Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Not native to this continent, the rakshasa is in many ways like a changeling, in that it has a mutable form, but rakshasas also posess a “true” form—that of a tiger-like beastman—and an organized nature. Using their ability to alter their shape, they infiltrate society and politics seeking both comfort and luxury for themselves as well as a steady supply of food—preferably sapients—on which to dine. While they are generally unable to assume the form of a specific individual, with some notable exceptions, rakshasas have nevertheless embedded themselves in the power structures of many foreign nations, and it is only through the greatest of efforts that they have been thus far unable to do so in the Emperor-King’s realm.

Thus far, a simple test developed by the Collegium has been able to root out all rakshasas attempting to pass themselves off as mundane individuals. A rakshasa, like some other sorts of seelie and unseelie fae, is unable to bear the touch of cold-forged iron, which will rapidly redden and blister them. Therefore, the simple act of holding an iron ingot is usually enough, although some rakshasas have been able to circumvent the test by using a similar weight of dark clay or by surreptitiously coating the iron in wax. Even so, anyone who ostentatiously uses copper or brass where iron might be expected is at risk of suspicion or accusation, rightly or wrongly.

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Numerous sightings of green children have been reported, up to a dozen per century at one point, but for all the common elements in their stories the Collegium is as yet unable to present a coherent explanation for their existence. In every case, a child—usually one, occasionally two, rarely three—with an unusual green hue is found wandering in a rural locale, dressed in strange clothes and speaking an unknown language. They at first refuse all food that is not vegetable in nature, and around half of them soon sicken and die. The survivors gradually lose their green coloration for a normal human hue, are able to learn and speak the common tongue, and have even been reported as marrying and having living descendants.

While the Collegium has been able to identify several supposed descendants of green children, they display no outward signs of being anything other than normal humans. It has also examined written accounts of their strange speech, without conclusive results. The only sure fact is that the one piece of flaxen clothing asserted to have been worn by them does not seem to correspond to any known fiber.

When asked, the surviving children claimed to be from a green land of vegetarians, and professed to have no idea how they came to be found wandering in the countryside other than that it was often portended by a loud bang or a sound of bells. Collegister Eames in particular has put forward a theory that the green children hail from an “alternate fairy plane of existence,” but this theory has thus far found few adherents.

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Sirens are speculated to be related in some way to selkies, but while selkies have been known to sabotage and even murder, they always do so using mundane tools and trickery. Sirens, on the other hand, use a form of song that seems to compel obedience in the listener—one that the Collegium has been unable to fully explain or reproduce. While blocking a siren’s song is possible, hearing the least note is extremely dangerous as sailors have been driven to self-mutilation and even suicide when hearing a siren’s song but being unable to act upon it. In their natural habitat, sirens appear to live amid normal tropical seals as one of them, only emerging and singing during certain phases of the moon—seemingly taking and eating live prey just before they breed.

Despite their high intelligence, and the obvious grasp of human language demonstrated by their lyrics, communication with sirens—unlike selkies—has proven elusive. So far as can be ascertained, they have no interest in human affairs beyond their need to consume a blood meal before breeding. Indeed, they will often mimic other creatures as well in order to devour them, though the song “sung” by a siren to attract a gibbon, and the form it assumes whilst doing so, are unlikely to tempt any human observer.

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Unseelie fae that haunt burial sites, the barrowight differs from the typical wight in that they typically resemble the physical form of those who have died peacefully and been interred, while wights resemble those that died violent, brutal deaths. Considerable debate exists over whether barrowights—indeed, all wights—are truly the dead come back, or whether they represent a wholly new form of (un)life that merely arises from the dead, much as a plant may inherit characteristics of its soil.

In either case, wights seem to be driven to reproduce by creating more of themselves through the interment of more bodies, and to that end they seek to ensicken the living with a variety of fatal diseases and agues. The Collegium believes that they rely solely on natural sources of infection, but nevertheless hoard and cultivate what they are able to produce. In one case, a group of barrowights was able to spread anthrax through a small town, swelling their own ranks while leaving no survivors.

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A creature only recently discovered by science, the bunyip is an aquatic ampush predator that lies in wait in shallow or muddy water before latching onto prey with its sharp claws and drowning it in muck. It seems to colonize areas of extremely variable and ephemeral water supply, those unsuitable for crocodiles, and appears to be able to lay in wait for decades if not centuries in search of prey. When rare rains come, ephemeral rivers run and salt lakes fill, the bunyip will reportedly gorge itself enough that it can lie fallow for an equal period. Beyond that, though, the Collegium has been unable to assemble a coherent image or drawing of the beast, and those remains that have been collected have been so dessicated that dissection is impractical.

