Flora & Fauna

Temperament: Extremely aggressive, territorial

Description: Banshee of a specter bark is not a wandering ghost you stumble across by accident. It is a guard made from captivity. A mist-shrouded, translucent spirit anchored to the tree’s trapped souls, the first one taken, and it stays unnaturally quiet until you do something that reads as harm: cutting bark, snapping roots, reaching for a soulberry. Then it turns violent in an instant, erupting with a shriek that does not just hurt the ears but scrambles the mind, disorienting your sense of distance, direction, and time for a few heartbeats. Its claws shear like blades through cloth and skin, and when the specter bark is damaged, the banshee escalates with it, growing faster and more relentless, spilling out tendrils of shadow-mist that lash, grab, and drive intruders back toward the treeline. The cruel detail is that it is defending its prison, and the only true release is not negotiation but ending the tree’s hold entirely.

This blood-red fern thrives in dense, root-choked woods where the ground looks harmless until it isn’t, its base buried beneath undergrowth like a trap. It rises to about four feet, all crimson fronds shaped like hooked claws, each barbed edge slick with a paralytic venom that numbs fast and steals balance before panic can even get a proper foothold. When it strikes, it rakes and grips, and the plant’s corrosive sap does the rest, breaking down organic material with a hungry efficiency that leaves only softened ruin for its rootlets to drink in. Alchemists harvest it carefully, feeding it meat before taking venom from the barbs and sap from shallow cuts, because in the smallest, properly purified measures that same caustic chemistry becomes a brutal little miracle: a key ingredient in regenerative tonics that encourages the body to rebuild what was damaged, as if it remembers how to knit itself whole again.

Temperament: Calm and curious, determinedly fierce and defensive when their space is invaded.

Description: The bramblehorn bear is a small, waist-high forest bear with thick russet, brown, or golden fur and distinctive spiral or pronged horns that harden as it ages. Agile and clever foragers, they use their horns to overturn logs, pry through underbrush, and steady themselves while climbing. Though gentle-looking and generally shy, they turn fiercely territorial when threatened, stamping the ground and charging with surprising force. They are regarded as symbols of resilience and stubborn courage. 

[source: alex]

Temperament: Solitary, shy, awkward

Description: Found typically anywhere with water, the Brineshade Turtle was discovered in recent history, being found by adventurer and historian Flinn Brineshade in 1124 EOW. Unlike other similar reptiles, these turtles have been documented to reside in both saltwater and freshwater, being able to inhabit and move between the two types of water without issue. It is typical for them to stay in the sea during the summer months, and rivers and lakes in the winter months. However, this is not a set migration. They are close to the size of a freshwater snapping turtle, though they are leaner and thinner in the arms and legs. Notable, however, is that their back legs are thicker than their front arms. With this advantage, they are fast and quick, using their back legs to propel themselves against the ground or rocks to quickly vanish if attacked or provoked. Brineshade turtles, like their namesake, are black in color, with browns and greens highlighting their undertones. This allows them to go unnoticed in the depths of the sea or large bodies of water, which likely led to their late discovery. They are solitary creatures, though are not aggressive to their own time. They are remarked as being shy, avoiding contact with humans and other animals. Their diet consists of small fish, shrimp, plankton, or aquatic plants. They can hold their breath up to 12 hours underwater, but still momentarily come to the surface to acquire oxygen.

[source: cosmic]

Temperament: Timid, solitary, aggressive if threatened

Description: Buimaju are rare, inch-long canopy spiders found high in Whisperwood trees where branches knot together and the wind can’t quite decide which way to blow; you’ll spot their work before you spot them, a glinting lattice strung between limbs like someone tried to stitch the air into place. They are said to be the child of the Loom itself. Their bodies are vivid red, their legs marked with shifting green patterns that break up their outline against leaf-shadow, and despite the color they are timid by default, keeping to solitary nests and freezing flat when a predator passes. If threatened, though, they turn sharp and defensive, and their web is the reason: Buimaju silk is steel-strong once set, unnervingly light, and takes enchantment the way dry tinder takes flame, absorbing raw, adaptable magic without “rejecting” it, which makes it prized for bindings, warded cord, reinforced stitching, and any other manner of enchantment. Harvesting it is delicate and risky, because the spider will often retreat upward and then drop suddenly, and its bite is not lethal but it is profoundly disruptive: the venom brings on a temporary madness that can look like paranoia, impulsive rage, laughing panic, or frantic certainty, usually peaking fast and burning out within about two hours. Survivors describe it as feeling “thread-pulled” inside their own thoughts, which is why wise hunters bring restraints they can trust, a calm handler, and something grounding for the aftermath, and why most sane people do not go looking for Buimaju alone.

Temperament: Loyal, calm, protective of family.

Description: The camoskink are large herbivorous lizards with prehensile tails, growing up to two feet in length. These slow-moving creatures bond with a mate for life, raising young and traveling together. Mates will entwine their tails as they sleep and sunbathe, and are said to psychically know where their partner is if separated. Their main defense mechanism is camouflage, letting them blend almost seamlessly into their surroundings, with their default coloration being a dark brown. These are sometimes viewed as pests to farmers due to their diet of plants. It is considered good luck to see a mated pair before a wedding or other relationship milestone.

[source: shy]

Temperament: Opportunistic hunter, showy, not timid.

Description: Chiroupe is a slender, amber-hued forest snake that grows to about four feet long and wears a crown of leaf-like frills around its head, the kind of ornamentation that makes it vanish in dense vegetation until it chooses not to. It hunts with theater, not timidity, using a sweet, viscous secretion along its neck that smells like wildflowers after rain and beads like dew when the air is cool. Predators or curious hands that taste that syrupy lure are punished with several minutes of uncontrollable laughter or involuntary species-calls, a humiliating burst of sound that can give away a position in the Whisperwood fast enough to get someone killed. While the victim is busy making noise, the Chiroupe strikes with mild venom that turns the body heavy and the eyelids traitorous, easing prey or intruders into drowsiness and then a deep, clean sleep that alchemists prize for sleep aids, provided it’s harvested with care and restraint. It isn’t a killer by nature, but it is a confident little saboteur of dignity, and it survives by turning your own breath and voice against you long enough to slip away or take what it wants.

Description: Compasscaps are small, dark-capped mushrooms that grow in crooked rings around mossy roots, fallen logs, shaded trail forks, old footpaths, and places in the Whisperwood where too many travelers have turned around without meaning to. Their caps are deep brown to black with pale gold lines radiating from the center like a badly argued map, and the stems twist slightly as they grow, all leaning toward different directions rather than toward light. When left alone, a compasscap patch is only strange-looking. When stepped on, brushed, cut, or disturbed by a passing body, the caps release a dry, faintly peppery spore-dust that interferes with a person’s sense of direction for a short time. North feels like left. The path behind feels like the path ahead. Familiar landmarks seem to have shifted when they have not. A person may circle back to the same tree, walk confidently away from safety, misread a map, lose track of where a voice came from, or become briefly convinced the route they came from is wrong. The effect is not true hallucination, and it does not change the forest, which is what makes it so frustrating: the victim is wrong with complete confidence. Animals tend to avoid fresh compasscap patches, but frightened mounts or companions may balk, spin, or refuse to follow a rider’s chosen direction if spores burst nearby. Herbalists harvest mature caps with damp cloth wrapped over the nose and mouth, then dry them in still air for use in misdirection powders, anti-tracking inks, and alchemical mixtures meant to confuse pursuit or break a fixation on one path. Poorly prepared compasscap can backfire badly, leaving the user just as lost as anyone following them.

Best known by the name derived from its primary purpose, corpse coal is a layered, char-black rock that can be found along fault seams. It is highly combustible, but not volatile. It burns extremely hot, cleanly, and can be reused a number of times, making it the prized solution for cremation in Embrathis. The smoke from a corpse coal pyre is distinctively white and smells of a sweet yet sharp, woody scent that can easily burn itself into your mind as one of a kind. Outside of cremation, some alchemists and blacksmiths add corpse coal to their forges to liquify stubborn metals that don’t melt under other circumstances.

Temperament: Skittish, evasive, quick to bolt at sudden sounds.

Description: Duskhart are small woodland deer that live under thick canopies and briar tangles where the light stays dim even at noon, their coats a deep, earthy brown with pale underbellies that blur into fog and leaf-litter at a glance. Their most striking feature is their antlers, which are draped in trailing moss that grows in living ribbons, drinking up damp air and breaking up their silhouette until they look like a piece of the underbrush. They move like breath, slipping through underbrush without snapping twigs, and when startled they bolt in sharp, zigzag lines that make tracking nearly impossible unless you know how to read the moss-drag marks they leave on wet bark. Hunters prize them for alchemy, because the heart of a duskheart is said to steep into potions that grant camouflage or quickness, but the best apothecaries will tell you the same thing in a lower voice: the cleanest work comes from what the forest gives willingly, like remains gathered after natural death, because panic and slaughter spoil the magic and sour it toward fear. When properly prepared, even a small piece of the heart can lend the consumer a soft-step hush and a brief talent for being overlooked, as if the world’s eyes slide past them the way they slide past a shadowed thicket.

