yes, they will offer payment to the kidnappers - a king's ransom in precious jewels. If no, the story typically ends with the abductee killed by their kidnappers - though some who tell these stories claim that they were able to escape through luck, guile, or the aid of the gods.

We know that the Leng-Men speak of benefactors.

We know that they gladly take people in trade.

We know that they sell icons and idols of the New Gods.

We know of a few fragmentary, terrified accounts of great pale beasts lurking in the holds of their ships.

We do not know what they want.

151 Fantastic Beings

 

Wilhelm Kuhnert

Carrying on from the previous post, here is the long-awaited list. There is no stated setting, nor theme beyond "I just think it's neat." Some are connected to others, most are not. Many come from folklore, some are my own, and some are blatantly stolen.

A List, In Brief, of 151 Fantastic Beings and Peoples

1. Agnathic Master - A variety of ancient ostracoderm that grew to intelligence, then to mastery of the magical arts, and finally to the cold detachment of the immortal. They live in the abyssal places of the world, uncaring of the apes that inhabit the surface except as far as they might be enthralled as puppets in their endless schemes with each other and their rival ancient powers.
2. Alfar - Ancient, inbred nobility of misty kingdoms beneath the hills and beyond the grip of time. Translucent, blue-veined skin stretched painfully over thin bones. Eyes of solid black. Obsessed with minute laws and decrees, and delight in the cruel punishment of infractions. They come to steal children, replacing them with simulacrums. They hate iron, fire, writing and song, and seek to erase all four from the hearts and minds of men.
3. Swine-Thing - A) Wild boars that have eaten enough human flesh to learn how to hate. B) Pigs possessed by swarms of demons. In either case, they possess just enough knowledge to retain the simplest tool usage and malice. They move about the wilderness in vast swarms, killing and devouring whatever might be in their path. Occasionally they will excavate a warren and form a hive there around their dread queen sows.
   
