Death in Arcardia

The Guides of the Fallen

The concept of death to the Free Peoples would sound very foreign to the Civilized folk of the Glass City. The City of Mirrors sees death as a reaper, personified in various guises by the Broken, from Falsenight to Starheart and on. To the Free Peoples, death splits along two lines, neither of them an end but a beginning. As these are broad abstract concepts, they have been personified as a married couple: the Masculine Little Green Man and the Hermaphroditic Rainbow Moth.

The Little Green Man

The great instructor and the regenerator. The death of the Little Green Man is the death of green of the forest in face of cold of the darkening solstice. As autumn draws to a close, death creeps in and the world goes quiet. As Winter passes and the Rains come, life returns, regenerating from apparent devastation. The leaves are not the same leaves, the fruits are not the same fruits, but the pattern is the same. The Little Green Man does not pretend that death cannot reach us, but points out that death cannot stop us. What we have taught the next generation lives on in the next generation, they are the rains and the coming spring and summer, as their teachers are the Autumn and the inevitable cold of the Dark Moons. Death is merely a pause: breath in, hold, breath out. 

The out shell looks different, but the pattern remains, the story continues to unfold. Death is merely an interruption. Do not fear it, prepare for it and the next generation will carry your tale for eternity and you will never truly be dead.

Death is the source of all life in Arcadia. Don't fear the reaper.

The Rainbow Moth

As the Little Green Man personifies death as a regeneration, so the Rainbow Moth personifies death as a transformation. From Larva to Pupa to Adult, the Rainbow Moth is the blossoming of something new and greater- death as a shedding of lesser form. Before death, the inhabitant was small and frail and merely physical in form. Now, in death, the inhabitant's greater form bursts forth: a powerful set of accomplishments and ideals that they have lived well enough to have added to the archetypes of the Freepath and the stories of the Tribe itself. Freed from the constraints of the body, the life that the inhabitant lives becomes more an greater than said life every could have been while the inhabitant was alive.

The Rainbow Moth also venerates sacrifice and legacy and may be a little too comfortable with the idea of dying well for a great cause, but when a warrior seeks to die gloriously to buy the tribe time to retreat as the Harvester and the Men of Black and White bear down upon a village, it is to the Rainbow Moth that said Warrior says invocations.

A closer look at the Wendigo

All monsters begin as something mundane. The fractal begins with simple rules, and then spirals out into something more, and sometimes, something much worse. The origins of the Giants are unknown to the Psychonauts, but the origins of the Wendigo are not. The Wendigo were once human.  

The Wendigo are what happens when the hunger of the Grey Locust is left wild and uncontained by the Locust King and the constraints that the Grey places upon the Hungry Empire in an attempt to maintain its cold order.   

The hunger drives them, and in the early stages they still seem human.  

The Stillborn  

From a distance, one might mistake the Stillborn for people. Up close, the mistake is unlikely. The Stillborn's skill has gone white and chalky, and clouds of dry skin cells explode around them with sudden movements. Their eyes have gone milky blue-white and the skin has tightened all across the face to give the eyes a sunken look. The Stillborn's hair has bleached to translucent silver and seems to defy gravity, floating about the skull like an unholy halo.   

The Stillborn still speak, but their language is unintelligible to any non-wendigo. They have their own culture and mythology, those none who understand it are able to transmit it back to those who still understand human speech. The path to hunger is nearly always a one way journey.   

The Hungry Ghost  

As the body is consumed by the hunger, the Stillborn go from emaciated to truly skeletal, with skin stretched so tightly of bone and sinew that they could be mistaken for desiccated corpses if they choose to remain still. The teeth sharpen and elongate and the eyes decompose completely in the head, replaced by cold blue lights. At this point, the Wendigo is known as a Hungry Ghost. The Hungry Ghost, like the Stillborn army, still physically eat. However, they no longer attempt to cook their food, and seem unable to digest it- as the food sits inside their huge distended bellies.   

The Ravener  

The final state of deterioration. The Wendigo's head is now a skull with glowing eyes, resembling nothing so much as the terrible love child of an elk and a bear. Carnivores teeth poke out of a herbivore's jaw. A predator's eyes sit uneasy in the skull of a prey animal. What skin remains is ragged and wispy and flutters in the slightest breeze. The Ravener is an animate skeleton that glows with a cold blue light. The body of the skeleton too is twisted, elongated and ape-like, but with the hooves of an ungulate, the ribcage and fore paws of a polar bear, and bizarre protrusions extending from the individual vertebra of the spinal column.      