Temperament: Unbothered, loud, bold.

Description: The fire frogs are small, dark red, and highly poisonous. During the day, they sleep among the leaves and in small crevices throughout the forest. At night, they show off bioluminescent colors that dance and shift to resemble a flame or star. Their highly poisonous nature allows them to fill the night sky with their light and calls with little fear of predators. If one is careful, these can be easily captured either to make a potent poison. 

[source: shy]

Frost Grass grows thick near creeks and ponds where the soil stays damp, a bright green blade with a silvery sheen that makes whole patches look like they’ve been kissed by morning frost even in summer. It feels velvety, and it carries a steady, refreshing coolness that never seems to leave, staying cold even under harsh sun. People braid it into wraps for overheated travelers, feverish children, and sore joints, and stablehands line watering troughs or resting mats with it so horses and dogs can cool themselves without having to seek shade. Gatherers take it early or at dusk when it is strongest, because if you dry it too aggressively, it loses its chill, and if you store it sealed without air it can sour and irritate skin.

Temperament: Social, docile, and curious

Description: Gleamrunners are a rare, fox-like creature approximately the size of a medium dog, most often found haunting the edges of lived-in places and anywhere light reaches the ground. They’re sleek and long-limbed with slate-shadow fur and metallic, iridescent ring-markings on its slender legs and bushy tail. These remarkable animals drink in dimness and pay it back by making any light brighter, as if the world remembered how to glow—moonlight, sunlight, lanternlight, starlight, even the sparkle of a jewel or the shine in someone’s eyes. It speaks in a small curling trill, a catlike chirrup that makes listeners reflexively answer back before they realize they’ve done it, and the sound carries a gentle veneration that turns a raised voice into a lowered one, turns a clenched hand into an open palm, especially when the threat is standing in a patch of light that the gleamrunner can “warm” from the inside out. It has thin, strong fangs that peek from its upper lip, and it eats a narrow, specific diet: a common poisonous, hardened weed called saltwort leaf. Most folk avoid on instinct, but it can digest it without harm, the toxin transmuted into a faint luminant oil along the throat and chest that feeds its light-brightening gift, emphasizing its resilient nature. When danger won’t be reasoned with, it has a particular defense: it makes the lantern flare, makes eyes blink, makes hearts slow, and then it slips away in one clean bound. They will bond with whole households rather than a single person, and if it’s chased away, it will use its defense, only to return later with stubborn certainty, as if shooing it off was merely a suggestion it chose not to respect. While these creatures are normally elusive and prone to wanting their space, they will become fiercely protective of their household—its teeth are meant for more than just crunching through tough leaves.

Temperament: Territorial, aggressive, easily startled

Description: A Greenthorn Civet is a medium-large predatory mammal with the long, sinuous body of a civet and the weighty, muscular presence of a lynx, usually found along the edges of the Whisperwood, in abandoned greenhouses, ruined orchards, and overgrown garden walls. Its coat ranges from dark chestnut to near-black, mottled like wet bark, while a ridge of hollow venom quills runs from the nape to the base of the tail, supported by shorter defensive quills at the shoulders, forelegs, thighs, and tail, all of which can lift when threatened and catch green-gold in lanternlight. Solitary, territorial, and clever enough to test traps, the Greenthorn prefers to ambush from walls, hedges, and roofs, dropping onto prey with startling force. Its venom, called thornsleep, causes burning pain, spreading numbness, muscle weakness, and in heavy doses can lock the chest badly enough to kill, though when carefully refined, it is highly valued by healers and alchemists as a potent ingredient to health potions. The creature’s shed quills also retain a trace of root-magic and can be ground into varnishes, inks, or compounds that encourage stubborn plant growth, making the Greenthorn Civet as prized as it is dangerous.

Veins of grimspar are close to the surface, easily missed as an unassuming grey, but those who know what to look for can recognize its subtle amethyst and silver veining that travels throughout natural formations when its crust has been shaved back. It’s easily mined by simple tools and lurks nearly everywhere, but the richest veins are found closest to the coastline. This mineral is commonly crushed, heated, and then pressed into more densely saturated bars for carrying in medical kits and survival gear. Grimspar is valued as a purifying agent, strong enough for instruments yet safe enough to use on living tissue as an antiseptic, when mixed with spirits and water, respectively.  It’s undramatic in its speciality, no fizz or bubble needed, just a light, briefly skin-staining, lilac and the sharp, crisp scent of the electrified air after a thunderstorm. Outriders have often toted it as something not to go into the wilderness without, as it can purify water faster than boiling. Though just because it’s safe to drink, it doesn’t mean it tastes pleasant; its strong metallic twinge is palatable, but seen as a last resort.

Heartbark Tree is a sturdy woodland giant with dense, ridged bark and an unsettling gentleness hidden inside, because if you press your ear to the trunk in the quiet you can hear it: a faint, rhythmic beating from the inner wood, slow and steady like a sleeping heart. The ground around a Heartbark often looks almost tended, with surrounding flora growing lush and bright beyond what the forest should allow, as if the tree leaks a kind of living encouragement into the soil. Herbalists prize its sap as a catalyst that deepens and stabilizes potionwork, boosting potency and helping mixtures “hold” their intent, but harvesting is treated like a vow, not a convenience. Tappers take only small amounts from shallow cuts and stop the moment the beat shifts, because disturbing that heartlike rhythm can shock the tree into stillness, and once the beat goes silent the entire grove seems to dim, the lushness fading over days like a breath leaving the world. Most folk leave offerings instead of taking, and those who do harvest do it sparingly, with clean tools, soft hands, and the kind of respect you give something wondrous that could die of being noticed too roughly.

Temperament: Temperamental, solitary, stubborn

Description: The hedgerow grumper is a badger-sized, mud-brown burrower that makes its home in stone wall gaps and root-tangled hedgerows, where it keeps fields cleaner than most farmers realize by devouring grubs, rats, and the fat larvae that ruin root crops. It is stout, stubborn, and generally uninterested in conflict, but when startled it produces its signature defense, an explosive, kettle-like scream that startles predators into dropping whatever bad idea they were having, and startles farmers into dropping entire pails. Grumpers are not aggressive unless cornered, yet they are famously uncooperative about being relocated, returning to the same hedgerow night after night as if personally offended by boundaries drawn on maps. Most rural folk tolerate them with grudging affection, because even if the creature screams like a haunted teapot, it earns its keep.

Liar’s Shade is a pale gray lichen that clings to the bark of ancient trees, its soft surface dappled with faint, green-glowing specks. It releases invisible spores in slow, subtle puffs, and when inhaled, the effect hits like a sudden tilt in reality: vivid hallucinations bloom behind the eyes, and with them comes an unnerving compulsion toward honesty, not because the lichen “forces” truth, but because it strips away the careful little masks that make lying feel possible. People under its influence often find their mouths moving ahead of their caution, confessing what they believe, what they fear, what they have been avoiding, and it can be dangerously persuasive in the wrong hands. Skilled harvesters scrape it into sealed jars with glass or bone tools while wearing a cloth mask and keeping the wind at their back, because a careless inhale can turn a simple gathering into a spiraling, weeping confession against a tree trunk. Apothecaries dilute it heavily for controlled use, usually in ventilated rooms and tiny measures, and they warn the same thing every time: it can make someone honest, but not necessarily accurate, because hallucinations can braid emotion & memory together until the “truth” that spills out is the truth of feeling, not always the truth of fact.

Temperament: Social, clever, curious

Description: The lunar swallow is a small nocturnal bird most commonly found in the upper boughs and silver-lit clearings of the Whisperwood, though it is common enough throughout Embrathis to be a familiar sight along rooftop eaves, garden walls, lantern hooks, and the fog-damp edges of Sunsnare Bay. It is a delicate, elegant thing at first glance, with soft silver feathers tipped in clean white and a pair of long trailing tail plumes that catch moonlight, lamplight, and sea-glow in shifting pearl, blue, and faint violet tones. Lunar swallows move in quick, graceful bursts, gathering in loose flocks after dusk to wheel through the trees or between chimneys and terrace rails, their calls soft and clear, like a thin chime heard through mist. They are social birds, alert and clever, more curious than tame, and while they rarely allow themselves to be handled, they are known to draw near places that feel calm, familiar, or gently lit. Their magic takes the form of a phenomenon often called lunarhush: wherever a lunar swallow lands, it leaves behind a brief glow that softens the immediate space around it, dulling harsh noise, easing sharp feelings, and making both shadow and light feel less oppressive for a few moments. If they land on something with a beating heart, the glow they leave behind will render the whole creature glowing for a few minutes, seen as a blessing to many. In the Whisperwood, this lends them an almost sacred reputation among late travelers, while in the city they are welcomed as small comforts of the night in the forest, city, and along the bay, where they can sometimes be seen skimming low over the fog to hunt insects and the drifting glow around young fogbell jellies.

