Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Centaurs are not native to the realm, having been instead imported from the steppes as part of the Emperor-King’s bodyguard when the current noble house inherited the throne. Nevertheless, thanks to their loyal service, His Majesty’s Own Centaur Heavy Cavalry enjoy numerous legal and social protections not due other seelie fae. However, that retinue has been decreased over time, as cannon and shot have made cavalry more vulnerable, and for those centaurs not serving in His Majesty’s Own hold few if any rights—including the wives and children of serving members. Needless to say, this has been very unpopular with many centaurs, and their repeated demands to be recognized as full subjects have met with fierce opposition in Estates.

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It is a matter of considerable debate within the Collegium how the common selkie’s mysterious shapeshifting powers work. Appearing as an ordinary fur seal, not unlike the thousands that dot the upper coasts, it appears to be capable of taking human—and possibly other—forms. The legends of them shedding their seal skin remain unsubstantiated, with some Collegium members convinced that this is a myth, and others convinced it is some sort of artifact of the shape-changing process. It is believed that, in either event, this power is used for self-preservation, to tempt away or sabotage fishermen or sealers in the form of a comely maiden. Collegister Lara holds that this is an artifact of those trades being male-dominated, and insists that female fishermen would encounter robust male selkies; this has not yet been taken seriously as a matter of scientific inquiry.

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Long known to hunters as the most difficult prey in any of the Emperor-King’s forests, unicorns are officially protected as imperial-royal game, meaning that they can only be hunted with express royal permission. A number of rejuvinative health effects have been attributed to unicorn meat and unicorn blood, but the Collegium has been unable to determine this reliably. What is clear, though, is that unicorns are at least as intelligent as any human or fae, and that they possess several reserve powers that they ordinarily do not deign to exercise. Wild stories of unicorns speaking, changing shape, and using tools and traps have yet to be substantiated for all the interest they have provoked.

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Violent, misanthropic killers by reputation, a barghest is similar enough to a man in size and posture, and will often wear stolen rags for warmth, that its true unseelie nature may not be discovered until it is upon its victim. Using massive spade-like teeth and a distendable jaw, the barghest will kill by crushing or slashing its prey’s throat, after which it will dismember the body to get at the long bones, which it will crack open and suck dry for sustenance. Though attacks on humans are relatively rare, barghest predation on cattle and other livestock has led to its ruthless suppression and hunting, and there are some in the Collegium who believe that less than 1000 of these creatures yet persist in the Emperor-King’s realm.

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Among the most familiar of the seelie fae, brownies will often observe and mimic human activity, and are known to master human trades such as carpentry, cobblery, and joinery. This has made them, unfortunately, key targets for exploitation, especially as the laws in force among the Emperor-King’s subjects do not apply to fae. Many an unscrupulous tradesman has been found to be using an all-brownie workforce, kidnapping the creatures and packing them together inhumanely on a diet of moldy bread and water. It is thought by some in the Collegium that brownies represent a prior and lower form of life that since evolved into the High Seelie such as elves, but this theory has been consistently resisted by conservative collegisters.

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Thought by many in the Collegium to be related to kelpies, the green knights are so named because their leaves seem almost like overlapping scale or splint mail. Lacking the magical illusion abilities of kelpies, green knights instead fashion themselves into roughly humanoid forms mainly for self-defense and occasionally to move to a new location.

While easily identifiable as inhuman in strong light, many a green knight has been mistaken for a mortal in low light or thick fog, and they are not above slaying and consuming those who make such a mistake. With a strongly vascularized woody body beneath their leafy exterior and the ability to both use and wear human arms and armor, green knights are not to be underestimated as opponents.

For a time, there was a fad for cultivating green knights as topiary guardians on private estates, but the difficulty of controlling the creatures as well as the need to frequently fertilize their soil has made it an unpopular choice in later years.

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When the first emissaries from the land of Daqin arrived in the lands of the King-Emperor centuries ago, they noted that their land had similar creatures to the dragons they encountered. These Tianlong are regarded by the Collegium as being closely related to dragons, possibly sharing a recent common ancestor.