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Extirpated from the continent at around the same time as griffins, sphinxes are unseelie fae that actually do deserve their reputations as man-eaters, as they seem to derive more nutrition from highly intelligent prey, favoring learned professors above all else. This, combined with the sphinx’s own high intelligence and cunning, makes them extremely dangerous to keep in a zoological garden or menagerie. But it also makes them highly desirable and sought-after, so naturally both the Imperial and Royal Menagerie and the Collegium Zoological Gardens have at least one sphinx.

They are fed a regular diet of rhesus monkeys, the most intelligent creature that can be spared, but will often try to bargain their way into sweeter meat, as both sphinxes have fully mastered the common tongue. Indeed, they engage in an enciphered correspondence which seems to keep them appraised of the other, though no one at the Collegium has been able to break their code. It was thought that providing a male sphinx—the size of a housecat, and quite stupid compared to the female—might result in cubs, but the only result in both cases was that the sphinx toyed with the male for a month as they slowly tortured it to death. Visitors to both are cautioned never to enter into a contract of any kind with a sphinx, to give its riddles no heed, and above all to never, ever take anything that it offers.

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The noble griffin, the sign and sigil of many a kingly house, has been a favored animal on heraldry for centuries. However, as near as can be ascertained, they have been extinct in the Emperor-King’s realm since the days of the Eternal Empire, and have indeed been extirpated from the continent entirely. They survive elsewhere, however, albeit in far-diminished numbers given their—perhaps unfair—reputation as man-eaters.

Still, griffins are highly prized for menageries and zoological gardens. The Emperor-King’s menagerie currently holds one, as does the Collegium’s, though both specimens—nicknamed “Earl” and “Duke” after their donors—are elderly and sickly, having been fed a steady stream of refuse by paying visitors and being unable to fly due to clipped wings. Indeed, thanks to declawing that was done while they were both fledge-cubs, neither Earl nor Duke is even capable of seeing to their own meals and must instead be fed pre-cut meat. Indeed, it has been observed that both have grown spoilt and rather fat on this diet, but as the Collegium records no information on the proper diet of a griffin—save legends of them eating only infants exposed and left to die—it is currently unknown if, or how, this can be remedied.

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Seelie denizens of peat bogs, the ballybog is a shy herbivore that feeds on decaying vegetation and small animals. Due to its small humanoid shape and alarming appearance of a perpetual scowl, ballybogs are traditionally shunned and often killed on sight as bad luck. The Collegium has been unable to verify this, as the definition and provenance of “luck” is currently a matter of intense scholarly debate, but what is beyond dispute is that the ballybog is in a decline, possibly a terminal one. A last survey of the peatlands which form their last refuge identified only 101 individuals, of which only 14 were the rare sessile females. Debate is currently underway in the Collegium about the possibility if establishing a preserve, while others hold that the ballybog must perish because it is the natural order. In the meantime, the collegisters have been unable to agree on whether to take action on ballybog slaughter, with some holding that it should be banned until the debate is settled, some preferring to merely discourage it, and others agitating for an outright ban.

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So called because of their resemblance to particularly aged women, hags are unseelie fae that have no other appearance whatever their age. Among the most intelligent and ruthless of the unseelie fae, hags are capable verbal mimics that can exactly copy another’s voice only once. They are also capable of casting an aura of darkness about them, which they generally use for concealment and hunting, luring prey with vocal mimicry and then strangling it or slashing it with their talons. Despite this fearsome reputation, hag attacks on humans are rare, and at least one hag, Coligstress Svingril, gained renown as a scholar before unseelie fae were banned from the Collegium by the Emperor-King.

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Not much has changed since last year, in any sense of the word. I suppose there’s a kind of comfort in that stasis, but also a feeling that I may have stalled, creatively or conceptually. I suppose it’s traceable to my own sporadic upload schedule as well as the general decline in blogs as A thing™ over the last decade plus, but the feeling of screaming into the void is a lot stronger now than it was in the blog’s heyday.

But that’s not stopping me. Nope! Onward and upward, or at least onward and forward. I half-jokingly described this blog as my life’s work recently, and in many ways that really is true. If even one person read, and enjoyed, then it’s a life’s work well spent.

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