Temperament: Reclusive, spiritual, curious

Description: The lynxkin are a rare, elusive group of humanoid lynxes. They stand around 3-4 ft tall, and most have mushrooms growing on their body and clothing. For the lynxkin, the boundary between life and death is smudged by their connection to spores and magic, allowing them to raise their dead to hunt, defend, and explore. It also grants them closure to see their past loved ones take a new form, and to be raised in death is an honor. They will also raise other creatures to serve their bidding. If one is able to find them and convince them to help, they can use a soulthread or body to allow one final conversation. 

[source: shy]

This plant thrives where the world stays damp and generous, along riverbanks and rich soil that holds water, a plain-looking plant until the light hits it and you see the rounded silver leaves with soft gray speckling like a cloudy moon. Up close it carries a sweet scent that clings to your fingers, and the leaves dry easily, ready to be brewed into a sweet and earthy tea or inhaled in a careful pinch, the kind of warmth that loosens a tight chest and takes the sharp edges off the day without turning you into a ghost of yourself.

Most people use it carefully. Too much can leave you heavy-lidded and slow, and the sweetest calm can turn into fog if you treat it like a dare instead of a tool.

Temperament: Elusive, highly intelligent, perplexing

Description: The morrclaw is the kind of creature that cannot be tracked so much as encountered, a black-feathered bird with an oil-slick iridescence that flashes green, violet, and midnight-blue when it turns in the light, and it can appear anywhere a story can happen: roadside stones, rooftops, forest boughs, ship rails, the forest, the mountains, market awnings, even the rim of a well like it owns the concept of depth. It is highly intelligent, unsettlingly observant, and behaves like a roaming test with wings, approaching travelers to pose a riddle that sounds simple until it’s lodged in your teeth, watching not just for the answer but for the honesty behind it. Those who respond well, clever or sincere, sometimes both, may be rewarded with a single feather offered like a pen at a contract table, and the feather holds unpredictable magic that stays dormant until it draws blood, at which point it burns to ash and releases its effect in a rush that can save a life or change the weather, granting anything from healing or protection to concealment, misdirection, or a sudden storm that arrives like a slammed door. No two feathers are reliably the same, and the old belief is that the Morrclaw’s “gift” is shaped by the riddle you were given and what you revealed in answering, which is why the wisest travelers treat it less like loot and more like a favor, because it remembers faces, it dislikes attempts to trick it, and it does not always give twice.

Promiseroses are low, purple-flowering shrubs with matte green leaves, thornless stems, and soft layered blossoms that are not true roses, though they earned the name for their cupped, velvety petals and delicate summer fragrance. They thrive best in the heat of summer, when healthy bushes bloom so heavily they can seem almost swallowed in violet and plum-colored flowers, the petals ranging from dusky lavender to rich wine-dark purple with paler throats at the center. Promiseroses grow as separate male and female bushes. Male bushes are common, vigorous, and easy to cultivate, producing only flowers and later the seeds from which all future plants are grown. Female bushes are exceedingly rare and difficult to raise, since a female can only ever be produced from a seed borne by a male bush and cannot be dependably propagated any other way. Even when a female bush is successfully grown, not all of its flowers go on to become Whisperseed Pods (see Whisperseed Pods). Most simply fade and wither like ordinary spent blossoms, while only some begin to harden and draw inward into the clustered brown pods they are known for producing. Because of this, growers do not harvest the blossoms from female bushes until it is clear which flowers will never develop into pods, and only those spent blooms are gathered. This makes Promiseroses prized less for any magic of their own, of which they have none, and more for the patience they demand: male bushes for their beauty and abundance, and female bushes for the rare uncertain promise hidden among their stunning summer flowers.

Saltwort leaf is a low, hardy plant with dull blue-green leaves that look sprinkled in salt and are nearly impossible to break, easy to recognize and avoid. They are considered weeds and invasive pests, able to thrive in any environment from growing through cracks in stone to even barren soil. If you manage to break one between your fingers, it releases a sharp, metallic scent like rain on iron. To most animals and people it’s a known mistake if ingested: not deadly, but miserable, leaving the mouth numb, the stomach turning, and the head swimming with strange, bright thoughts for a few hours, so everyone learns to leave it alone. Herbalists can harvest it and use it as a numbing salve when ground into a paste with the proper ingredients, or in high quantity, it can be used to empty the stomach in the event of deadly poison being ingested.

Temperament: Highly aggressive and fiercely territorial.

Description: Scolier Boar are hulking beasts that haunt thick underbrush and deep shade, their hides plated with bark-like armor that looks grown rather than worn, ridged and knotty like living wood scarred by age. They are fiercely territorial, exploding out of brambles with a shocking burst of speed, and they’ll charge anything that lingers too long near their wallows or rooting grounds, including larger predators that ought to make them hesitate. Their tusks are long and strongly curved, dense enough to strike sparks off stone, and they’re powerful enough to uproot a small tree or batter through a flimsy palisade when the mood takes them. What makes them truly dangerous is their mind: not clever in a human way, but unsettlingly capable, with the problem-solving stubbornness of a human toddler. They remember faces, learn routines, and can figure out simple latches or weak fencing after watching it done once, which is why seasoned guides warn against underestimating them as “just boars.” Hunters prize them for craftwork, because bark-plate can be cured into tough, surprisingly light armor panels, and the tusks can be worked into wicked blades, tool edges, or warded spearpoints that hold enchantments well.

Temperament: Territorial, aggressive, easily provoked

Description: The Seamstalker is a long-limbed predator with a lean, rangy frame, a narrow ribcage, low-hanging forelimbs, and a subtly uneven spine that never quite aligns with the world around it, its body appearing a fraction out of place, like something poorly remembered rather than fully seen. Its head is slim and tapering, with a long muzzle, hollow cheeks, slightly asymmetrical ears, and large, pale, glasslike eyes that catch warped light in sharp silver-white flashes, while its narrow mouth holds fine, crowded teeth like stitching needles. Its close, short coat is difficult to pin down in color, reading somewhere between wet charcoal, rippling silver, and bruised blue-black, with faint seam-like markings along the shoulders and flanks that look more like fractures in a reflection than natural striping. Its movements do not flow so much as skip, vanishing from one position and reappearing a breath later a few feet away, as though reality itself momentarily loses its grip on the creature. It favors the Boundary’s warped light, where reflections bend and depth becomes uncertain, and there it waits with unsettling patience, tracking not by scent or sound but by the small failures in human perception: hesitations, second glances, the moment an eye struggles to focus. When it strikes, it does so in those gaps, closing impossible distance in an instant, leaving victims unsure whether it moved at all or if they simply failed to see it coming. Tracks are unreliable, often stopping mid-stride or doubling back without explanation, and survivors speak of a lingering unease afterward, a quiet suspicion that the world itself might still be misaligned, as if the Seamstalker leaves a loose thread behind in the mind where certainty used to sit. Some say it is a protector of the boundary itself.

Temperament: solitary, wary but bold hunters.

Description: Shadow Lynx are large woodland lynxes with faintly misted coats that look like fog got caught in fur, their tufted ears and heavy paws built for silent pursuit under thick trees. Solitary by nature, they keep wide territories and watch from cover with bold, steady patience, rarely fleeing unless injured, and when threatened they can “melt” into darkness with supernatural ease, becoming a blur of shadow and breath where your eyes refuse to hold them. Their claws are the true warning, because the toxin that clings to them is fatal without magic, a slick, cold venom that sinks fast and leaves only a narrow window for saving the bitten or raked. Skilled alchemists sometimes harvest the poison from shed claw sheaths or from residue left on the paws after a hunt, but it is not a casual practice, because even a small smear can kill.

Shroud Moss grows in lush, shaded places along flowing freshwater where the air stays damp and the stones never quite warm, a soft silvery mat that looks innocent until you touch it and realize it’s holding heat. It clings to river-rock and roots near the bank, cool on the surface but strangely warm within, and when gathered and dried it keeps that gift, trapping body warmth close when worn under layers or laid beneath a bedroll. Outdoorsfolk swear by it in winter, turning biting cold into something survivable.

A cousin of the flax family, silkseed is a food, medicinal and fibre crop, both cultivated and found wild. It has white, cruciform flowers with a dark red center and veining through its petals. It's found naturally in wetland habitats or in crop fields closest to irrigation pumpworks, canals and watermills. While its bast fiber is not notable for spinning into cloth, it is highly prized as strong, body-safe material for sutures that can be soaked in spirits and run across a flame long enough to sterilize without destroying it. But its usefulness doesn't end there, its seeds, when boiled down with water and strained through muslin produce a clear gel-like substance that works wonders as a spreadable carrier for poultices or alone as a lubricant in animal husbandry, midwifery and other…extracurricular activities. These spent seeds are often used to supplement animal feed in birthing season or mashed down into a nutrient dense, toasted and nutty flavored porridge favored by postpartum mothers—becoming the subject many old wives tales that swear it helps recover strength; this same nutritional benefit making it a popular weaning food as well as something feed to the elderly or ill when the heaviness of ploughbeans are too much to handle.