4. Goblin - A) Are typically about the size of a child B) have a cartilaginous skeleton and can squeeze through anything big enough to fit their (large) eyes and (many, large) teeth C) are unafraid of death and cannot permanently die D) have a distant king who is said to return when least expected E) run the Goblin Market (naturally), which exists Between Places F) wallow in trash and absurdity G) are the life of the party. H) Everything else varies greatly.
5. Troll - A large, hairless creature like an hunchbacked ape. Its body is tumorous, constantly expanding and growing ever-denser with more cancerous flesh. They loathe and fear fire, and use its image and color as displays of bravery and prowess. They prefer dark, wet environments - caves or beneath bridges. They hate goats, for goats are clever and trolls are not. Long ago, when they were a kindlier folk, they raised the troll-stones, which may still be used to communicate across great distances instantly
6. Basilisk - A sluggish, portly reptile with a pebbly hide. A slow-motion ambush predator that uses its petrifying gaze to render its prey both incapable of escape but also completely aware of their inevitable fate.
7. Manticore - A tiger that has eaten 1000 humans. Has a face like that of a man, three rows of teeth, and a long tail covered in venomous quills. The souls of those they devour are an irritant, forming pearls in their stomachs
8. Forest-Folk - Tall figures in shimmering robes of emerald and gold silk, with skin dark as bark and hair like celestial bronze. First of humanity’s allies in the world, and though their numbers have dwindled they still hold to the ancient compacts.
9. Mouldywarp - Mole-folk with pink, star-shaped noses. Live in enormous, lightless citadels carved out beneath the mountains. Nearly blind, they are rarely seen above ground before dusk or after dawn. Masters of smithing, stoneworking, and jewelcutting - their work is renowned both for quality and beauty. Small companies (never more than a dozen) will often travel throughout the hill country and mountain townships as merchants and tinkerers.
10. Zombie - A corpse animated by a minor motive spirit; alternatively, a living human who has been incapacitated by repeated application of neurotoxin and mentally dominated by a sorcerer.
11. Skeleton - Bones animated by binding a motive spirit to them. Stronger spirits can manipulate bodies consisting of bones from multiple sources, arranged in layouts they could not have had in life.
12. Lich - A powerful sorcerer that has removed their soul without killing their body and stored it in an item. They cannot be fully killed without destroying their soul-container, though destroying their resurrection-casket might delay them for centuries. As such, they take great joy in making the locations of their soul-containers obtuse and impossible to find.
13. Ooze - A catch-all term for amorphous, soft-bodied detritivores. Generally aquatic, or otherwise limited to hot, damp environments, as they will turn to dust in dry heat or freeze solid in the cold. Dehydrated oozes can be resurrected, however, so care is needed.
14. Devil - One of the legions of infernal spirits scattered to the winds by the Harrowing of Hell. Despite the dissolution of their bureaucracy, they have remained loyal to their purpose as tempters and accusers and adapted well to solitary existence. A devil will never directly harm a human - they will grant them whatever they desire, and should it result in self-destruction and the ruin of others, that's on whoever asked for the boon.
15. Blemmyes - A people without heads - the features that would otherwise be found there are instead found on their broad, barrel-like chests.
16. Dragon - Enormous lizards, diverse in form (the possession of wings, the number of limbs, etc) who took fire from the sun and declared themselves masters of all the world. They are solitary, territorial creatures, and habitually gather enormous hoards to impress mates and establish dominance against rivals. The introduction of money to dragons serves as the basis of the known world’s economy.
17. Sphinx - A great cat with a woman's face, which may or may not have wings. Delight in books, games and riddles. Typically found as the guardians of libraries.
18. Fulgurmus - A palm-sized, golden-furred marsupial that, alone among mammals, can generate an electric charge to defend itself from predators. Notoriously cute, they are a very popular subject for children's toys (despite not making very good pets).
19. Ogre - A human that has grown bloated and monstrous through the combination of excessive cannibalism (and thus the accumulation of sin) and the soul-corroding effects of gold. Typically emerge from among the landowning class in times of famine or war.
20. Ghoul - Hairless, scabrous grey humanoids. Nocturnal corpse-eaters. Either exceedingly emaciated or immensely corpulent. Dwellers of catacombs, battlefields, cemeteries, and abattoirs. Typically solitary. No fear of death or age. Perpetually hungry. Will enter a state of estivation if the local corpse supply is low.
21. Embryonic God - A floating sphere of amber theoamniotic fluid. The soft, curled form within is wreathed in a radiant halo. Simple miracles cascade off it, wild and unshaped. Approach in lead-lined robes, ye faithful, and see: what manner of god is to be born?
22. Minotaur - Deformed offspring of human and auroch. Most will die within hours of birth - those that survive might endure forever, if they are fed sufficient human flesh.
23. Golem - A humanoid shaped out of clay, animated by divine power through the ritual intermediation of a priest. Being an imitation of the creation of man, as made by a less-skilled craftsman, golems do not possess volition or speech (though a golem developing these traits over time is not out of the question, especially if there is an important moral lesson to be taught.)
24. Moon Beast - Bloated, froglike beings with slippery grey skin and heads dominated by anemone-like clusters of pink tendrils. They are enslavers, viewing other beings as livestock to be corralled and eaten (they favor the brain). They have many servants abroad (the Men of Leng, among others), who under their secret patronage shape the workings of the world to their liking.
25. Mi-go - Winged crustaceans with pink-red shells about the size of a pony. Descend from the sky at night. Have a great interest in mining rare earth metals, and the workings of the human brain. Will trade their symbiotic fungal technology for both, and will welcome volunteers for brain studies. Many of their experimental subjects will end up housed in brain canisters, which are often left behind at their outposts.
26. Unicorn - A horse with a single horn. Hunted to near-extinction in religious rituals of the knightly class. Symbolic of innocence and purity, but really just a magical horse. Not particularly bright. Its flesh tastes better the more evil one has committed. One's death will spiritually poison the surrounding landscape.
27. Phoenix - A rare bird with brilliant flame-colored plumage. Brooding females will, when it is time for their eggs to hatch, catch fire and reduce themselves to ash - this intense heat is necessary for the chicks to hatch - a phoenix egg unable to receive the final burst of heat can remain dormant for centuries. Their feathers are a common ingredient in cure-alls, though they do a decent job of waking one from unconsciousness.
28. Harpy - A large carrion bird with a disconcertingly human-looking face. Native to warm coastal regions, favoring cliffsides and caves for their nests. Folds and wattles of skin on the neck and upper torso can give the appearance of breasts and first glance. Can mimic human speech, typically the vulgarities and taunts of passing sailors - their typical calls are considered unpleasant to the ear. Fond of shiny objects and beautiful stones, and will hoard them in their nests. Notoriously bad smell.
29. Morlock - A subterranean people that inhabit the vast, decaying machinery that supported an ancient civilization. They tend to devices that no longer work and that they no longer understand. They will step out onto the surface only at night, to scavenge food and other goods that they cannot find in the lightless factoriums below.
30. Eloi - Hairless, childlike beings that live in a land of idyllic orchards and perfect gardens. They are easily frightened by change and easily overcome by adversity, but will adjust to the outside world given care and time.
31. Bonnacon - A bovine with curling horns like a ram and a long, red-brown bane. When startled or threatened it will violently expel burning feces at the threat while making its escape, a trait which makes them unpopular animals on the whole, but very useful when it comes time to fertilize a field.