The Leviathan

The Fading Lake and the Drowned City are not deep bodies of water for the most part, but there are deep parts. And in those areas, sink holes and trenches, buried caverns formed of sunken bits of a long past golden; here the Leviathan makes its nest.

Most of the time, the Leviathan is content to remain hidden beneath the waves, feeding upon whatever has left the scars in its mutilated hide. Most of the time. Some of the time, the great giant sea monster explodes up to the surface and devours settlements on the Coast. Like the Behemoth, the Leviathan is singular. There is no more than one to bear the name. Unlike the Behemoth, the Leviathan is predatory, and those sentient beings that it devours it certainly does not devour by accident.

Unlike the Behemoth, there are not structures on the back of Leviathan that the Psychonauts might plunder. But when the Leviathan is active, the ancient underwater tunnels and structures where it normally sleeps are open for exploration by the bold and near suicidal. But psychonauts should be wary. The Leviathan got its scars somewhere.

The Behemoth

The largest Thing to walk upon the Wastelands; the Behemoth is, like the Leviathan and the Sentinel but unlike the Watchers and Trolls and Colossi, singular in existence. Psychonauts who have studied the Behemoth are uncertain whether the behemoth has always been singular or whether the great beast is the last of some monster species.

The Vast majority of the Behemoth's time is spent sleeping in the southern wastes. The Behemoth sleeps so long that dust will cover much of the giant's flanks and scrub grass and tumbleweeds will seed and take root. The Behemoth does not sleep long enough for cities to spring up, but upon each waking Psychonauts have observed a hut or ruined tower or two upon the back of the Giant. Because of their location, the story inevitably places things of great note or merit in these structures and brave Psychonauts will frequently attempt to climb the behemoth and explore the structures.

When the Behemeoth awakens, it feeds. The Behemoth is an omnivore, although seemingly by accident. The great giant lumbers across the landscape and grazing by devouring whole hillsides as it literally bites the tops of hills and mountaintops alike. It can devour whole camps or settlements this way, though most scholars agree that this is almost certainly accidental.

To the Scavenger Folk, the waking time of the Behemoth is a time of dangerous omens and ill portents, not the least of which because the Behemoth could simply decide to sit on a Scavenger Camp without noticing that it had done so.

The Four have a discussion

Into the void a cold tenor voice rang out like, ice field splitting across the horizon, "This is the story of us."

A second, distinctly motherly voice wreathed in an echoing chorus interrupted "And them. Don't forget that."

A third wet voice that seemed to thrum rather than speak add, "She means you, the reader."

"They may be listeners." Added a voice that echoed like a sermon in a sunken cathedral.

"In any event," The first cold voice said, regaining control of the narrative, "This is the story of us, and how our story is your story."

The motherly voice continued, "This is the story of how we made you."

"And how you then returned the favor, " the third voice thrummed.

"And this is the story of paradox of those words is the key to understanding your importance to the story." The Cathedral voice added.

"Because the story is where we live," The motherly voice said.

"And where we will find ourselves once we die," The cold voice concluded.

"And where you find us now." The Cathedral voice added.

"I'm trying to set up the story," The Cold voice objected, "You are ruining the mood."

"I am explaining important information," The cathedral voice insisted.

"You're just going to confuse them," the motherly voice said.

"Then I'm doing my job," The Cathedral voice answered.

"May we get on with this, please?" The Cold voice said.

"Yes," Said the Motherly voice," Our readers may be growing bored."

"Our Listeners." The Cathedral voice.

"Our audience," The Cold Voice said, "And while we waste time, our audience is dying."

The Fisher King Spider, The Deep Water Spider, The Eye Spider

A Bright painted spider with an elongated abdomen and which sports, instead of a cephalothorax, a miniature carapace shaped like an eyeless human skull. Mandible protrude from the front of the thorac, where the skull would have teeth. And in place of a cranium, the carapace fascimile skull sports a human-like eye swivelling in a bizarre ball socket.

The Fisher King Spider is a creature like Falsenight, stolen from and built by the Locust King from a piece of an ancient Elder- one of the Three. In this case, a stolen eye from the Weaver.

Unlike other mythic creations of the False King, the Eye Spider is not a large monstrosity. The Spiders that form its temporal bodies in the Shadowlands are only slightly larger than a typical hunting spider, smaller than a tarantula or camel spider certainly. The Deep Water Spider is not any spider however, and creates many avatars in the Shadowlands- an army of quietly watching bodies.