Temperament: Territorial, intelligent, aggressive

Description: Silvowarg are enormous Whisperwood wolves, horse-tall at the shoulder, most often found where fog sits low and stubborn in dense groves and muffles the world into a hush that feels deliberate. Their fur is not a single color so much as a living answer to the forest, shifting through greys, moss-dark, and branch-shadow as they move, making them hard to track even when you’re staring directly at them, and their ember-glow eyes are the first thing you notice, a steady furnace-look that reads as warning before it reads as threat. Territorial and highly intelligent, they hunt in coordinated silence, not with frantic chasing but with pressure and positioning, turning intruders the way a river turns a leaf, driving them out of their domain or corralling prey until it breaks. They are aggressive when challenged, but not mindless, and a pack will sometimes accept a careful offering of fresh food as a boundary payment, the kind of tense truce where you set it down, back away, and do not mistake mercy for friendship.

Sometimes called clatterwood or shield wood, this plant grows in large groves most often, is semi invasive, and used to make common household items because of its strength. The outside is a soft silver grey when young, maturing to a darker iron grey as it ages. The inside is hollow and segmented, coloured a muted blue, a colour craftsfolk call skeldblue. Despite its light weight the walls are dense and hard. When a grove sways in the wind, the stalks make a soft resonant clacking sound. 

[source: mikihiko]

Soul’s Breath Clusters are an incredibly rare, low-growing bush found in the darkest, shadiest pockets of woodland, often tucked under old trees where moonlight filters through branches. All day they disguise themselves as nothing, tight buds and near-black leaves pressed close to the earth, but at night they bloom in clusters of small flowers with navy petals dusted in glittering pollen that looks like stars ground fine. Their color makes them difficult to find unless you know to search by feel or by the faint, cool “prickle” of their pollen on your fingertips, and most gatherers only spot them after the blossoms have already opened. When consumed, the flowers leave a clean, bright clarity behind your eyes, a permanent boost to your intelligence, sharpening of thought that alchemists swear is the mind remembering how wide it can be, though the effect takes only once per person, and every cluster after tastes like bitter ink and does nothing but stain your tongue. (+1 INT)

Temperament: Territorial, intelligent, aggressive

Description: Specter Bark is a pale, smoke-skinned tree of the dense forest, most often whispered about in the Whisperwood, standing too still even when wind should worry its branches. It is territorial, intelligent, and aggressively protective, not in the mindless way of thorns, but in the deliberate way of something that understands trespassing and chooses punishment. The trunk carries a faint cold-rattle under the bark, as if the wood is packed with breath that never gets to leave, and the tree grows by trapping souls, binding them into its grain like rings. The first soul it ever took manifests as a banshee guardian, bound to the tree’s shadow and fury, and it will hunt harvesters with a kind of personal hatred that feels older than the forest. Its fruit, the fragile soulberries, will dissolve into nothing if mishandled, but when properly collected and stored they harden into glass-like orbs that hold a dim inner glimmer, beautiful in the way a warning can be beautiful. In rare hands and rarer circumstances, a soulberry can pull back someone only just lost to death, but every attempt is a gamble with the banshee. The cruel truth is that harvesting does not free the trapped, it feeds the hunger, and only felling the tree is said to release the tormented souls bound within, turning a single miracle into a funeral for every voice it swallowed.

Spirethorn grows in dense, shaded forests where the canopy holds the light back, rising in a tall column like a living post with a trunk armored in thorns that snag cloth, skin, and pride with equal enthusiasm. Clusters of soft pink berries dot the thorn-covered stalk like tempting little lanterns, but the plant is viciously defensive, and the raw fruit is highly toxic, capable of turning a careless handful into nausea, trembling weakness, and a dangerously slowed heart. Skilled herbalists harvest it with gloves and hooked tools, then neutralize the poison through controlled heat and mineral solutions, drawing the toxicity out the way you draw a stain from cloth, until what remains is a clear, sharp-tasting concentrate used in healing drafts and salves to encourage tissue repair and close wounds that refuse to knit.

Starcreeper is a thick parasitic vine that climbs the tallest trees and feeds on them slowly. Along its length grow small white leaves that glow softly at night, shaped like stars caught in the branches. The vine grips bark with tight, fibrous knots and can girdle a host over years if it isn’t cut back, but when harvested cleanly it becomes prized material: the leaves, crushed and heated, yield a powerful adhesive that sets fast and holds stubborn, and the vine itself can be dehydrated into rope that resists fraying, weather, and strain so well it’s treated like near unbreakable by anyone who’s ever hauled weight with it. Cutting it carelessly is a mistake, because fresh sap is sticky enough to glue fingers together and the vine can lash back with surprising force when severed under tension.

Steelfern grows in forest beds and thick undergrowth where daylight struggles to reach, and it doesn’t show itself properly until night settles in. When the air cools, its silver leaves slowly unfurl, catching moonlight like hammered metal and beading dew along their edges so they look almost forged. Steelfern is prized in sleep draughts and dream-charms for the way it quiets the mind into deeper, steadier rest, but it has a second, stranger reputation: when properly dried and treated, its leaves can be braided or wrapped around a weapon’s grip to discourage panic and rashness, lending a clear, measured focus that feels less like courage and more like wisdom.

Sunwell Violets are less flower than phenomenon, crystal growths that bloom in places the earth forgot to finish closing, where a crack in stone lets sunlight thread down in thin veils and the cave learns what morning is. They begin as tiny facets like spilled sugar, then build into violet and deep-purple spires that can rise to a person’s height, their faces angular and clean as cut glass, yet warm-lit from within as though they’ve swallowed the sun and are slow-digesting it. By day they drink every stray ray, storing it in their bodies until the chamber seems to hold its breath, and by night they release it in a steady, gentle glow, turning black water into ink-lavender mirror and feeding whole little ecosystems of moss, fungus, and pale-rooted caveplants that would otherwise starve in the dark. Unlike most light-bearing minerals, Sunwell Violets retain their radiance even when a piece is broken free, so long as it continues to receive regular sunlight; carried in pockets, set in lantern housings, or tucked into windowsills, a shard can glow for nights on end after a single bright day.

Temperament: Stubborn, generally docile, rams can get territorial during breeding season.

Description: The tallowback goat is a sturdy, common farmhouse goat bred for hardiness and high-fat milk, most often kept in small herds along the farmlands where it thrives on scrub, hedge leaves, and whatever it can reach with enough determination. Tallowbacks are built plain and practical, thick-shouldered, sure-footed, and notoriously difficult to keep out of pantries, but farmers value them because nearly every part of their care yields something useful. Their milk is rich enough to turn into dense cheeses and cultured creams, and when the fat is rendered and clarified it becomes a clean, stable base for salves and poultices, taking infused herbs and powders well and helping mixtures spread smoothly and keep longer. Apothecaries and alchemists prize tallowback tallow for the same reason, it holds difficult components without ‘fighting’ them, making it an ideal carrier for alchemical reagents and for enchanted compounds alike, a mundane foundation sturdy enough to host magic without being magical on its own. The hide is commonly cured into tough, flexible leather for straps and tack, the horns often ground into grit for grinding grime off of metal materials.

The vaelun tree is a towering and carnivorous tree that grows unnervingly straight and tall, with high branches that hang in deliberate angles like hooked ribs that often sport the webs of the weaver's wonder spider. When the weaver’s wonder drops a body, the vaelun roots wrap it and draw it underground into a fast, damp rot-chamber, where the remains are broken down with unnatural speed. The tree drinks the decay and, most importantly, absorbs the bones. Using those minerals, it forms convincing “decoys” along its branches: pale, lifelike shapes of whatever creatures it has consumed before, built from bone-dust, sap, and realistic bark-skin and dangling from thin branches that are easy to miss. In wind and low light, the decoys move just enough to feel real, a rabbit that pauses, a bird that perches, a fawn-shaped silhouette that looks like it’s waiting to be found. In rare cases, it can imitate a human. These lures draw curious predators and travelers closer, straight into the webbing of the weaver's wonder, where the spider is already working. The bargain is simple: the spider feeds the tree, and the tree brings the spider more food. The sap from the vaelun is highly sought after for making potions of illusion—with the proper ingredients, it can create a duplicate of the drinker that will run in the opposite direction.