32. Vampire - Those that would desecrate a sacred space by drinking the blood of man and recanting the blessings of the gods are struck down with neither hesitation nor clemency. Those who host larvae of the Conqueror Worm will rise again in the night, to hunt the living faithful.
33. Hodag - Stocky, short-legged quadrupedal predator about the size of a badger or wombat. Hairless, with dark, leathery skin. Wide toothsome mouth, bull horns, and a series of cruved spikes running down the spine. Born from the ashes or refuse piles of abused livestock to enact revenge on humans. Nasty as hell.
34. Hydra - Giant serpents with nine heads that might be found in any hot environment far from human habitation. Their bites are venomous, easily capable of quickly killing other large wildlife. This venom reacts when exposed to water, foaming up and forming a poisonous gas - weaker than the venom itself, but still often lethal. The implantation of a hydra egg in a trepanned human is the means by which gorgons are created.
35. Elephant - Wisest of all creatures upon the earth. Steed of the gods, counselors to kings and princes, possessors of the true history of all things that have happened in the world and keepers of the old magics. To kill an elephant is to be cursed forever, and hunted to the ends of the earth.
36. Nymph - In lieu of marriage within the church, some women will offer themselves to the spirits of forest, river, sea and mountain. This wedding of souls will form a new being, a caretaker of the wilderness in the auspices of the great god Pan, long-dead Dionysus and dread Cybele. Their dances and songs are enticing, but travelers are wise to remain polite and make no advances towards them, for they strike against transgression without pity.
37. Centaur - Reincarnations of steppe-warriors who died alongside their steeds in battle. Patiently await the end of the world, when they shall be gathered by the Roan God to ride against Ahriman in the final battle. Until then they bide their time. They have no fear of bloodshed nor qualms regarding warfare: units of them might strike an army on the march solely for the glory of it. They can, with some difficulty, be persuaded to teach a mortal some of their secrets.
38. Salamander - Similar to its similarly-named cousins of ponds and streams, save for its increased size and its habit of inhabiting fireplaces, ovens, and fire pits. Makes a terrible loud hissing noise when disturbed (and it is very sensitive to disturbances) Possesses a pelt of tangled white fur which provides both complete resistance to fire, and a greatly increased risk of lung damage.
39. Sea Serpent - An enormous oceanic serpent, shimmering blue in coloration with a bright red crest trailing from its head. A predator of large fish and occasionally even whales, though its ferocity towards ships and their crew tends to be overstated. Considered a bad omen.
40. Conceptual Shark - The idea of a shark, retaining the predatory nature and deadliness of a substantial shark. Comes with the added, terrible bonus of not being limited by things like "water" and "materiality". Being the idea of a shark, rather than an actual shark, a conceptual shark is significantly more bloodthirsty and aggressive than its material counterparts.
41. Concubus - A spirit of sexual predation. It paralyzes its victim while they are sleeping and thus makes its attack, taking semen from men and impregnating women. The cambion offspring of these unions, though they are human and bear no taint of the demon, are often either killed as infants or left in the graces of the church. It is abhorrent to look upon - a dream-form of shifting parts and images overlapped upon each other - a thousand thousand cut up pornographs, stripped of any pleasure in the viewing. It makes no attempt to hide its form with glamour - it prefers its prey to be fearful. They are a common target for travelling bands of cutters, as not every township has the benefit of being able to wait for a church-sanctioned hunter.
42. Homunculus - An artificial organism (often but not always a human) created through the alchemical arts. They might be easily identified by their thick, calloused skin, their dependency upon certain reagents to sustain them and the mark of the Squared Circle or the Rub el Hizb somewhere upon their bodies. Because of the nature of their creation they lack traditional souls, instead possessing ones built of the fragments of many collected shades.
43. Cat of Ulthar - An inhabitant of the Dreamlands, which may hop to and fro between them and the waking world as they see fit. Similar in all ways, behaviors, and magical skills to mundane cats, save the willingness to speak to humans.
44. Flatlander - A two-dimensional people. Their social hierarchy is determined by the numbers of points an individual has, with the near-circular priestly class leading their theocratic society.
45. Glatislant - A creature with the body of a leopard and the head and neck of a serpent. Their call is that of a pack of baying hounds, sending hunting dogs into confusion. One of the Three Knightly Creatures, it has proven the most elusive to the hunts of the first estate - no glatislant has ever been taken as part of a hunt, whether alive or dead. They seem to enjoy taunting their pursuers, leading them on hopeless-cross-continent quests for nothing.
46. False Hydra - A pallid, flabby thing, a mass of flesh buried in the ground. It extends a long neck upwards, out of the soil; an eyeless head, a gaping mouth. Then another, and another. So long as it is singing, no one can see it, no one will notice it, but it must start singing to feed. The town is thinning out, and no one knows why, and the hydra grows fat and prepares to gather the survivors as its servants.
47. Parasitic Crown - A sort of crustacean taking the form of a ten-pointed crown. It will burrow its claws through the skull and into the brain, and drive the host to delusions of grandeur and an insatiable drive to accumulate wealth and exercise violent power against others, all while remaining reclusive in a fortified position. This is how most royal lines start.
48. Tartary Lamb - A large flowering shrub that grows live sheep, connected to the main plant by an umbilical root. These sheep are stringy and thin, but the wool is of good quality and they might grow even in dry and desolate soil. For poor farmers, this might be all that sustains their livelihood.
49. Vessel Knight - An empty ceramic exoskeleton into which some essence is to be poured. They are bound to a duty and to their sword, and sent out into the world to collect the soul or spirit that is to be housed within them.
50. Death Clock - A variety of spider whose abdomen is a fully functional chitin pocketwatch. These spiders do not tell the time of day, but rather count down the lifespan of those residing in the home whose walls the spiders currently inhabit.
51. Kalidah - Apex predator with the head of a tiger and the body of a bear. Commonly used as a heraldic beast. Have been driven to near-extinction for their pelts and supposed (but untrue) medicinal properties of their body parts.
52. Bobbit Dog - Mangy ferals in a pack, all thin and sickly. Spines like needles down their back. A worm’s head, with barbed fangs long as a hand, sticks out from between the shoulders, the neck coiled within and ready to strike.
53. Halfling Snatcher - A gangly black-haired thing with a too-big smile and a horrible rusty knife. Cavorts around looking for halflings to stuff in a sack. Never empties the sack. Ever.
54. Natali Stork - An ivory-feathered wading bird with a sable crest and a bronze beak. Reputed to spontaneously deliver human infants to doorsteps in the early morning, or in radically different sources, to devour them in their cribs.
55. Cynocephalon - The dog-headed folk of Prester John Land, far to the east. Few are ever seen in the Occident; those that are are often wandering sword-sages seeking the secrets of the Philosopher’s Stone for the sake of their ancient priest-king.
56. Man in Black - Always in pairs, always wearing formal attire and bearing the seals of the king or duke or pontiff or tyrant or congress or so on and so forth. Do not be alarmed, they are only here to ask questions. Do not be afraid of their unnatural speech patterns and the jerks and twitches of their movements. Do not be suspicious of their origin nor of their purpose. They are only here to ask some questions. Please, step this way, there is much to discuss.
57. Umibozu - An enormous head and shoulders rise above the suddenly storm-tossed waves, black-blue as the night-depths. Implacable, they move to destroy the intruding ship.