The Eye Spider is paranoia and surveillance and the chilling effect that such surveillance has upon creativity in creating the story.

The Eye Spider makes webs out of stagnant or polluted water and travels along its webs and only along its webs. but it can allow the web to disperse and 'surf' along drops of water or within (or upon) any stagnant or polluted body of water- as these things are all implicitly its web as well.

The Eye Spider can cast a charged line of water to strike the skin of a denizen, and thereby influence what they see, changing their perception of the Shadowlands.

Due to the Deep Water Spider's movement limitations, it is at its most powerful in the Foglands and nearly as powerful in the Mirrored City, and virtually powerless in Arcadia and The Painted Labyrinth, and completely powerless in Hollow Heart.

A First Look at the Dead Gods of the Mirrored CIty

When a god accumulates enough power from offerings and worship they may build themselves a seat of power, a sacred throne which both amplifies their power and serves as a vessel for that power. When the Locust King began to build the capital of his Hungry Empire, he sent his forces to hunt down appropriate gods and steal their thrones for the Hungry Empire. The City of Glass is built around these thrones, now bonded to the wards of the city. The gods from whom the thrones were stolen are now shadows of their former glory. Publically lauded as official Gods of the state, they are little more than propaganda puppets; trapped in the stones and steel of the cityscape, whispering prophecy and begging for offerings in exchange for favors.

• Gildguld, God of Tax Collectors
• Mitchuas, The Son of Ash
• Gaibrus, The Birdgod of the Dawn
• Zeudin Vashas, The Six Faced Lord of Thunder
• Lamris, The God of Obedience and the Underworld
• Friedites, The Goddess of Sin and Purity
• Valstaris, The Goddess of Love and War
• Xerfer, The Goddess of Jealousy and Greed

An Introductory Look at the Green Peoples

Humble Allies in Arcadia and the City of Glass: vine and bulb, leaf and flower. Concrete cracks as life breaks through. The Peoples are the green tribes, and it is a foolish Psychonauts who does not respect the trees. For in the Shadowlands, the plants make known their preferences.

• The Five Clans
  •  The One Leaf People
  •  The Two Leaf People
  •  The Winter Leaf People
  •  The Water Green People
  •  The Blade Green People
•  The Stone Crack People
•  The Village Treaty People

An expanded look at the Fair Folk

The Greater Magi of the Shadowlands - also known as the Demons

The Fair Folk are the mythic beings that wear human forms: Sheedr and Faidr and Gnomon. They are the keepers of Magick and will be teachers and patrons to human sorcerers. Often mistaken for Gods, the difference is that Fair Folk need no worship or offerings. The Fair Folk will normally trade or barter for their favor or their instruction. The Fair Folk may appear most human like, but they are not human. Like the Elders they are sympathetic to humans in the Shadowlands. But also like the Elders, their minds are alien and they do not see things as humans do.

Deal with Devils and not with Gods.

For Devils will bargain for your soul, 

while Gods will demand it for free.

The Aelfen

These fair folk look noble but are treacherous. The fair folk come from the future and feed on the present. They can provide prophecy for a price.

Sheedr

The fair folk of the Dark. Beautiful, regal, treacherous and cold. Rumor says that they come from the future and feed upon the present.

The Darkened Court

Tales of the Magus of Dark Solstice are many. Tales of his Court are told in whisperers. There is more to this solstice than stockings and gifts.

• The Magus: The Wondermaker
• The Four
  • The Caretaker: The Lady of Icy Waters
  • The Messenger: The Blind Dark
  • The Mediator: The Wild Huntsman
  • The Scholar: The Cold Wind
• The Fortuneteller: The Keeper of the Seed

Faidr

The fair folk of the Waning, said to be of the future. They whisper that harvesting the present is necessary to keep wheel of time whole.

The Twilight Rebels

The Court that is not. Day and night imagine themselves as a dichotomy. The changing of light rebels against such clean labels.

• The Magus: The Purifier
• The Four
  • The Caretaker: The Sheltering Wind
  • The Messenger: The Guardian of the Gate
  • The Mediator: The Mountain Beast
  • The Scholar: The Ascetic
• The Fortuneteller: The Summer Storm

The Kobalen

The goblin folk look vile and scary but are just and kind. The goblin folk come from the past and give to the present. They will take messages to the past for a price.

Gobn

The fair folk of summer. They defend the present, sending aid from the past. It is said they can undo past mistakes.