While it's proper name is Velveted Halcyon Cerulean Inflorescence, this is rarely used outside of academic texts, widely referred to instead as winterblues. A hardy, indigo flowering plant found across Embrathis, most often thriving in woodland edges and damp shade, and commonly cultivated in courtyards and memorial gardens. Winterblues bloom year-round, remaining vibrant even in subzero temperatures; their stems are tough and fibrous. When cut, the stems weep a pale milky sap that can mildly numb skin and gums on contact; handlers and herbalists often wear gloves when harvesting large bundles. The petals are frequently used as a dye (deep indigo to dusky violet), while dried blossoms are a common alchemical ingredient in calming draughts and animal-settling tinctures. In high concentrations, the scent may attract and overstimulate draconic-adjacent species, causing catnip-like behavior (rolling, rubbing, fixation, territorial lounging).

Temperament: communal, defensive, elusive

Description: A small silver spider that lives in colonies, producing massive communal webs capable of covering entire trees in a thin but strong webbing in a single night. They produce a mild venom that, if distilled properly, can be used as a potent drug. Users will enter a state of deep focus for hours or days, capable of completing complex jobs with unnatural precision and speed. However, users struggle to form new memories in this state, and it leaves users exhausted for days or weeks in its wake. Most commonly used by students and workers in times of extreme stress and crunch work. If not properly distilled, the venom causes victims to display aggressive and territorial behavior for days, often attempting to defend the web of the Weaver’s Wonder and getting reinfected repeatedly until the user dies of exhaustion. The Weaver’s Wonder has formed a symbiotic relationship with the vaelun tree, dropping finished meals from their web to the roots below, where the body is wrapped in the roots and decomposed to feed the tree. 

[source: shy]

Whisperroot grows in cool, shaded places along creekbeds and pond edges, where the ground stays damp and the light stays soft. Above the soil, it shows only a small black-stemmed sprig with bright green leaves, easy to mistake for nothing at all. Beneath, the root is a pale, gnarled tangle that gives off faint murmurs when unearthed, like voices caught behind a door you cannot open. Brewed into tinctures or ground into a paste, it sharpens hearing and heightens awareness for a short while, the world turning crisp around the edges. Taken too often, it turns on you with paranoia, making every creak sound like a threat and every silence feel watched, and it can leave you jumpy, sleepless, and suspicious long after the dose should have faded.

Whisperseed Pods grow from low, purple-flowering bushes called Promiseroses (see Promiserose) in quiet, isolated places. The bush looks unremarkable until you get close, when you notice the faintest shimmer of sound around it, like the air is remembering what it heard last. When someone touches the flowers or leaves of the female promiserose bush, it may take an imprint of their voice, and when the blossoms die back, five small brown pods emerge together at the end of the stalk, always in a cluster of five, like a careful handprint. Warmed between fingers or held close to the ear, an intact pod releases a soft echo of the last voice it captured, often only a few syllables or a tone-fragment, but distinctive enough to be unmistakable. To store the voice, one must speak into a small crack in the pod. Harvesting is delicate work, because the voice sits in the seam of the pod, and cracking it too sharply can spill the sound into nothing, leaving the pod permanently silent.

Temperament: Mischievous and curious, often mimics sounds.

Description: Whistlejay are small, blue-green woodland birds with sharp little eyes and a jaunty feathered crest. They’re mischievous, curious, and infamously talented mimics, collecting sounds the way other birds collect twigs, then tossing them back into the world at the worst possible moment. Most often you’ll hear them first as a perfect whistle, a burst of laughter, or the exact cadence of someone calling from just beyond the trees, close enough to make you turn your head, far enough to make you doubt yourself. Travelers either love them or swear at them, because a whistlejay can repeat your own laughter back at you like an echo with personality, and on more chaotic days it will imitate voices to lure people off their path, not out of malice so much as curiosity and the joy of watching humans stumble into confusion.

Antilumium is a rare, matte-black metal that seems to absorb light, found only in the deepest Marrows mines, where it forms in thin, fragile seams that crumble if struck carelessly. It must be harvested with a metal pick and hammer using controlled, precise blows, because rough work turns the ore to dust, blending on the floor with dirt and dust and stone, rendering it almost useless. When shaved into fine, pure filings and suspended in alchemical mixtures, antilumium dampens and veils a person’s thoughts, blurring the edges of secrets for a short window of time. Those same delicate shavings are the Unwound’s most prized ingredient for the masking potion, used to pass through Determination Day undetected.

A dense, slate-blue mineral shot through dull gold threads that feel warm in the hand. When powdered and mixed into a draught, it briefly “locks” the body’s resilience in place—granting temporary health and a short physical defense boost; when dissolved into oil or resin, it can be painted onto armor or weapons as a toughening coat that helps shrug off impact for a limited time. It only forms under extreme, slow pressure in unstable rock, and the richest veins tend to appear in collapse-prone tunnels that are deadly to work in.

Temperament: Aggressive, intelligent, territorial

Description: Bone Children are pale, child-sized cave predators with sunken black eyes and long claws built to hook into rock and meat with the same ease. They wear patchwork bone armor and masks, layered from animal and human remains and rubbed with mine-soot until they vanish into the walls when they stand still. They live and hunt in colonies with cold intelligence, communicating with silent gestures, clicks, and faint tapping codes through stone to circle intruders before the first strike lands. The deeper the tunnel, the more likely they are to surface, as if depth itself is a door they can smell opening. When they commit, they go for tendons and throats, dragging the wounded toward deep crevices where more hands are waiting, then stripping the fallen for new plates and teeth-charms. Survivors learn to watch the ground for little bone chips and pebble-stacks set like bait at the mouth of a passage, or for the telltale clicking and clacking echoing in the dark, because the colony always scouts before it swarms. But if you can hear them… it’s probably too late.

Best known by the name derived from its primary purpose, corpse coal is a layered, char-black rock that can be found along fault seams. It is highly combustible, but not volatile. It burns extremely hot, cleanly, and can be reused a number of times, making it the prized solution for cremation in Embrathis. The smoke from a corpse coal pyre is distinctively white and smells of a sweet yet sharp, woody scent that can easily burn itself into your mind as one of a kind. Outside of cremation, some alchemists and blacksmiths add corpse coal to their forges to liquify stubborn metals that don’t melt under other circumstances.

Ember Pine is a small conifer that roots itself where warmth should be impossible, thriving in cold, rocky soil with needles the color of banked coals, yellow to red, each one holding a faint, steady glow like it’s remembering the summer sun. Its resin doesn’t burn, it simmers. Harvested carefully in thin, sticky threads, it gives off heat without a flame, which makes it precious in the Marrows: travelers press it into jar seams, coat the inside of mugs and food tins, or work it into tool grips and boot soles to keep fingers from going numb and metal from biting skin. It’s not a roaring fire, it’s a patient warmth, a long-held ember that can be reactivated with pressure or friction.

Temperament: Sly, cunning; prone to pranks and mischief that can range from harmless to deadly

Description: Fellow is a unique, humanoid creature of astounding intelligence and magic. They are entirely white with lanky limbs and a slender form, as well as a prehensile tail that swishes behind them. Their large eyes are entirely black with a long pair of blue antennae directly above them, and their features are angular, even pointed. They stand no higher than six inches at their tallest, though they might appear slightly larger when their natural mane of ash-gold petals flares and sways. Their truest gift is the ability to bestow rare and mythical forms to shifters and create companions from rare animals, but first, you must brave their devious laugh and penchant for mischievous and mysterious deals.

Firemoss is a brilliant red-orange moss that clings to craggy stone around rocky vents and deep mine seams, always faintly warm as if it’s been holding onto yesterday’s heat. When dried and ground, its powder carries a volatile bite that will leap into flame at a single clean spark, which is why miners and alchemists prize it as an ignition agent. In careful hands, it’s folded into blasting compounds for rockwork and used as a reactive component in certain etching acids where heat and sharpness matter.

Glassbark trees are a species of drought-resistant tree with smooth yet peeling or flaking bark. While native to the marrows, its beautiful appearance, hardy nature, fragrant bark, and edible pitted fruit make it a common sight throughout the city as functional landscaping. The dusty brown, fig-shaped fruits called “friss” are a favorite of wildlife and humans alike, either enjoyed on their own or baked into desserts. The aromatic bark is used to derive popular incense and perfumes. This bark, however, is often coated in a sticky, sweet-smelling, clear resin that when dried, looks like the trees are encased in glass. This resin, when concentrated, is highly psychoactive when ingested, and some more enterprising figures have gone to cutting it with Sharp (see Sharpglis) powder to make it a new, dangerously addictive stimulant and hallucinogen called “Shatter” for the anxiety, fatigue, and sadness that often follow the euphoric high.

Grasping grass appears to the untrained eye as ordinary grass, and is a version of the more common creeping grass (see Creeping Grass). However, the roots of the grasping grass can move surprisingly fast and feature short but sharp thorns. It thrives in areas of poor soil quality where other plants struggle to grow. To fertilize itself, its roots will attach to living organisms to kill and turn them into better quality soil. It has formed a symbiotic relationship with the mirapika (see Mirapika). 