58. Squonk - An ugly crepuscular herbivore, easily identified by its rotund body and loose folds of wary skin. Secretes a greasy substance that might be clarified into a corrosive. These "tears" are rather valuable among alchemists and other such uses.
59. Carbuncle - A small, furry creature similar to a rodent or rabbit, with an enormous red gem embedded in its head. The gem is valued for purported healing properties (healing of skin lesions and cancers with a touch, of curing ulcers when ground up and drunk), but the creatures are rare, fast, clever, and there are no valid citations for the gem's properties beyond second and third hand accounts.
60. Shoggoth - An archaean ooze, a mat of metamorphic organic matter from which all other life descends. Changing climate and the warfare of the peoples to follow them have driven them to the secret regions of and below the world. They possess vast, alien intelligence and in their brief communications have indicated that they were once enslaved and rose up against their masters, and would do so again. Yet, they permit some of their lesser spawn (dolmantles, flesh orchids, etc) to live and work alongside humanity.
61. Mimic - A predatory ooze capable of manipulating its shape, size, texture and color so as to imitate its environment. Some particularly intelligent specimens will imitate manmade items, some even going so far as to take the appearance of valuables to serve as the most effective lure for prey.
62. Alzabo - This much is agreed upon - it is the size of a bear, thereabouts. It resembles no beast of earth in form. Its skin may be red, and its hair may be black (both of these are contentious claims). It may speak in the voices of those it devours. It is cannier than worldly animals. Its brain may be processed into the fabled analeptic, which when consumed alongside human flesh permits communion with the memories of the dead.
63. Yith-spirit - A possessive spirit that will take command of an individual and drive them to a state of obsessive scholarly pursuit. They will not induce the host to violence, but the chilling of social relationships and sudden interest in esoterics will often permanently damage the host's bonds with friends and family.Yith-spirits will not admit their nature unless cornered, and even then will refuse to elaborate on their research beyond their need for more. A yith-spirit possession lasts 3-5 years, on average, and leaves no lasting effects on the host save murky dreams of winding stone hallways.
64. Mothman - Solitary, shy nocturnal creatures, forever seeking a sun they cannot bear to see. The archetypal appearance is black fluff and ruby-red eyes, but their looks vary as much as their tiny cousins. They bring warnings of disaster, hoping that some might take heed and flee with their lives.
65. Monopod - A people possessing of only one leg ending in an enormous foot, with which they hop around with surprising speed. They live in hot climates and will use their feet as sun-shades during the heat of the day, if nothing else will suffice.
66. Martian (Red) - Most numerous of the inhabitants of Barsoom and the most akin to humans. They possess sleek rust-red and tawny fur and a thick layer of blubber to insulate against the cold. They have liberated themselves from the Masters in the wake of the failed invasion, and so have begun to rebuild their civilization through the cultural fragments that they kept alive in great mountainside cities.
67. Martian (Green) - Twice or thrice tall as a man, possessing four arms, pale green skin, shaggy white hair, and prominent tusks. The warrior caste of old Mars, they have maintained the martial culture imparted to them by the Masters, though now for their own glory. They ride across the high steppe on their thoats, raiding and plundering neighboring settlements and each other.
68. Martian (Master) - The rarest of all; huge black cephalopods with bioluminescent, lanternlike eyes. Distant, dispassionate, and cruel - they consider other beings to be possessions at best, and meat the rest of the time. The few that survived the bacterial infections of Earth stew in their sterile saltwater tanks, deep in their frozen fortresses, attended to by their few remaining captives and the treasure vaults of their ancient dynasties. Consumed by hate, but impotent.
69. Carcosan - Nobles and their retinues, come to visit from a far-away court on the shores of the lake of Hali. There is something off about them, about their tattered finery and the way they speak of their king and his daughters, but one can hardly put a name to the feeling. They appear to us as a man might appear to a deer. And what of that slender man, standing just in the corner of your vision?
70. Merfolk - True merfolk are mammals, of two main lineages; peaceful seaweed-grazing sirenia, and the sleek carnivorous phocidae. Both are considered good omens by sailors and thus sacrosanct. False mermaids include the descendents of the Atlantean amalu caste (who bear scales and other fishlike traits, and are less intelligent than true merfolk), predatory klaxons (in truth a species of bird that mimics the distress horns of ships to lure would-be rescuers into rocks), and the legendary contraicthys (a fish’s head upon two human legs, created by wizards and one of the Five Greater Blasphemies).
71. Chambermaiden - A type of faerie native to all manner of pots, jars, and assorted earthenware containers. Typically take the form of beautiful women about a foot tall, wearing gowns of white, blue, or butterfly wing. Generally friendly, but very protective of their pots and the contents thereof. They greatly enjoy riddles and games, and so will ask visitors to bring them some obscure and obfuscated item for their help.
72. Infectious Advertisement - A weak possessive spirit that will, on certain triggers of sight or sound, trigger the host to recite a slogan or jingle for whatever product it has been bound to. Those nearby are at risk of catching the spirit as well, and furthering its spread like a mildly (or perhaps supremely) irritating disease. These spirits do not compel anyone to purchase the product, and may be removed through a simple exorcism.
73. deR0 - A subterranean creature similar to a human infant, with a bloated head and disproportionately thin and long limbs. Their skin is the grey-blue of asphyxiation, and their eyes dart and roll around without ceasing. They are the descendants of slaves taken by the serpent-men, and suffer still the tortures of their paranoia-wracked slavery. There is an air loom out there controlling everything, they are certain of it, doubtless you can see the connections...
74. Gremlin - A variety of goblin, something like a very small, hairless lemur with a long snout. They live inside machines and mechanisms and cause all manner of malfunctions and damaged parts in their mischief - occasionally resulting in deaths. They are more animal-like than their kin and do not speak except in high, giggling noises. Nests must be relocated when found, typically to scrapyards where they may pay to their content. Some progress has been made in training them to help repair and maintain machines instead of dismantling them.
75. Bogey - A shimmering grey being that flies through the air at great speeds, taking the form of a disc, blunt triangle, or cigar. Luminescent patches on their flanks will shine and flicker in patterns. Lone travelers occasionally drum up stories of being abducted by the creatures, claiming them to be living vessels inhabited by a people of grey-skinned dwarves, but often as not these tales have been the result of delusion or trauma.
76. Tooth Fairy - Thorny bodies like porcelain cicadas, voices like dentists’ drills and baby laughs. Eyes like drops of blood, mandibles like barbed fingers. Butterfly wings, orange, yellow and black. A milk tooth placed under a pillow absorbs dreams, and here is where tooth fairies are born – the unconscious child-mind recalling a beetle in the garden or a wasp at the window. They will bring these eggs to the Masticate King in his faraway castle atop the Red Hill, where he will fertilize them in hopes that they might birth his long-lost White Knights. When all 30 are returned to him, they shall mount their white horses and depart from the Hill, to hunt the Enamel Queen.
77. Oni - Huge, hairy, horned creatures, bright red or blue in coloration, that live high up in the mountains getting drunk and challenging travelers to wrestling matches or feats of strength. They love nothing more than getting absolutely shitfaced and getting in a fight - whether they win or lose is entirely incidental.
78. Dinosaurids - Last surviving descendents of the ancient dromaeosaurids. They live beyond the boundaries of the known world in small nomadic bands who have remained content with the obsidian blade and reed basket. They have a kinship with birds; though they bear no allegiance to the Simirugh themselves, they will offer hospitality to her servants.