The Midnight Court

They guard the night during its weakest point. The Solar Solstice is their great siege. They preserve the cycle for another year.

• The Magus: Walker of the Crossroads
• The Four
  • The Caretaker: The Hearthkeeper
  • The Messenger: The Cryptwalker
  • The Mediator: Child of the Rainbow
  • The Scholar: Watcher on the Wind
• The Fortuneteller: Lady of Grace

Bogn

The fair folk of the Waning. Shriveled, squat, ugly, joyous and friendly. Hailing from the past, feeding past to present to bring the harvest.

The Noonday Court

Bright, shining and glorious. One would never guess the nature of these splendid arch devils. Who knows what emerges from the cocoon?

• The Magus: The Splendid Peacock
• The Four
  • The Caretaker: The Walking Worm
  • The Messenger: The Resurrectionist
  • The Mediator: The Giver of Libations
  • The Scholar: The Lightbringer
• The Fortuneteller: The Remover of Obstacles

The Gnomon

The Gnomon are the Fair Folk of science present moment and of science. Xaokn are researchers. Saign are Educators. The Gnomon are always willing to help but tend to be oblivious to consequences and will help Locust forces just as readily.

Saign

The Gnomon of Education. Closely aligned with the modern mind. They help, but they help everyone, tribe and city alike.

The Bone Shrine Court

The Bone Shrine Court teaches insights from the Bonelands. Remember how large is the universe. Remember how small is the human skull.

• The Magus: The Sage of Motion
• The Four
  • The Caretaker: The Sage of Time
  • The Messenger: The Sage of Descent
  • The Mediator: The Sage of Radiation
  • The Scholar: The Sage of Orbits
• The Fortuneteller: The Safe of Lightning

Xaokn

Gnomon of science. The Xoakn are dedicated to research, But they provide their research to the Locust just as readily as to you.

The Bonewood Court

Hidden in the Bone Forest. The court whose magick peers into the Bonelands. Magick ends and Science begins when we seek to prove ourselves wrong.

• The Magus: Eldest Teacher
• The Four
  • The Caretaker: The Teacher in the Library
  • The Messenger: The Teacher in the Observatory
  • The Mediator: The Teacher in Miniature
  • The Scholar: The Teacher in the Garden
• The Fortuneteller: The Teacher in the Cage

Locust Touched Fair Folk

Not all of the Fair Folk retain their independence in the face of the spreading conquest of the Hungry Empire. As it devours everything, either assimilating or destroying whatever it encounters, many of the Fair Folk who once were are no more. And many more Fair Folk now hold forms unrecognizable to what they once were.

The Sold Ones

The Hungry Empire expands across the land, spewing new gods and conquering lands and Denizens, people and stories and mind, The Sold Ones are Fair Folk corrupted by the Locust.

• Wheat Goblin
• Rice Spriggan

The Broken

The Broken are the Fair Folk, beings who were once part of the great Courts, corrupted and twisted into incomprehensible forms by the corruption of the Grey and the Locust King.

• The Grey Locust
• Falsenight

The Court of Eternal Summer

The Conquered Court. The Demon Servants to the Locust. Magick caged like a songbird

The Court of Eternal Summer is the Captive Court of the Locust King. They celebrate The Whore's Holiday (Valentine's Day), The Chimney Sweeper's Rest (May Long Weekend), The Worker's Holiday (Labor Day), And Black Market Day (Nov 1). These holidays are commercial mockeries of Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain. They serve the Grey and Falsenight. They are the keeper of consumption and immortality and absolute right and wrong.

• The Magus: The Lord of Lords and Builder of Cities (The Broken Bird)
• The Four
  • The Caretaker: The Lady of The Bloody Fountain (The Martyred Mother)
  • The Messenger: The Lord of Extermination (The Caged Huntsman)
  • The Mediator: The Lady of Unification and Conquest (Captive Citizen)
  • The Scholar: The Oracle Skull of Knowledge (The Toy in the Glass Tower)
• The Fortuneteller: The Quintuple Lords of Misfortune (The Curse of Cities)

The Broken

The Hungry Empire expands across the land, spewing new gods and conquering lands and Denizens, people and stories and mind. The Broken are the Fair Folk, beings who were once part of the great Courts, corrupted and twisted into incomprehensible forms by the corruption of the Grey and the Locust King.