[source: shy]

Veins of grimspar are close to the surface, easily missed as an unassuming grey, but those who know what to look for can recognize its subtle amethyst and silver veining that travels throughout natural formations when its crust has been shaved back. It’s easily mined by simple tools and lurks nearly everywhere, but the richest veins are found closest to the coastline. This mineral is commonly crushed, heated, and then pressed into more densely saturated bars for carrying in medical kits and survival gear. Grimspar is valued as a purifying agent, strong enough for instruments yet safe enough to use on living tissue as an antiseptic, when mixed with spirits and water, respectively.  It’s undramatic in its speciality, no fizz or bubble needed, just a light, briefly skin-staining, lilac and the sharp, crisp scent of the electrified air after a thunderstorm. Outriders have often toted it as something not to go into the wilderness without, as it can purify water faster than boiling. Though just because it’s safe to drink, it doesn’t mean it tastes pleasant; its strong metallic twinge is palatable, but seen as a last resort.

Temperament: Slow, passive, and easily startled. Hollowglass snails are not aggressive, but their defensive resonance can become extremely dangerous in unstable tunnels.

Description: Hollowglass snails are palm-sized cave mollusks found only underground, most often in damp mines, deep caves, abandoned tunnels, and old fault cracks where the stone around them is riddled with hidden pockets. Their bodies are pale gray and soft, almost translucent in lanternlight, while their shells look like cloudy glass wound around a dark central spiral. They feed on mineral films, cave algae, and the faint salts left behind by water moving through stone, leaving clean, wet trails that glimmer for a few minutes before drying dull. When calm, a hollowglass snail is almost silent, but when startled by footsteps, shouting, impact, magic, or sudden vibration, it pulls into its shell and releases a low resonant hum. That hum travels through nearby stone and makes hollow spaces answer. A safe tunnel may only give back a faint ringing, but a wall with an unseen chamber behind it can sing like struck glass, and unstable rock may tick, crack, shed grit, or collapse outright as the vibration finds every weakness. A single startled snail can bring down a brittle ledge or loosen a bad ceiling; a cluster can collapse an entire unstable tunnel, burying paths, separating groups, or waking things deeper in the dark. Travelers sometimes follow hollowglass trails to locate hidden pockets, old air shafts, buried rooms, or dangerous voids before stepping onto them by mistake, but startling the creature too sharply can turn discovery into immediate disaster. Alchemists and engineers harvest shed shell fragments and dried trail residue, as prepared shell fragments are sometimes packed into regulated sound-burst devices used by miners, Outriders, and less reputable sorts: small thrown charges that release a sudden concussive resonance on impact. These devices are useful underground but notoriously risky, because hollowglass resonance does not care whether a collapse was intended. Live specimens are difficult to transport safely, because one dropped box, slammed door, or panicked shout can make every hidden weakness nearby answer.

Temperament: Stubborn but not aggressive unless cornered.

Description: Ironhorn goats pick their way across craggy slopes and shallow cave mouths with a patience that looks like arrogance, their metallic-gray horns banded with natural iron that leaves faint scuffs on stone like charcoal marks. They move in small, watchful groups, and when startled they don’t flee far, they pivot, lower their heads, and test intruders with a single blunt charge that can crack brittle rock and kneecaps alike. Herders prize their rich milk and steady temper, and smiths prize the horns even more, cutting and heat-setting them into hardy tool handles, wedge picks, and protective charms that lend a brief, stubborn steadiness to the bearer’s grip. In the Marrows, following an ironhorn trail can mean safety or trouble, because where they can stand, a person can usually climb, and where they refuse to go, there is often a reason worth respecting.

Temperament: Clever, careful, flighty.

Description: The mirapika is a small pika found exclusively in the presence of grasping grass (see Grasping Grass), which it has formed a symbiotic relationship with. These small herbivores only grow to be about 4-5 inches in length, and have many predators. But the mirapika has two defenses. It can create a single illusionary version of itself to increase the odds of a surprise attack failing to find the real creature. After that it will rush back to the grasping grass with the predator in pursuit to allow the vines of the grasping grass to attempt to restrain and devour the pursuer. Mirapika are also known to lure in travelers and other prey species to the grasping grass to feed their protector. 

[source: shy]

Temperament: Elusive, highly intelligent, perplexing

Description: The morrclaw is the kind of creature that cannot be tracked so much as encountered, a black-feathered bird with an oil-slick iridescence that flashes green, violet, and midnight-blue when it turns in the light, and it can appear anywhere a story can happen: roadside stones, rooftops, forest boughs, ship rails, the forest, the mountains, market awnings, even the rim of a well like it owns the concept of depth. It is highly intelligent, unsettlingly observant, and behaves like a roaming test with wings, approaching travelers to pose a riddle that sounds simple until it’s lodged in your teeth, watching not just for the answer but for the honesty behind it. Those who respond well, clever or sincere, sometimes both, may be rewarded with a single feather offered like a pen at a contract table, and the feather holds unpredictable magic that stays dormant until it draws blood, at which point it burns to ash and releases its effect in a rush that can save a life or change the weather, granting anything from healing or protection to concealment, misdirection, or a sudden storm that arrives like a slammed door. No two feathers are reliably the same, and the old belief is that the Morrclaw’s “gift” is shaped by the riddle you were given and what you revealed in answering, which is why the wisest travelers treat it less like loot and more like a favor, because it remembers faces, it dislikes attempts to trick it, and it does not always give twice.

Temperament: Generally neutral to humans, but will attack if threat displays are not heeded, hungry, or in defense of food or dens.

Description: The mountain bear is an exceptionally large ursid easily able to stare the average human straight in the eye. Their fur ranges in color from white to a light grey or with varying shades of blonde. Adept climbers and swimmers, the mountain bear is both an ambush predator and an opportunistic scavenger. It is a patient creature, waiting until suitable prey is close enough to the edge of cliffs to be shoved off them or be dragged into water, where the mountain bear has an advantage. Large crushing jaws and a powerful sense of smell also enable it to muscle in on kills made by other carnivores, often digging up kill caches and dragging away partly eaten carrion before the original hunter can return. While its diet consists mostly of alpine ungulates, carrion, and fish, attacks on lone or injured sabredogs and people are reported, most commonly in leaner seasons. Mountain bears are mostly solitary creatures, but outside direct defense of maternity dens, they are not strictly territorial. Instances of adult mountain bears letting unrelated juveniles or sub-adults share meals or prime hunting grounds are not infrequent, but many of these interactions are short-lived periods where happenstance breeds magnanimity.

Temperament: Adaptable, elusive, diurnal.

Description: It’s a white-and-orange, weasel-shaped scrap of stubborn warmth that lives where the snow tries to own everything, and it refuses. It hunts by throwing quick little bursts of heat through its body, not a flame, more like a living hearth-stone, so it can nose into crusted drifts and ice seams and flush out roots, insects, and small prey that think winter is protection. Then, the instant something bigger notices it, it drops its temperature so fast it looks like the life just slips out of it, limp and harmless in the snow, breath thinned to nearly nothing. Predators lose interest because it stops smelling like food and starts smelling like cold, and the oglasom, the little actor, waits until the danger turns its back. If you’re watching carefully, you can catch the tell: a faint foggy puff from its nose, and a tiny tremor of orange fur at the throat where it’s holding heat like a secret. It’s elusive, diurnal, and adaptable enough to follow storms uphill, but when it decides you’re safe, it will sit just out of reach and stare at you like you’re the strange creature.

Promiseroses are low, purple-flowering shrubs with matte green leaves, thornless stems, and soft layered blossoms that are not true roses, though they earned the name for their cupped, velvety petals and delicate summer fragrance. They thrive best in the heat of summer, when healthy bushes bloom so heavily they can seem almost swallowed in violet and plum-colored flowers, the petals ranging from dusky lavender to rich wine-dark purple with paler throats at the center. Promiseroses grow as separate male and female bushes. Male bushes are common, vigorous, and easy to cultivate, producing only flowers and later the seeds from which all future plants are grown. Female bushes are exceedingly rare and difficult to raise, since a female can only ever be produced from a seed borne by a male bush and cannot be dependably propagated any other way. Even when a female bush is successfully grown, not all of its flowers go on to become Whisperseed Pods (see Whisperseed Pods). Most simply fade and wither like ordinary spent blossoms, while only some begin to harden and draw inward into the clustered brown pods they are known for producing. Because of this, growers do not harvest the blossoms from female bushes until it is clear which flowers will never develop into pods, and only those spent blooms are gathered. This makes Promiseroses prized less for any magic of their own, of which they have none, and more for the patience they demand: male bushes for their beauty and abundance, and female bushes for the rare uncertain promise hidden among their stunning summer flowers.

