Bestiary

Common Goblins

Towering, muscular brutes with skin the color of rotting pumpkin flesh, clothed in the cobbled remains of unknown beasts and armed with bone clubs. They travel in packs and answer to forest powers like Dhorath, though they're not above turning to worse things when it suits them. Not every goblin fits this mold, smaller kin like the tree-dwelling Orin, the crimson-haired Redcaps, and the swamp-slick Trilleboth, all trace back to the same blood, however little they resemble one another.

Orin

A smaller, gentler cousin to the common goblin, Orin make their homes in the high canopy and speak the language of trees as fluently as their own. Where their larger kin favor clubs and raiding, Orin prefer to listen and the forest, it's said, listens back.

Redcap

Mean-spirited and bloodthirsty despite their diminutive size, Redcaps are often mistaken for wearing hats dyed with the blood of the slain. In truth, the color is their own, a shock of bright red hair crowning an otherwise unremarkable goblin skull. The rumor persists anyway; Redcaps have never been in a hurry to correct it.

Spitting Hobs

Short, squat goblins with bat-like faces and a rolling, wobbling gait, Spitting Hobs wrap themselves in rocky capes and carry pipes whittled from bamboo or reed. Through these pipes, they launch a rainbow of caustic, paralytic mucus at anything that threatens them, though in practice the weapon is more often used for hunting birds than fighting enemies. For all their strange arsenal, they're skittish by nature, and their oversized ears mean a loud noise will send a whole colony scattering.

Trilleboth

Small, slick water goblins with the pointed ears of their kin and the slippery hide of a catfish. So long as they stay submerged, their glamour holds; pulled from the water, the illusion dries and cracks, forming a disgusting crust across their skin, and the stench of rotting fish gives them away.

Bryn'velen (Fae)

Small, self-obsessed fae originally from Otherside, marked by pointed ears, spiky hair, bare feet, and clothing woven from leaves and branches. Vain, preening, and obsessed with pomp and circumstance, they're deeply distrustful of humans but can be bargained with, provided you know the old customs and mind your manners.

Common Pixies

Tiny, unassuming fae who drift from bloom to bloom, tending insects and wildlife with quiet devotion. Harmless to most, though anyone caught mistreating the natural world may earn a stab from one, which does little more than sting and leave a scratch.

Urchin Pixies

Cousins to the Common Pixie, similar in size and shape alone. Where their rural kin tend gardens, Urchin Pixies have claimed the city, and they hold a grudge against anyone who dares move into a house they've already decided is theirs. Tripped shoelaces, tumbles down stairs, forcing dogs to bark at nothing until dawn, petty, deniable mischief is their specialty.

Phooka

Goat-headed fae with a talent for wearing the shape of human children, every part but the head, which no Phooka has ever learned to disguise. Old stories cast them as corpse-thieves or minor demons; the truth is stranger and less sinister, though no less unsettling up close. They carry the sulfurous reek of their true nature no matter what shape they wear, along with bone staves strung with beads, teeth, claws, and older charms. They have an innate ability to use very simple magic, but what they can use is limited.

Pucks

Kin to the Phooka, marked by large, rounded ears, angular faces, and small horns peeking from a wild tangle of hair. Their gift is shapeshifting, though not the boundless kind of legend. A Puck can only become something of similar size and mass to itself, and the change is no more magic than an octopus's is: an act of specialized chromatophores and papillae, refined by their kind into an art.

House Boggart

Convinced of their own sophistication, House Boggarts consider themselves nearly the equal of humans in wit; they are not, and are in fact remarkably dim. What they lack in intellect, they make up for in ambition, stealing the finest clothing they can find and wearing it in ostentatious layers, with the best-dressed thief claiming leadership of the group. The rise of the washing machine dealt their culture a serious blow, and most boggart wardrobes today are decades out of fashion. They'll pocket silverware and any other finery within reach, and defend themselves with a green venom they consider a last resort, as House Boggarts see outright attack as barbaric and beneath them. Cunning liars can talk circles around them; boggarts keep names for one another, but a well-told lie or a new name offered with confidence will confuse them completely.

Bone Fae

The monstrous true creatures behind the tooth fairies of children's stories, bone fae are horrible creatures. Wards keep them out of a home, but few would dare invite one in on purpose. What the stories miss is that the "tooth fairy" and the bone fae are one and the same. The tooth fairy is simply a bone fae child, six to nine inches tall and slow to grow, taking upward of a century and a half to reach adulthood. Their young are born with spurs capable of numbing pain on contact, the true origin of procaine and its modern descendants. As they grow, their bodies constantly build and shed plates of bone-mineral armor, which is why the young need bone and teeth specifically to survive; no ordinary diet will do until they're grown. The bargain behind the legend is said to trace back centuries, to a mother who traded her child's safety for a nightly gift of teeth and bone left outside her door. The custom spread through the fae of the forests, and it's practiced still, whether or not the families who leave a tooth beneath a pillow know what they're really bargaining with.