Like dragons, Tianlong are intensely magical beings with the ability to cause terrible damage with their claws and breath. Unlike dragons, they either cannot or do not wish to alter their shape at will, and they also generally have vestigial wings at best, having adapted to rely solely on magical levitation for their flight.

So far as is known, Tianlong have never ventured from their homeland, though a number of their whelps have been given as court gifts and a Tianlong known as Dakkie was once present in the King-Emperor’s menagerie for a period of about ten years before being slain for an organ which would supposedly have cured the King-Emperor’s declining heath—the consumption of which, incidentally, caused him to be struck stone dead.

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Regarded by some as an unseelie counterpart to changelings, pookas have the same propensity for shifting and mutable forms, but add to it a considerable suite of unseelie powers that the Collegium is, at present, unable to explain. These include the ability to become invisible, incorporeal, or airborne seemingly at will. Pooka also have been observed to fast for months or to engorge themselves at a rate that would explode the stomach of a human or seelie fae, among other feats.

Again unlike changelings, pooka seem to have no clear agenda with their impersonations, and seldom attempt to fit in or remain in a single form for long. A single prank is normally the limit of their attention span, and they will often “break character” by assuming a deliberately frightening or alarming form, another behavior rarely seen in changelings.

Despite their classification as unseelie, however, there are no known examples of violent attacks by pookas, and they generally seem to be interested in causing chaos rather than bloodshed. There are recorded cases of pookas pledging their services to mortals in payment after accidental killings, but while surely well-intentioned these have never lasted for more than a day or two before the pooka once again becomes destracted and wanders off.

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A ravenous predator of marshlands and tidal pools, kelpies are carnivorous plants that are saturated with magical energies, only being able to grow or take root in areas of naturally high background magic. Using powerful illustions, as well as an innate ability to somewhat change their shape, kelpies will appear to be a being in distress—usually an attractive member of the opposite sex, an elder or youngster, but sometimes an animal or pet.

Once within arm’s reach, the kelpie will lash out with a leaf or stem coated with a sticky secretion that serves as both a trap and a powerful digestive acid. A victim so consumed will have its memories and personality made available to the kelpie, allowing them to become more effectice mimics with time. In one instance, the Muir Moor Tragedy, a single kelpie was able to wipe out all but one member of a Lower Verge village by mimicking each of its victims in turn.

In their investigations, the Collegium has found that kelpies are intelligent and capable of conversation, but appear generally disinterested in communication unless there is the possibility of a meal. Collegister Au’Brin was only able to obtain answers to simple questions by repeatedly placing himself into peril, with the kelpie ignoring him and his entreaties unless it seemed like he might be slain and consumed. From this can be gathered that kelpie intelligence came about primarily as a hunting tool, with the creatures being tempermentally unable—or perhaps consciously unwilling—to use it for anything but predation.

The keeping of cultivated “interrogator kelpies,” once common, has largely ceased due to the difficulty of extracting reliable information once a victim has been slain and digested.

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In the original myths and legends of the Kingdom-Empire, particularly in the Verge, changelings were fae that were left in place of stolen mortal babies. Other than a few isolated cases, that bas proven to be a myth, and as such the term has gradually shifted to mean those creatures that are of mutable form, captable of taking on a variety of guises.

The general consensus among the Collegium is that changelings either have some undetected fae (or possibly draconic) ancestry, or have been exposed to some sort of potent magical contamination at an early age or in utero. In either case, changelings’ abilities vary widely and inconsistently, with many arguing that they are in fact not even a discrete group at all.

Most changelings appear to attempt to blend in, assuming an innocuous form and attempting to maintain it. Some are able to do this more easily than others, but being outed as a changeling almost inevitably leads to the being in question being ejected from any employment and family bonds in suspicion of being an imposter.

They are, of course, treasured as spies and courtesans by the elite, but rarely if ever in the open due to the intense stigma, and many a changeling in government employ has only been revealed as such on their death. It was widely spectulated, but never proven, that King-Emperor Francis III’s well-known lover Hibibeth Dio was in fact a changeling, which led to her “disappearance” immediately after Francis III’s death.

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