The Grey Locust

The Locust Spirit is not villainous alone, twisted by addiction and fear. A plague of hunger and paranoia devours those it does not convert. The Grey Locust is some bizarre gestalt form, a minor spirit empowered by one of the fear touched Elders, latched parasitically upon a nameless lost Magus of a long forgotten Demon Court. This strange legion of beings is what transformed the youngest of the Seven Siblings from the Archetype known as Lion, into the Archetype now known as the Locust King.

Falsenight

An oily smoky skeletal fossil powering dark ambition with stolen fuel. This is what powers the Hungry Empire's Expansion, a forgotten Fortuneteller from the same now nameless Demon Court that birthed what become the Grey Locust. To give his captured Demon the power he needed, the Locust King bonded this captured demon with corrupted flesh stolen from the Great Serpent. But Falsenight needs tribute to provide its power, and the tribute must be paid.

The Guides of the Fallen

The Psychopomp, the Guide of the Fallen is a feature of practically human cultures. Fear of death and fear of the unknown combine in human mind and causes storytellers to allay the fears of their brethern by conjuring guides and protectors of the dead. In the Shadowlands, the Guides of the Fallen oversee travel between the Realms of the Shadowlands, and it only through their intervention that psychonauts may reach the Realms of Light and endeavor to reclaim a soul they may have foolishly lost to some avaricious god.

The Little Green Man

The great instructor and the regenerator. Death is the source of all life in Arcadia. Don't fear the reaper.

The Rainbow Moth

The rainbow is used by so many cultures to symbolize transportation and tramsission of messages. The Rainbow Moth beats wings made of iridescent light as it glistens through the dark caverns of the Painted Labyrinth

The Fear Touched

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. - HP Lovecraft

Pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of danger are the two primary drivers of living beings: desire and fear.

Void and Fire

Man of Void and Lady of Fire

The Man of Void and the Lady of Fire walk the circle of time and vastness of space. They share a human shape and are sympathetic to sentient beings. Their minds are alien, and yet quite familiar. The most disquieting of the Elders for their similarity to humanity while never quite getting it right.

The Hound

The Grey is fear from which springs paranoia and the need for control. The Hound is fear from which springs panic. The Hound is inescapable, an event horizon as implacable hunter. Face your fear or be devoured.

The Grey

Fear is inescapable. Fear is inevitable. Heroes use fear as their sword and shield, as their drive and fuel. But some use fear as a cage within which they capture everyone, including themselves. In the hopes of total control, the Grey inspires the Locust King to cage and devour the world.

The Living Four

The four 'younger' elders- no older than life itself.

The Survivor

That Which Survives

Older than the dead gods of the Glass City, The Elders exist without the worship of humans. That Which Survives is the essence of endurance and perseverance. This archdemon is what taught the first tribe the art of survival, just as the Pale Shepherd taught adaptation.

The Shepherd

The Pale Shepherd

Progress is an illusion. There is only change. Progress is a story we tell ourselves to keep ourselves sane. The walking worms shrouded in the pale cloak leads the midwives that tear change- stillborn- into the world.

The Sleeper

The Sleeping Beast

There are secrets, sleeping, in the deep. There are pieces of knowledge that torture the mind. Progress drives us beyond our safe illusions. The Bonelands shatter the mind, and the Sleeping Beast is an elder who opens the eye to the Bonelands.

The Primal

The Primal One

Life is an aberration. An anomaly in the vast cold blackness of an expanding universe, life is a tiny flickering light. The Primal One is the candle that feeds that hollow light in the darkness.

The Three Unknowable

The Three Unknowable are the three of the Elders most sympathetic to the Free Peoples.

Mystery

The Firebird is the Phoenix, and MYSTERY. The Firebird is the fire that inspires the story. It is the Shadowlands and more, born with the first breath of every "once upon a time", and dying with every "The End'. The Firebird sits just outside of understanding, pushing back the mystery just deepens it.

The Great Serpent

The source of all ambition and drive. The root of the heroic instinct, and the fire that burns within the heart of every legend. The Great Serpent echoes in the stories of Quetzecoatl and the Rainbow Serpent.

The Weaver

The spirit of the story, the teller of tales, keeper of the narrative, the great weaver. The Weaver is the guide to First Mother and the source of much of her annoyance. Inscrutable and wrapped in schemes and tricks. The Weaver is an ally to the story, but serves nobody.

The Sold Ones

The Hungry Empire expands across the land, spewing new gods and conquering lands and denizens, people and stories and mind, The Sold Ones are Fair Folk corrupted by the Locust.
 