Hemogoblin

A diminutive, bipedal creature with skin the color of fresh blood, an unusually long nose, beady black eyes, oversized hands and feet, and a long, thin tail. Despite its small size, Hemogoblins radiate an unmistakable pressure of power, and their noses are unmatched at tracking anyone who's had contact with Otherside.

Dwarrow

The true origin of every dwarf legend, Dwarrow are towering, stone-bodied artisans standing well over seven feet tall, nothing like the stumpy miners of children's movies. They don't reproduce organically; instead, groups of them carve new life from stone, each craftsman contributing their specialty. Fierce fighters and master builders, they dwell in glittering underground cities lit by veins of crystal.

Gnome

Small, unassuming, and almost always adorned with their cartoonish red hats. Beyond that, Gnomes have mostly avoided documentation, keeping to themselves and staying out of the affairs of louder, larger folk.

The Hollow Beast

A creature born of smoke and shadow that coalesces into four legs, a torso, and a serpentine neck, wearing the stolen faces of its victims. It speaks directly into the minds of those nearby, and even the most powerful entities in a room fall silent when it arrives. It hungers for souls and considers itself an instrument of vengeance, delivering cruel, personal judgments to those it hunts.

Voraketh

Also recorded under the name Bezolus, Voraketh is a minor god of unknown origin. Thin to an uncomfortable degree, he is dressed in a red leather jacket over skin scarred with ritual symbols that weep black, rotten flesh at the edges. In place of a head floats a mask, the color of dried blood, where on the forehead an upturned crescent moon is carved. Ringed by six drifting horns, his smile is something lifted straight from the edge of a nightmare. Voraketh moves with an unsettling, humming, dance-like gait and consumes bodies whole, drawn to blood and violence wherever it's summoned.

Alenari

The creatures who inspired the old tales of elves. They are created and grow from the accumulation of knowledge, beginning as an animal or creature of lower intelligence into a humanoid creature who generally still holds some of the traits of their original form. The courtly fae who serve King Nemora beyond the Gate to Otherside ruled with old formality and old grudges. Their guards, like the spear-wielding Centurion Estelar, are quick to violence toward trespassers, while their diplomats offer honeyed hospitality laced with danger; accepting food or drink from their table is a bargain no wise traveler makes lightly.

Dullahan

Headless riders drawn from Celtic legend, Dullahan have the ability to summon weapons at will, provided those weapons are free of iron. The old protections still hold: iron remains the one thing a fae of any kind cannot touch, let alone wield.

Bill

A small, duck-billed fae with an unmistakably poultry-like bearing, Bill move in short, birdlike bursts, tuck their arms close at sharp angles, and behave, in nearly every respect, like overgrown chickens with hands.

Taroo

Fae who chose to evolve alongside humans rather than apart from them, Taroo make their homes inside the walls of houses and barns. They gnaw on clothing when they can get it, with a particular weakness for leather, but their true obsession is footwear. Taroo will go to considerable lengths to steal shoes, especially a child's, not for consumption, but for wearing themselves. Without the ability to communicate with them, almost no one understands why this is.

Khalesian Script Demons

Not demons in truth, Khalesian Script Demons are conjured by ritual scrawlings that channel something through from other realms. They don't last long, and water dissolves them outright, but in their short lives, they're capable of an outsized amount of chaos.

Baku

Massive, white-furred creatures with a short trunk, small tusks, and a red circle on their foreheads, Baku resemble something between an elephant and an okapi. Native to Myrithal, the Dream Realm, they feed on dreams and nightmares alike, which is why a dream half-remembered on waking has usually already been eaten. Fiercely territorial around their extended family groups, Baku defend themselves with scent: a smell tailored to each observer, calming to allies and family, and unbearable to threats.

Sobek

Squat fae native to Portugal, Sobek feed on tree bark, and are considered agricultural pests wherever they settle. In Europe, they've formed a long symbiotic relationship with cork trees, a relationship that, thanks to the cork trade, has carried them as an invasive species into parts of the United States.

Common Troll

Large, slow-witted, and thoroughly overgrown with fungus, Common Trolls are as dim as they are dangerous. River trolls are a particularly foul subspecies — slick, muck-covered giants with finger-like toes, who wield fallen logs as clubs and leave dead zones behind them wherever they pass, killing plant, animal, and soil alike.

River Troll

Gremlins

Chaos given teeth, Gremlins never appear alone. Instead, they come in swarms that surge and crash like water, flooding through foes with no more direction than a wave breaking against rock. Tearing, biting, uprooting anything unlucky enough to stand in their path, they leave a battlefield picked apart rather than defeated, more mess than massacre. No one can guess what a Gremlin will do next, as it is believed that even they do not know.

Ewah

The skull of an elk crowns its shoulders, antlers still attached, skin still flayed and hanging loose beneath the bone. Beneath it, a crooked, too-tall body splits the trees apart as it moves, long fingers spreading wide against the trunks. Its jaw works in slow, deliberate motion, as though it's forever a breath from finishing some curse it can't quite speak. Moss and lichen cloak its long arms down to claws, a foot in length, and capable of peeling the steel from a car as easily as skin from fruit. Often noticed first by its glowing red eyes in the shadows of the night.