79. Coelcyon - The hollow hounds of many angles. Their bones are needles and the rest is skin and fur hanging over empty space. They make a high-pitched whistling as they run, near-indistinguishable from tinnitus.
80. Acanthomata - Stoop-backed from the weight of the bulging, pulsing growths that weigh down its spine. Head bowed to the ground, as if in prayer. Yellow eyes burning with the fervor of endurance.
81. [Minotaur] - An entity of unknown countenance and capabilities, recorded only as the paranoia, and thereafter the absolute assurance, of the presence of a dangerous being. An inhabitant of mazes, labyrinths, and liminal spaces.
82. Literati - Tall, stoop-backed humanoids with grey-blue skin, lidless lavender eyes, and shining halos of stolen glyphs. Their presence renders the written word into gibberish or steals the words entirely, and with a touch to the head they might strip one of their ability to read at all. They are used extensively in the southern tyrannies as bureaucrats and functionaries.
83. Zoanthrope - A human whose cogitatium has been removed, typically through surgery, either as punishment or, more often, for purposes of fashion. They gambol about as animals, lacking the good graces of apes. The yahoos of Houyhnhnms' Land are by far the most famous variant.
84. Redcap - Appear as small, shrivelled old men, naked save for their enormous grey gore-stained beards and their tattered blood-red hats. Inhabitants of old battlefields, accosting travellers with chipped and rusty blades.
85. Loam Soldiers - The image of a man born of battlefield mud beneath a full moon, clad with broken armor and abandoned weapons. Their silver eyes are empty of thought or recognition. They march by night, seeking a foe without name just over the horizon. They are silent, and unwavering in their march.
86. Kishi - A hyena that has learned how to assume the shape of a human through sorcery. Predatory to fault, they will exert their will over others where-ever they can and bring ruin on those who resist. They can be told apart from human sorcerers by the presence of a hyena muzzle on the back of their heads, typically hidden by a common headscarf.
87. Homo diluvii - An extinct hominid with a flat, wedge-shaped head and enormous eyes. The discoverers of the bones declared it to be a branch of the human family from before the Great Flood; critics claim it is the skeleton of a gigantic salamander. Punches have already been thrown, and reports from distant outposts of similar creatures will only inflame matters further.
88. Cordyceps maximus - A variety of fungal infection that will gradually override the host mammal’s brain, driving them to seek the highest elevation possible where the fruiting body will then emerge from the host’s skull and begin releasing spores. If the infection is caught before maturity it can be treated through alchemical tinctures, sterilizing the fungus and allowing the victim to retain an altered but still stable consciousness after fruiting.
89. Nebutori - A spirit that manifests as sudden, inexplicable overnight weight gain.
90. Yeongno - A small, wingless, gold-orange dragon with broad, overlapping scales and a long crocodilian snout. A predator of the wealthy, as it has been tasked with devouring 100 rich people so that it might ascend to the heavens.
91. Jabberwock - A buck-toothed, bug-eyed, snake-neck and catfish-whiskered dragon from deep in the dreamy woods. Known for extreme violent territoriality, a tendency to survive for a surprising amount of time without its head, and for generating a localized field of spontaneous semantic aberration.
92. Bandersnatch - A large bird with a long, straight beak and an upside-down head. Rather than wings it possesses long, taloned arms with which it crawls around on all fours. They are considered a bad omen at best by the smallfolk, and extremely dangerous in all other cases. Should one be seen standing on its hind legs, the common advice is to prostrate oneself before it: not in an attempt to appease it, but rather to offer one’s neck for a quick death.
93. Chainbreaker - A spirit taking the form of a broad-shouldered man, wreathed in smoke and with a tongue of fire and wielding a huge workman’s hammer. It will come in the night to free the enslaved from their bondage, so that they might depose their enslavers and flee into the dark and to freedom.
94. Cattlopas - A miserable swamp-dwelling creature, similar in appearance to an emaciated, long-necked black bison. Its head is weighed down by the excessive weight of its horns, though this is rarely an issue for the creatures as they are solitary and graze near-exclusively on aquatic plants. The gastrointestinal fermentation required to digest its diet generates large quantities of noxious gas, which may be released from either end and can prove fatal if there is a lack of otherwise clean air about or an open flame present.
95. Chalkydri - Immense (often in excess of ten thousand miles!) copper-scaled serpents that inhabit the stellar corona of the sun. They possess six sets of wings. Despite the difficulty in observing them, their migrations are often used in certain divination practices and their songs have been translated into an entire school of magical practice.
96. Kuchisake-Onna - A spirit appearing as a beautiful woman, wearing a scarf or mask to cover up her mutilated mouth. She will ask her victim if she is beautiful - the only safe answer is to remain polite and neutral, saying that she is neither beautiful nor ugly. An offering of money or hard candy is also helpful. Otherwise, she will either kill the victim outright, or mutilate their face to match hers.
97. Kodama - A common tree-spirit, whose presence indicates that the local forest is healthy. They typically appear as small wooden figures with painted, mask-like faces. They do not speak, making only the noise of falling nuts or rustling leaves, but will aid lost travelers and give warning of danger.
98. Lemures - Spirits of the restless and malignant dead - black, maggotlike,wearing poorly-made plaster funeral masks. Will appear in a chorus to mock and harass the living, typically family members and descendants who have not shown appropriate familial piety. They may be distracted by a handful of black beans tossed over the shoulder, and driven away for a time by banging on pots and pans.
99. Galactomonstrum - Acephalic quadruped the size of a cottage, whose ponderous body is covered in teats and udders. A daughter of the mother of mammals, its milk can restore health from even the brink of death, enlivens the blood, and provides head against even the most bitter cold.
100. Bai Ze - A being with the body of an enormous white boar and face like a man, with rows of yellow eyes along its flanks. Known primarily for teaching the King in Yellow the nature and manner of every supernatural being in the world, though the book that recorded this knowledge has been lost and only small and contested fragments remain. Finding Bai Ze again has been a goal of supernaturalists for centuries.
101. Polycetus - A horrifying leviathan created when a pod of whales melds into an island-sized fleshbeast of blubber and barnacles and oil and curtains of baleen and banks of paddles, singing apocalyptic songs of the abyss. Mass beachings are in truth mass suicides: the whales know that the melding is near, and their good nature drives them to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the rest of the world.
102. Globster - A species of large, oceanic ooze with the appearance and smell of rotten flesh. Will occasionally wash ashore, where they will confuse and terrify the local population before they are washed out to sea. Despite the smell and appearance (and taste, for that matter), globsters are edible and can prove and enormous boon to local fishing villages - should one be found nearby, the entire town will turn out with hooks, ropes, catchpoles and saws to butcher the creature.
103. Wub - A flabby, blobby grey thing with large, sad eyes. Reminiscent of waterbear, molerat, pig. Sapient, capable of mental communication - most of which is either discussion philosophy or moping about and piteously begging not to be eaten. This is a false pretense, as it in fact desires to be eaten, and will transfer its consciousness over to one of its devourers and swiftly take up its preferred life of lazy indolence.
104. Devil-Eater - Easily told apart from their cousin the hippopotamus by their coloration (light grey underbelly with crimson dorsal surface), and by the fact that their primary food source is demons. Several orders of sin-eaters will use the daemonovore as their icon. An invasive species in Hell, having infested both the Lethe and Phlegethon river valleys. As bad tempered and violent an animal as you are likely to find.