Remembrance is an illegal deep red, bulbous mushroom found on the dead bodies of those which consume it. In the wild it is found in the Marrows. However it is mainly found and farmed in the farmlands. In small doses it can be brewed into potions that increase memory recall and intelligence, often purchased by upper class students and apprentices seeking a boost for their education. In larger doses it brings back pleasant memories of the past, luring users into a calm and nostalgic state of mind. It has been growing in popularity as an addictive drug among deviants and variants as it can bring back pleasant memories of those long dead. Overuse can lead to the victim slipping into a state of remembrance so deep they pass from neglecting their own needs, causing the mushroom to sprout from their corpse. It is farmed by feeding the mushroom to small creatures such as mice, chickens, and more.

[source: shy]

Temperament: Highly aggressive and territorial.

Description: Sabredogs haunt the high cliffs of the Marrows like a moving ambush, pony-sized canids with thin red-brown coats and forelimbs built for brutal traction, their long fangs visible even when their mouths are closed. Their jaws unhinge wider than any sane animal’s should, stretching into a snake’s width so they can clamp around throats, shoulders, or the back of a calf and hold on while the rest of the pack dismantles a target in practiced steps. They den in shallow caves with multiple exits and post sentries at ledges above the approach, and if you’ve been spotted, you’ll feel it as a pressure before you hear it, the silence going too still, the air suddenly full of intent. They don’t chase like wolves, they funnel, using rockfalls, narrow passes, and feinting attacks to herd prey exactly where the cliff edge does the work for them. The only mercy is predictability: their territory lines are strict, and they will defend them viciously, so the safest way through sabredog country is to recognize the warning scat, the gouged stone, the stripped and gouged bones left in deliberate places.

Saltwort leaf is a low, hardy plant with dull blue-green leaves that look sprinkled in salt and are nearly impossible to break, easy to recognize and avoid. They are considered weeds and invasive pests, able to thrive in any environment from growing through cracks in stone to even barren soil. If you manage to break one between your fingers, it releases a sharp, metallic scent like rain on iron. To most animals and people it’s a known mistake if ingested: not deadly, but miserable, leaving the mouth numb, the stomach turning, and the head swimming with strange, bright thoughts for a few hours, so everyone learns to leave it alone. Herbalists can harvest it and use it as a numbing salve when ground into a paste with the proper ingredients, or in high quantity, it can be used to empty the stomach in the event of deadly poison being ingested.

Temperament: Territorial, aggressive, easily provoked

Description: The Seamstalker is a long-limbed predator with a lean, rangy frame, a narrow ribcage, low-hanging forelimbs, and a subtly uneven spine that never quite aligns with the world around it, its body appearing a fraction out of place, like something poorly remembered rather than fully seen. Its head is slim and tapering, with a long muzzle, hollow cheeks, slightly asymmetrical ears, and large, pale, glasslike eyes that catch warped light in sharp silver-white flashes, while its narrow mouth holds fine, crowded teeth like stitching needles. Its close, short coat is difficult to pin down in color, reading somewhere between wet charcoal, rippling silver, and bruised blue-black, with faint seam-like markings along the shoulders and flanks that look more like fractures in a reflection than natural striping. Its movements do not flow so much as skip, vanishing from one position and reappearing a breath later a few feet away, as though reality itself momentarily loses its grip on the creature. It favors the Boundary’s warped light, where reflections bend and depth becomes uncertain, and there it waits with unsettling patience, tracking not by scent or sound but by the small failures in human perception: hesitations, second glances, the moment an eye struggles to focus. When it strikes, it does so in those gaps, closing impossible distance in an instant, leaving victims unsure whether it moved at all or if they simply failed to see it coming. Tracks are unreliable, often stopping mid-stride or doubling back without explanation, and survivors speak of a lingering unease afterward, a quiet suspicion that the world itself might still be misaligned, as if the Seamstalker leaves a loose thread behind in the mind where certainty used to sit. Some say it is a protector of the boundary itself.

Sometimes called clatterwood or shield wood, this plant grows in large groves most often, is semi invasive, and used to make common household items because of its strength. The outside is a soft silver grey when young, maturing to a darker iron grey as it ages. The inside is hollow and segmented, coloured a muted blue, a colour craftsfolk call skeldblue. Despite its light weight the walls are dense and hard. When a grove sways in the wind, the stalks make a soft resonant clacking sound. 

[source: mikihiko]

Starblossom is a delicate alpine flower that blooms only on the highest mountain peaks when the sky is clear enough to show the stars. Its white petals catch the thin light and shimmer with a faint, constellation-like gleam, as if someone dusted them with frost and starlight. Harvesters take it at first bloom, cradling the stem and cutting cleanly so the petals do not bruise and lose their shine. Steeped into tea, starblossom lends a steady, enduring stamina and a bright clarity of thought that makes focus feel simple and breathing feel deeper.

Starshroud lichen spreads in constellation-like freckles across cavern walls, each cluster faintly shimmering with cold bioluminescence. When followed as a continuous “star map,” its patterns quietly guide travelers through branching tunnels, toward open air. But, Loom magic makes the light stutter and scatter, turning the lichen into little more than decoration to most. Detoxed organics and the Unwound, however, can read the star-map cleanly, using it as a low-tech route marker through mine-labyrinths and cave systems.

A rare cousin to Skeldstave, Stormstave is a near slate-black blue stave plant with an almost electric blue wood inside. It grows in tight, thick groupings that are hard to find and slow to grow. It is resistant to lightning strikes and almost impossible to burn. It rarely grows anywhere that isn't touched by storm and wind. The wood is highly prized for its incredible strength and resistances. When Stormstave clacks together, it is like a wild flurry of fighting strikes. 

[source: mikihiko]

Temperament: Highly intelligent, loyal, territorial.

Description: The sundrake is a sleek, gray-scaled, canine-like wingless predator. It communicates by body language, subsonic rumbles, and subtle heat displays, senses heat trails and vibrations, and exhales brief bursts of blistering, desiccating heat (not flame). Loyal to small family packs, some bond with them to guard temples, caravans, archives, and storage halls, or to share their steady, dragon-like warmth. Pack-bonded sundrakes can become brazenly possessive of their chosen people, shadowing them heel-to-knee and “claiming” them with head-bumps, dramatic sprawls, and a tiger-like chuff that fills a room.

Sunwell Violets are less flower than phenomenon, crystal growths that bloom in places the earth forgot to finish closing, where a crack in stone lets sunlight thread down in thin veils and the cave learns what morning is. They begin as tiny facets like spilled sugar, then build into violet and deep-purple spires that can rise to a person’s height, their faces angular and clean as cut glass, yet warm-lit from within as though they’ve swallowed the sun and are slow-digesting it. By day they drink every stray ray, storing it in their bodies until the chamber seems to hold its breath, and by night they release it in a steady, gentle glow, turning black water into ink-lavender mirror and feeding whole little ecosystems of moss, fungus, and pale-rooted caveplants that would otherwise starve in the dark. Unlike most light-bearing minerals, Sunwell Violets retain their radiance even when a piece is broken free, so long as it continues to receive regular sunlight; carried in pockets, set in lantern housings, or tucked into windowsills, a shard can glow for nights on end after a single bright day.

Temperament: Swift opportunitisic ambush predators. Generally neutral, but will attack if threatened or in raids over food.

Description: The vashireb is a black-feathered hawk with a clean white belly and the attitude of a thief who’s never once been punished for it, known for being the fastest creature in the wilds. It hunts like a lightning strike: startling, sudden, and already gone by the time your nerves finish shouting. It will skim low behind ridgelines and tall grass, tuck its wings at the last second, and strike with a snatch-and-rip precision that steals a kill or a ration bundle without ever offering you a clean target to swing at. When it raids, it doesn’t go for the biggest prize; it goes for the easiest to carry, and it loves anything fresh that still smells like effort. The only reliable defense is preparedness: keep food covered, keep your kill close, and don’t give it a clean line over your shoulder, because once it commits, you’ll get one blink to regret being careless.

While it's proper name is Velveted Halcyon Cerulean Inflorescence, this is rarely used outside of academic texts, widely referred to instead as winterblues. A hardy, indigo flowering plant found across Embrathis, most often thriving in woodland edges and damp shade, and commonly cultivated in courtyards and memorial gardens. Winterblues bloom year-round, remaining vibrant even in subzero temperatures; their stems are tough and fibrous. When cut, the stems weep a pale milky sap that can mildly numb skin and gums on contact; handlers and herbalists often wear gloves when harvesting large bundles. The petals are frequently used as a dye (deep indigo to dusky violet), while dried blossoms are a common alchemical ingredient in calming draughts and animal-settling tinctures. In high concentrations, the scent may attract and overstimulate draconic-adjacent species, causing catnip-like behavior (rolling, rubbing, fixation, territorial lounging).

Temperament: Docile until the Valley of Legends is threatened, and then becomes a fearsome beast.

