A Bestiary of Caeldon

Animals

The animals on this shelf are the ones the peoples live with: the cattle of the basin meadows, the horses and mules that carry the roads, and the driven herds of the Windscar kindreds, for whom a herd is food, shelter, trade, and the currency in which wrongs are answered. Around them live the deer a lord keeps and a poacher hangs for, the fox at the hen-house, and the crows and owls that every people watches for what they mean. Further out are the beasts people hunt and are hunted by: the wolf at the fold gate in a hard winter, the bear at the mountain waystation, the boar that has killed more young lords than war in some basin houses, and the hog in the ruin cellar that in some seasons kills more salvagers than falling stone.

At the edges stand the beings the peoples know least, like the eyeless creatures of the reservoirs beneath the Elderweald, and the dragon, which no one has seen for a very long time and most believe never existed.

Overviews

Bestiary 514The bestiary holds every being of the world that is not a people: the animals, plants, fungi, and crops of Caeldon; the natives of the planes and zones; the hosts and spawn of the Dark Entities…

Most Named in This Part

Humans PeopleThe young, fast people of the cradle-web's basins and headwaters, of the balanced adaptive field, who emerged c. 300,000-c. 220,000 BR; what marks them is pace, and they form regional peoples rather…
Thaluren PeopleAn ancient oceanic people of the Tidebound Reaches, no branch of the Elves despite the misnomer "sea-elves"; they live at sea but are born upriver, and the return to spawn shapes all their custom and…
The Confluence Basins RegionThe broad lowland heartland of Humans: wide valleys, deep fields, and linked rivers gathering towards the Serath.
Gnomes PeopleThe far-side people of fine craft and exact measure, who read an unstable coast truly and make others keep to the reading; their country is the Tidelace Coasts and their civilization the Gaugeward…
Orcs PeopleThe far-side people of harsh-land endurance, escorted roads, and sworn passage, neither twisted Humans nor mere raiders; their homeland is the Windscar Expanse and their civilization the Windscar…
The Headwater Marches RegionThe foothill country between the Human farmland and the Dwarven mountains, the oldest shared country of Humans and Dwarves, living by the escorted exchange roads to the hold gates.
The Rimward Basins RegionThe anchored half of the Windscar: closed basins whose rims carry the strongholds, defended wells, and rock-cut cisterns that let Orc life stay in one place.
Elves PeopleOne of the oldest peoples of Caeldon, stabilized in the Elderweald from an inheritance marked by the Verdant Expanse that shows in presence more than in anatomy; their branches are the Wood, Thorn…
Goblins PeopleA ruin-adapted people, not a malicious one, who live well in abandoned works, failed towns, and road shadows and know every gap and culvert in them; their strongest country is the Broken Marches and…
Dwarves PeopleOne of the oldest peoples of Caeldon, a dense and durable people stabilized under the Ironspine from an inheritance marked by the Iron Backbone; their branches are the Ironspine and Stonewake Dwarves.
Halflings PeopleThe far-side people of sheltered measure, who live where plenty has to be kept rather than taken; their first homeland is the Leeward Folds and their civilization the Foldward Commons.
The Leeward Folds RegionThe Windscar's opposite past a sheltering ridge: hollows, stepped terraces, orchard belts, and cistern-fed valleys, the first named homeland of the Halflings and of the Foldward Commons.
The Tidebound Reaches RegionThe far-side water-world that binds sea and river into one: current roads, reef and kelp settlements, estuaries, and upriver spawning approaches; the homeland of the Thaluren.
The High Scars RegionThe travelling half of the Windscar: wind-broken shelves and storm-cut passes held by moving escorts, where a road is a line of knowledge, not a built surface.
The Lower Serath RegionThe lower course of the Serath and the crowded corridor of walled towns strung along it, bound into the Serathic League.
Kobolds PeopleA small, careful, underwork-adapted people who live wherever surface and underworld meet imperfectly, in mine-edges, drains, vents, and ruin underlevels; their civilization is the Underhouse Compacts.

Terms

The Glassbelt · Headwater Humans · The Long Pan · Ravine Trolls · The Still Well · The Tidelace · The Windscar

Animals

Overviews

Most Named in This Part

Terms

In the Writers’ Guide