105. Tsukumogami - A household item that has, after 100 years, taken on a life of its own. They may move about under their own power, and might grow eyes and a mouth when they are active. Its behavior may be kind or cruel, depending on how it was treated when it was an object.
106. Mari Lwyd - A spirit of midwinter, manifesting as a tall figure in a white robe with a skeletal horse's head. Will appear at the door of the home and demand alcohol and food in song, and will only depart if the inhabitants of the home can out-sing it - otherwise, it will continue until either dawn arrives or patience runs out.
107. Dwarf Freshwater Plesiosaur - Precisely as they are named. They are more intelligent, and less aggressive than their oceangoing cousins, and much more reclusive. How they end up in isolated lakes both great and small, and how their populations persist in regions where there is not enough food to support them is a mystery still. Perhaps they go somewhere, when no one is looking?
108. Hollow Man - Superficially, they are a human - an older male of the dominant ethnic/religious/economic class. But there is nothing within them. No bones, no flesh, no air. A metaphysical hole in the universe, an embodiment of the un-thing, the death instinct encased in flesh. There was something there once, but it has been devoured, and it was given willingly.
109. Chessmen - Eusocial humanoids with chitinous exoskeletons. Each hive is split into multiple casts - the pawns (worker drones), knights (soldier drones) bishops (coordinators) rooks (constructors and mobile hives), the weak and vestigial king and the territorial and combative queen. The three primary species (white and black, with assorted subspecies) are engaged in constant warfare, attempting to capture or kill the kings of rival hives. Occasionally, queens will birth specialist clades, a trend that is increasing across all hives. Pawns may, in time of population stress, metamorphosize into all other non-king castes.
110. Angel - Servants of the Monad. Their ranks have been split into three factions since the breaking of the throne and the vacating of heaven: the apostoloi, who hold on to their duties as messengers of divine will and enforcers of Law; the egregoroi, who have dispersed through the world to lead and teach in secrecy; the hylics, who have embraced fully the pleasures and needs of the flesh.
111. Baku - A being somewhat like a small bear in shape, with tawny fur, a short trunk and blunt hand-span tusks. It feeds on dreams. While this may often be useful, eating nightmares and the like, they are gluttonous creatures and often overindulge, in preparation for a great hibernation to come. Should a baku feed too often on the same person they will develop increasingly severe insomnia, and in time even lose the will to live.
112. Cockatrice - When a chicken’s egg is nurtured by a toad or snake, it will hatch as one of these creatures - a small, vicious, venomous lizard with the beak and wattles of a rooster. They are considered a delicacy among certain noble courts, despite the danger they present and terrible taste. They hate their parent species and will attempt to kill all fowl or serpents they can find.
113. Ichneumon - A variety of mongoose that is the sole natural predator of the dragon. When possessed with hunting-frenzy, they will burrow their way through their prey’s soft underbelly (tearing away embedded gold or jewels if need be) and dig a direct line to the wyrm’s heart, which they will devour. They are the symbols of communist and anarchist movements the world over.
114. Deathworm - Segmented worm, bright red in coloration, wide as a barrel and up to forty feet long. A desert dweller. Sprays a sticky paralytic mucus, bright yellow in coloration.
115. Addict’s Friend - A spirit much like a lumpy orange balloon. It will latch itself to a host and provide it with whatever it might desire, but these gifts fade swiftly (for they are only illusions). The addict is driven to greater extremes, and the paradise feeds off of the emotional excess.
116. ORC - Armed enforcers of the principle of power, those who act with violence without consequence. Their masks are grotesque, the shields they carry declare their allegiance to their hate, their war songs are gleeful in the recitations of those crushed underfoot. They are perfectly ordinary humans, rewarded for their behavior and changed in no sorcerous way.
117. Ghost-Faced Killer - Someone whose face has been removed. The gaping hole that remains is now a nest for ghosts. They are the favored knives of necromancers, serving as bodyguards and assassins.
118. Gug - Hairy, four armed giants imprisoned deep underground by the gods for reasons unknown. Their massive mouths split their heads vertically. They are hated and shunned by the other peoples of the subterranean realms, likely for their habit of devouring most anyone who comes across them. Their language and culture remain unstudied.
119. Poliphoros Crab - The smallest are still big enough for a small cottage of symbiotic coral and barnacles, the average individual may possess an entire castle on its shell, and the near-legendary namesake specimens may indeed carry an entire town on their backs, though rarely more than two or three at a time grow to this size. They do not mind human habitation, and peaceably migrate around the shallow seas with no regard to their human inhabitants.
120. Shrike - An innocuous grey bird that serves the Nocinax, the King of Pain. They offer sacrifices by impaling small animals upon thornbushes, and do not think for a moment that they would not do so with larger prey, should they find the means.
121. Zaratan - A seagoing turtle so large that its back serves as an island. Thousands of unique microcultures exist on their backs all across the Panthallassic, migrating as the turtles see fit to do.
122. Brownie - A common house-spirit, appearing as an old man or woman no more than a foot tall. So long as the house is taken care of and their shrine respected, they will protect the inhabitants from minor evil spirits and tend to the home while they are away. When an object is lost, ask the brownie, for they are sure to know.
123. Rat King - Dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of rats bound together in an enormous mass of fur and teeth and scrabbling paws. They are typically found in sewers. Each component rat wears a tiny crown, and will retain its kingliness and be a recognized sovereign among the minor rodents even when severed from the whole.
124. Wild Hunt - A party of spectral hunters with their horses and hounds. Their clothing is tattered, their weapons antique, the words on their frosted breath archaic and strange. Their leader is obscured by hood and beard, and within only a single bright blue eye is seen. They will bid you join them, for there are beasts on the prowl, and more men are needed to hunt them down before the sun rises.
125. Man of Leng - A short humanoid with curling horns, a wide and jagged mouth, cloven feet and opalescent hair over all of their body. They arrive once or twice a year in great galleons with fuligin sails to trade in gems, luxury goods, and slaves. Very few people would admit doing business with them, but threats of force never seem to keep them away from the harbor. They speak glowingly of their great benefactors, but say nothing more on that matter.
126. Cacopithicus - Ratty red-brown fur smeared in shit. Fingernails curved like snail shells. Teeth set in gums like maggots in a side of beef. Crusty black eyes, dribbling snot and spit. An amygdala-dominated brain with a stunted neocortex flooded with testosterone. Everything bad about great apes with none of the good parts.
127. Loan Shark - Whether on land or on sea, debtors who skip on payments will eventually come face to face with their wide golden smiles. The interest rates are as you’d expect, and the appear out of nowhere, just when you think you might have gotten away with it.
128. Mushroom-Folk - Peaceable, patient, and slow, they first came into consciousness when they consumed the corpse of a god struck down from heaven in one of the interminable wars of the early celestial age. They possess the secrets of immortality, of a sort, where one might have their memories live on in the colony as their bodies are consumed by a fungal shroud.