The Wheat Goblin
(A Corrupted Gobn)

A small yellow goblin with a beard of wheat stalks and huge long floppy ears that look like leaves on a stalk of wheat. It can shapeshift but will always have a long braided beard or braided hair and it will always have it's ears. It tries to sell or offer freely wheat cakes that, if eaten, will render the victim unable to survive on anything but the wheat cakes or (just barely alive) on normal wheat products. Easy to fight and kill, they are not warriors.

But the wheat cakes will give temporary strength and speed to the Wheat Goblin itself and others who eat it. Foolish warriors will occasionally become willingly addicted to the wheat cakes.

The Rice Spriggan
(A Corrupted Bogn)

An amorphous spirit that lives in any stagnant water, but especially loves rice padi water. It can form a body out of the muck and vegetation and fish bones in it's home to fight if it needs or wants to do so. However, it's preference is to use fish teeth and bones to cut curse sigils onto the exposed feet and ankles of people who tread in the padi water.

The sigils render the victim week against cholera and malaria and Typhus spirits that will attack the victim every night for weeks (depending on the strength drawn for the curse and the strength drawn for the spirit itself). A Rice Spriggan can only be destroyed by draining it's watery home or purifying the water.

An Introductory Look at the Wild Folk

The other Tribes of Arcadia, wearing fur and scale and Feather. The Folk know the Locust by his scorn. The psychonaut would do well to remember that the fox and game fowl are his friends. The whale and wolf are her sisters. The rabbit and the rat are his aunt and uncle.

The wild folk are you neighbours and rivals as you explore the Shadowlands, they are your foes and friends, they are your trading partners and the hated raiders in the night.

• The Seven Clans
  •  The Free Folk
  •  The Cold Folk
  •  The Silent Folk
  •  The Wise Folk
  •  The Swift Folk
  •  The Gentle Folk
  •  The New Folk
•  The Sea Folk
  •  The Old Folk
  •  The Constant Folk
  •  The Strong Folk
  •  The Clever Folk
  •  The Singing Folk
  •  The Dancing Folk
  •  The Ghost Folk

An Introductory look at the Gods

The Bankers of Vajra and Souls

Gods are composite beings. Incorporeal as Spirits, derived from concepts as Elders, and bearing anthropomorphic avatars as Fair Folk; Gods have one unifying factor. Gods require human belief, human prayer, sacrifice and offerings. Gods are empty vessels that cannot generate any power of their own. They are bankers or insurance brokers, absorbing the Vajra and Souls offered them from a multitude of worshipers and giving back some small measure to the occasional worshiper as a miracle.

Gods can be a source of great power, but the cost is high. And it is difficult for a Freepath Sorcerer to use the power of the gods without breaking the first of the four great laws and worshiping that god.

• The Dead Gods 

An Introductory Look at the Monsters

The Misshapen and Gargantuan

The neutral parties of the Shadowlands, predator and prey. The monsters are sometimes intelligent and sometimes not. The common feature of monsters is that they are not human in appearance, although they will often have human features. They grant few favors, either ignoring or hunting those humans they encounter, dependent upon their nature.

• The Abominations
• The Wendigo  (The Stillborn Army)
• The Giants (The Grigorim)
• The Chimera (The Bakumera, The Name Eater, The Story Hunter, )

An Introductory look at the Spirits

The Clean and Unclean, The Pestilent and the Guardians
 
The spirits are the personification of illness and disease, of medicine and of places. They are beings without a form or body, though many bear a ghostly image; humans in the Shadowlands are unable to interact with spirits in a corporeal manner.

• The Old Spirits (The Quiet Ones, The Sickly Ones)
• The Miscreated
• The Psychopomps (The Iron Horses, The Rust Vultures, Ghost Bears, Stone Turtles, Stellar Jays)

A Introductory look at the Fair Folk

The Greater Magi of the Shadowlands - also known as the Daemons
 
The Fair Folk are the mythic beings that wear human forms: Sheedr and Faidr and Gnomon. They are the keepers of Magick and will be teachers and patrons to human sorcerers. Often mistaken for Gods, the difference is that Fair Folk need no worship or offerings. The Fair Folk will normally trade or barter for their favor or their instruction. The Fair Folk may appear most human like, but they are not human. Like the Elders they are sympathetic to humans in the Shadowlands. But also like the Elders, their minds are alien and they do not see things as humans do.

• The Broken
• The Sheedr, The Faidr, The Gnomon
• The Sold Ones