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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