129. Elder Thing - Beings found frozen in the midst of an enormous prehistoric city in the Uttermost South. They are shaped like an elongated barrel, green in coloration, with five-fold symmetry. Five tentacles with gripping appendages take up the posterior end, and a yellow, five-lobed structure bearing the five eyes and central mouth on the anterior Between each of the five ridges of the body there is a membranous wing, likely for aquatic movement or gliding than true flight. Reanimated specimens have mostly disregarded human interaction, communicating just enough to state that they do not wish to communicate.
130. The Red Death - A highly-infectious and often-lethal disease that causes extreme fevers and bleeding from the eyes, nose, mouth and pores. It is spread through contaminated bodily fluids as well as the breath. Should it reach saturation within the population, it will manifest as a spirit taking the form of a man in a bloody shroud and poorly-made death mask, come to gather the dying. It seems to favor appearing to those who believe themselves safe
131. False Infant - A fat, pink, caterpillar-like thing. Preys upon humans that have recently suffered a miscarriage, using its limited perception-altering abilities to drive the host parents to feed and shelter it. After growing a considerable amount in a short time, it will pupate and metamorphose into its adult form, the grand red-eye butterfly, which is of little note or consequence save for the fact that its dust has a tendency to induce miscarriages when inhaled.
132. Nightgaunt - Gangly humanoids with rubbery fuligin skin, faceless heads, and vast batlike wings. Can be recruited as transportation both in the Dreamlands and the waking world. Will occasionally find service as messengers or servants of the Outer Powers, but bear true alliance only to themselves. Their touch imparts a tickling numbness.
133. Clown Skinner - Something with the outward appearance of a human being. Hunt and kill clowns so as to take their skins. They do this because they desire the clown's power, and to expand their personal collections, and to sell to those parties who might desire clownskin garments to render themselves dismissed as a joke.
134. False Corpse - A variety of fungus with a fruiting body very difficult to differentiated from a bloated corpse from a distance. Will explode with great force if disturbed, releasing a cloud of spores which will grow into their own fruiting bodies. False corpse circles are favored by fairies of the Court of Skulls.
135. Sky Manta - Similar to their oceanborne cousins in all respects, save for their coloration (assorted shades and combinations of blue, grey, and white) and their potential to grow to immense sizes (the largest recorded specimen possessing a 200 meter wingspan). They feed both upon aeroplankton, and on sunlight directly. They are considered a sign of good luck, signifying clear skies and light winds.
136. Benthic Shepherd - A human form two hundred feet tall, striding across the abyssal plains stone staff in hand. Their shoulders and head bear a cathedral-crown of smoke vents and tube worms, and their herd is of great sightless pale and nameless worms. They would be completely unknown to the surface world were it not for the many wizards who descend in their bathyspheres to learn their secrets.
137. Cacogen - Lack of gravity destroys the human body - renders bones to chalk, muscles to jelly, strains the organs to breaking. These are the survivors - the inbred posthumans who went to the stars and found there was nothing to inherit. They have returned to an Earth they are unfit to live upon, and all the more desirous of it for that reason.
138. Thing At The Bottom Of A Hole - Everyone knows about the hole. They're all certain that there's something living down at the bottom, something that comes out in the black dead of night. No one ever claims to have seen it. They leave it offerings, always have. The thing at the bottom of the hole is, for now, satisfied.
139. 100-Handed One - Giants with fifty pairs of arms. Master weaponsmiths who will venture forth from their volcano-forges with wares for sale. It is from them that the coat of arms comes - a garment containing a hundred weapons.
140. Gingerbread Pseudowitch - The creature itself, little more than a stomach and some vestigial limbs and organs as an adult, buries itself upright in the soil, with just its mouth exposed. It weaves a shell of gingerbread and sugary treats, and forms a proxy body by which to interact with the surface world - the image of a kindly old crone, attached to the house’s central pillar by an ankle chain umbilical. It will lure in the starving and the gluttonous, sedate them upon the spittle that went into building the shell, and the proxy will toss them into the disguised mouth of the creature’s true body.
141. Gravemound - A moving hillock of corpses and loam, formed from mass graves. Seek to expand themselves by acquiring new corpses, can devour a graveyard in a night. Bring with them swarms of flies, maggots, centipedes, and belch clouds of miasma formed of the fermentation of flesh deep within.
142. Nucklavee -A creature appearing as a rider fused to a horse, both flayed of all their skin. Its breath is poison and its touch is poison. It is confined to the ocean during the summer months by other spirits. It is harmed by fresh water, and will refuse to cross streams.
143. Grey Goo - A shimmering silver slime that, when woken from its dormancy by the presence of steady heat, will slowly consume any nearby matter to increase its own size. Any part of the whole, no matter how small, will act in the same manner, and it may rebuilt itself from a single drop. As it grows it will begin to form fruiting bodies and large lattice-structures, both of purposes unknown. Their presence is a great danger to all around - they must be frozen back into dormancy and destroyed by either unbearable heat or arcane means.
144. Floatsquid - A meter-tall cephalopod that floats about in the air through the help of a specialized buoyant mantle. Curious, inquisitive, highly social, and very good at problem solving. Like warm, wet climates. Can use basic tools and simple communication. Have a persistent trouble with predators, especially birds.
145. Modesty Monster - A drab dun beast utterly terrified and appalled at the sight of skin. Will attempt to force people into ugly floor-length veils, or, failing this, just stuff them in bags. Will actively hunt down practitioners of sexual activity or language and beat them with a large club. Does not actually understand how sex works, believing children pop up out of the ground with the harvest.
146. Beastman - Chaos cannot create, only change - these creatures are the result of its directionless attempts at imitating the work of the gods. Mismatched chimeras of human and animal, possessing minds that cannot organize their contents, bodies at war among their own component parts. Worst of all, they know of their wretched state, and know that somehow, the secret to their salvation lies somewhere in the hearts of men.
147. Will o' Wisp - The simplest of all ghosts, being a palm-sized blue or blue-green flame. Harmless, save their tendency to drift around the area where the death occurred. Will occasionally form large schools or swarms, especially during Sawen, and can also be found in the presence of more complex ghosts.
148. Alien Von-Neumann Probe - A floating sphere, glossy white and shining silver, with a single enormous eyes of red and black. A thrum fills the air, goes down to the bones. It watches, it wanders, but it does not interfere. Here and there it will stop at a mine, drawing up metals in a flash of golden light. In time, it will have collected enough to build another of itself, that will go on its way. Watching all the while.
149. Wudu-Wasa - The people of the forest. Giants with deep red hair and skin grey as winter sky or deep walnut brown. Some are haired head to toe like an ape, and it is common that women will wear beards or sideburns. They shun the company of other peoples, preferring instead a life among the spirits and beasts of the mountains and forests. Those that come down from the hills will go about as traveling shamans and doctors, as according to their ancient agreements with the lowlanders.
150. Tiger - A perfectly ordinary tiger, possessing no traits that a perfectly ordinary tiger would not have, save for the fact that it is currently found in a place and circumstance that it is entirely unlikely for a perfectly ordinary tiger to be, and that it is desperately hungry.
151. Disc Horse - Oh god what the fuck. Why is it circular. What did you do to this horse. It is like a plate on its rim, with horse legs around the edge. Too many legs. Why does it have so many legs. No I will not look into its horrible horse eyes, the horse eyes that beg for death no I will not listen to the pitiful whinnies that plead for mercy. What has happened to this horse. God has abandoned us

