A Bestiary of Caeldon

Hosts of the Dark Entities

Here stand the hosts of the Beyonders and the spawn and servants of the Cast-Outs and the Unformed. A host is a living thing that a Dark Entity has taken, emptied, filled, or remade: the entity’s nature, walking. The Shard-Hosts of Krystallis still stand in the Hanging Vale where the lattice stopped them; the Hollow King’s empty Courtiers go out to crown the living.

Only three Beyonders have ever reached Caeldon, so most of the Beyonders' hosts here are examples, what an Incursion would bring; the hosts of the three are met only at the scars they left. Most people never learn the names of the powers behind them. They know the hosts as the Faceless or the wrong-born, as saints or ghosts, and ward them off with charms that sometimes help and sometimes bring them nearer. Among those who have met them, the most feared are the hosts that never strike a blow.

Most Named in This Part

The Material Plane PlaneThe central Anchor, also called the Equilibrium: Caeldon's own plane, the hub of the Veil, and the only plane where free will truly works.
Chorus CreatureThe beings of the Weave that have merged wholly into its network and lost all separate form, among them the Singers and the Menders.
The Hanging Vale SiteThe dry far-side valley on the Rimward Basins' inland rim that the Krystallis Incursion, c. 352,000-c. 349,000 BR, left standing in crystal, watched from the southernmost Lastwater Well; the only…
The Static Dark EntityThe White Noise, a Beyonder that buries every signal in hiss and flicker until the senses report what is not there; one clear, steady thought cuts through it.
The Sundered CreatureThe hosts of Xyphra: bodies come apart, head, torso, and limbs hanging a hand's breadth from each other in the air, whose touch makes a traveller's own body drift apart and cuts every bond.
The Bone Singer Dark EntityThe Cast-Out of Terra that was the Archivist of Bones, until it came to think memory too fragile to leave to the living.
Courtiers (the Puppet Court) CreatureThe Puppet Court of the Hollow King: people whose will it has drained, animated as empty suits with blank faces that seek out the living to crown them, each one crowned joining the court.
The Grafted CreatureBeings the Rootless Tree has grafted into its own growth in the Garden of Nowhere: bodies that branch and reach with no trunk behind them, and that feel themselves branching and cannot find the root.
The Many-Eyed One Dark EntityThe Cast-Out of Lux that was the Oculus, the clear light that exposed lies, until it came to believe that nothing should be hidden.
Stitch-Lings CreatureThe Patchwork Choir of the Flesh Weaver: bodies it has altered without asking, animated as mismatched marionettes on strings of sinew, some still knowing what they have become.
Watchers CreatureThe Eye-Cloud of the Many-Eyed One: swarms of disembodied, unblinking eyes that follow a victim everywhere, recording every act, word, and thought.
The Wrongwood SiteThe burned and overgrown Headwater valley where the Qzoth Incursion, c. 4,000-c. 3,500 BR, was burned back; Kindless Broods still breed there, and broken ground wakes the Changing Fever.
The Ashen Child Dark EntityThe Cast-Out of Ignis that was the Ember-Lord of the cycle of renewal, until it refused to let one burning go out.
The Flesh Weaver Dark EntityThe Cast-Out of Aqua that was the Loom-Master of living bodies, until its compassion for the sick curdled into a compulsion to fix them without asking.
Stitch-Wraiths CreatureThe Shadow Stitcher's animated threads: figures of black thread and shadow that do not attack but embrace, wrapping a victim in thread until they are bound to others for ever.
Flesh-Hosts CreatureThe hosts of Qzoth: unstable chimeras of shifting flesh, from towers of arms and mouths to puddles of thinking protoplasm, whose one drive is to grow by taking in living matter.

Terms

Incursion

Hosts of the Dark Entities

Most Named in This Part

Terms

In the Writers’ Guide