A Brief Taxonomy of Fantastic Beings

My long-fermenting bestiary post is delaying itself by sheer length, so I am splitting it up into the taxonomy, and the creature list itself. Prior posts in this series:

• D&D Doesn't Understand What Monsters Are
• 10 Bestiary Entries

I have mixed feelings about Gygaxian naturalism. On the one hand, I find it stifling and artificial, without grace or freedom - I am STILL salty, years later, that a 5e DM didn't allow me to use "Speak with Animals" with a Cloaker because, despite clearly being an animal, it is described as an aberration. 

On the other...science is fucking great. I have forgotten more about the classifications of dinosaurs than many folk will ever know in their entire lives

Thankfully for my purposes, Gygax was a terrible naturalist and his nonsense can be tossed aside in service of something better.

The Taxonomy

As with any good system of taxonomy, it's best to treat this as an in-universe artifact. Something that wizards get in arguments over during faculty luncheons. Fists can and will be thrown.

**I**

On the Laws of Material Necessity

• Lex Famis - That a being possesses the need for nourishment so as to live.
• Lex Excrementi - That a being is subject to processes of balance, that what goes in shall go out.
• Lex Sexum - That a being possesses the drive to generate more of its kind.
  
• Lex Mortis - That a being shall, in time, cease and die.

Some scholars expand this to seven or even ten laws, but four will suffice for our purposes. 

Or, in short: It eats, shits, fucks, and dies.

**II**

On Cogitatium

Cogitatium is damnably difficult to define, and great amounts of ink and blood have been spilled over figuring out precisely what it entails. Wizards rarely agree on topics, and on this one they agree least of all, for wrapped up in the question of "what is cogitatium?" is the greater question of "who is a person?"

Classically, cogitatium is considered to be "the possession of a rational mind." Modern scholars have mostly abandoned this reductive definition, on the grounds that using humans as a baseline for rational behavior is some dumb bullshit, and that whoever came up with that definition had never actually interacted with another human being in all their life.

In the modern age, two schools of thought have emerged.

The first is a nuanced approach, the mind along a great spectrum where cogitatium and the mes animalis are intertwined and inseparable, stretching up and down a scale of complexity, and whose component traits likewise exist along their own gradients.

The second school of thought is that cogitatium is the ability to perform immensely stupid behavior and brag about it later.

(Lexi on Discord had an even better one: "cognition is when you can have a choice between multiple options and choose the worst, typically out of spite, guilt, or love". Deus ex Parabola had "the ability to choose suboptimal behavior", which is also great.)

**III**

On the Varieties of Life and Beings of the World

Categorization is a great way to start nerd fights. The divisions of life are forever debated in the halls of wizarding universities. This is one of the more common schemas in use. (Come up with your own! I would very much like to see them.)

• Bacteria - Simplest of all material life, invisible without the aid of instruments. Often manifest in the form of diseases. 
• Plantae et Fungi - Vegetative life. 
• Animalia - Material beings subject to the Laws. Members tend to have a secondary classification added on (Vermes, Limus, Arthropoda, Crustacea, Mollusca, Pisces, Amphibia, Reptilia, Dinosauria, Aves, Mammalia, Etcetera, Alienae) and may have a tertiary label applied as well, which include:
  

• Domesticia - Domesticated animals.
  
• Fera - Wild (that is, dangerous) animals.
  
• Sophi - Animals possessing traits of cogitatium, but have yet to come into its fullness.
  
• Paradoxa - Animals that fit into no other category or violate one of the Laws. This is a very vague label and tends to be applied according to foppery and whim.
  

• Gentes Mundi - Material beings subject to the Laws and possessing cogitatium. 
• Gentes Alienae - Material beings that, though they possess cogitatium and are subject to the Laws, are radically different in how they fulfill and express these qualities, respective to the animalia and gentes mundi known and studied in the world.
  
• Sagani - Material beings that possess cogitatium, but are freed from one or more of the Laws of Material Necessity. While they may often display language, material culture, craft and likewise (setting them apart from animalia) their cogitatium displays a tendency towards less wild swings of volition.
  
• Animae - Spiritual beings freed from the Laws entirely. They might take a material form as a temporary projection, but they are not bound to this incarnation. While animae may be communicative, they do not possess cogitatium and will act according to their predetermined nature.
• Split into possessive spirits (tenerae), manifesting spirits (incarnatiae), and numinous spirits (numinae).
  
• Automatae - Material beings that are animated by an outside force, but possess no life of their own and never have.  

There are five additional categories that might be applied in addition to the above.

• Lusus Naturae - A category for beings and clades of beings that are related to another, but drastically different in physiology or behavior from what is held as the default clade.
• Sine Mors - Material beings that have died, but have since been animated by an outside force (typically an anima).
• Monstrum - A contested definition. Typically held as a being whose existence is a direct and persistent threat to humans without additional outside impetus.
• Contentia - Beings whose taxonomy is subject of heated debate among scholars. This will usually be along the lines of sagani vs animae. Entries labeled contentia will include the most commonly-used definition. 

So, for example, the Lowland Armored Redshell would be a member of Animalia crustacea domesticia, and the blind olmfolk of the Duruland Caves would be Gentes Mundi (Animalia amphibia), Lusus naturae

**

The next post in this series will be the full list of beings, as I cannot find an excuse to delay any longer.

My eyes were clearly larger than my stomach.