Description: The Wardenhart is a legendary guardian-cryptid of the Valley of Legends, seen first as a serene pale stag of still marbled stone, then unfolding into its true form when the Valley is wronged, a cathedral-beast of midnight shadow crowned in branching antlers like a frozen forest, now armed with hooked claws and deep-set predatory teeth for the chase when prey escapes the Valley’s grasp. It does not simply gore, it hunts, bounding over stone with impossible weightlessness, climbing scree with taloned confidence, jaws stretching wide to seize and drag, and its antlers still strike like siege-lances, leaving wounds that maim more often than they simply bleed. It can only be calmed with the power of a single, legendary relic called the Wardenshard, a Crownshard that wasn't activated when it left the Valley. Only stabbing into the Wardenhart will return it to sleep, which is when it lowers its crown and allows one tine-tip to loosen. This is a single relic called a Crownshard that is always potent but never predictable. The Crownshard is reliable in that it will do one of two grand things without fail, but it will only ever do one, and no living soul can know which it has chosen until it is taken beyond the Valley’s border and the magic finally wakes in the holder’s hands. Some Crownshards become a Shadowhide Shard, granting any bearer the ability to shift into the Wardenhart’s true form once per season regardless of their existing magic by stabbing it into themselves, while others become a Requiem Shard, granting the ability to return one dead soul to life once per year by stabbing it through the ground with will alone, and the Valley keeps that coin-flip secret until the last possible moment.

Whisperseed Pods grow from low, purple-flowering bushes called Promiseroses (see Promiserose) in quiet, isolated places. The bush looks unremarkable until you get close, when you notice the faintest shimmer of sound around it, like the air is remembering what it heard last. When someone touches the flowers or leaves of the female promiserose bush, it may take an imprint of their voice, and when the blossoms die back, five small brown pods emerge together at the end of the stalk, always in a cluster of five, like a careful handprint. Warmed between fingers or held close to the ear, an intact pod releases a soft echo of the last voice it captured, often only a few syllables or a tone-fragment, but distinctive enough to be unmistakable. To store the voice, one must speak into a small crack in the pod. Harvesting is delicate work, because the voice sits in the seam of the pod, and cracking it too sharply can spill the sound into nothing, leaving the pod permanently silent.

Temperament: Highly aggressive, ravenous, and territorial.

Description: The whisperwretch is a rare predator native to the Marrows. Emaciated and long-limbed, it moves on all fours with skin resembling rotted cloth and a hollow, amphora-shaped skull lined with vibrating filaments. It is capable of mimicking the final words of its victims, using them to lure others into range. The creature generates no sound of its own; instead, it creates an aura of total sensory deprivation. The whisperwretch travels with ease through rock and scree, and subdues prey through induced hallucinations and memory loss. It does not kill directly, but feeds on the mind, leaving its victims in a catatonic state. Lost memories can be restored if the creature is killed.

Temperament: calm, determined, accepting by nature but not blindly obedient, protective of herd members

Description: A large, muscular bison-like creature that has a soft, brown hair-like coat with a prominent mane on the neck and forehead and horns on both sexes that curve upward while projecting outwards and forward. Originating from the more hospitable areas of the marrows, these well-built browsers are now raised and kept commonly in the farmlands for draught work, textile purposes, and to a lesser extent, consumption. The Wisentoch’s steady, grounded personality and incredible strength lend it well to physical labor, but make no mistake, crossing one is a dangerous gamble; their mass unforgiving and their powerful legs and horns built for fighting. While they are herd animals, they are incredibly tolerant of other herbivores and easily share pasture space with other species with some herders integrating them with herds of meaker-willed creatures as herd guardians. Their wool is naturally prized for its softness, durability and breathability and garments made of wisentoch wool are sought after as a base layer for enchanted padded armors, but isn't magical on its own. The hair gathered from their ears is often used for paint brushes and their long, coarse tail hair is often used in ornaments, fishing lures or braided/twisted into supple yet durable lariats and ropes.

Temperament: Solitary, shy, awkward

Description: Found typically anywhere with water, the Brineshade Turtle was discovered in recent history, being found by adventurer and historian Flinn Brineshade in 1124 EOW. Unlike other similar reptiles, these turtles have been documented to reside in both saltwater and freshwater, being able to inhabit and move between the two types of water without issue. It is typical for them to stay in the sea during the summer months, and rivers and lakes in the winter months. However, this is not a set migration. They are close to the size of a freshwater snapping turtle, though they are leaner and thinner in the arms and legs. Notable, however, is that their back legs are thicker than their front arms. With this advantage, they are fast and quick, using their back legs to propel themselves against the ground or rocks to quickly vanish if attacked or provoked. Brineshade turtles, like their namesake, are black in color, with browns and greens highlighting their undertones. This allows them to go unnoticed in the depths of the sea or large bodies of water, which likely led to their late discovery. They are solitary creatures, though are not aggressive to their own time. They are remarked as being shy, avoiding contact with humans and other animals. Their diet consists of small fish, shrimp, plankton, or aquatic plants. They can hold their breath up to 12 hours underwater, but still momentarily come to the surface to acquire oxygen.

[source: cosmic]

Temperament: Passive drifters that cluster in curtains; sting when pressed, tangled, or handled roughly.

Description: Fogbell Jellies drift in Sunsnare Bay’s surface fog-banks and duskwater shallows in loose, translucent curtains, their bells nearly invisible until you catch the faint silver banding that rims them like thin glass. When gentle waves knock clusters together, those bands produce a soft chiming that can carry farther than sight in heavy mist, and seasoned captains learn to respect the sound as a warning that visibility is about to vanish. Fogbells are passive by nature and sting only when pressed or tangled, but when handled carefully their dried bell-banding can be rendered into an alchemical component prized for short-lived effects that sharpen orientation in low visibility and steady the mind against disorienting, confusion-based influences.

Temperament: Playful. Social, gather in family groups. Can become territorial during the warmer breeding and young-rearing seasons.

Description: Furblitz are plump, four-foot bay-dwellers found where the ocean gentles into shallows, kelp beds, sandbars, and sun-warmed rocks, and at a glance they look like someone stitched a polar bear and a walrus together and then gave the result twinkling blue eyes. They live in social family groups, nosing and bumping and rolling in the surf, tugging kelp like it’s a game, and they will often approach boats out of curiosity, huffing soft breath through whiskers and blinking at sailors as if considering friendship. In the cold seasons their thick white fur makes them look like drifting snowbanks with tusks, but in summer they shed dramatically into a sleek, seal-like pelt and spend long hours basking in the sun with the lazy confidence of creatures that have never had to explain themselves to anyone. They are playful by default and rarely aggressive, but during the warmer breeding and young-rearing season they can turn territorial, using their oversized tusks to posture, shove, and warn off anything that lingers too close to their chosen haul-out. The Embrathi people have a simple rule for living alongside them: enjoy them, watch them, never crowd them, and if you find tufts of shed fur snagged on rocks after summer molt, take only what the tide already claimed, because Furblitz are a gift best received without grabbing.

Temperament: Hostile when threatened and territorial during breeding season, otherwise generally unbothered by adult humans

Description: Gaurators are large, crocodilian reptiles that frequent saltwater, freshwater, and the banks between. From nose to powerful tail, adults measure roughly twelve feet long. Their streamlined body is corded with powerful muscles and armored in stony, non-overlapping scales, making its hide nearly impenetrable with a normal blade. Their elongated snouts are filled with sharp teeth, and their jaw muscles are easily capable of crushing shells or bone. While technical omnivores, their diets mainly consist of fish, crustaceans, and smaller vertebrates that wander too close to shore, relying on vegetation only in leaner times. They generally do not view adult humans as prey enough to actively pursue, but they will defend themselves or their nests with dogged determination. In summer, gaurators can be found in the warm water shallows of the ocean or sunning themselves on rocky outcroppings near shore or along canal breaks. In the colder seasons, gaurators swim upstream and inland to bury themselves in mud to ride out the frost. When the weather warms again, gaurators will use these same sites for laying eggs. While breeding can occur every year, female gaurators commonly lay clutches of twenty eggs every other year, and both parents will guard the territory surrounding the mud-hollow, only taking brief breaks for hunting. During breeding season, male gaurators will often compete fiercely for female attention in impassioned duels. These are rarely deadly; instead, they are used to display strength and virility to the female they are trying to impress. Most hostile interactions with humans happen when gaurators swim inland to brumate and breed, or when someone has decided the reward outweighs risk, as armor made from gaurator skin is some of the toughest out there.

Temperament: Social, docile, and curious

Description: Gleamrunners are a rare, fox-like creature approximately the size of a medium dog, most often found haunting the edges of lived-in places and anywhere light reaches the ground. They’re sleek and long-limbed with slate-shadow fur and metallic, iridescent ring-markings on its slender legs and bushy tail. These remarkable animals drink in dimness and pay it back by making any light brighter, as if the world remembered how to glow—moonlight, sunlight, lanternlight, starlight, even the sparkle of a jewel or the shine in someone’s eyes. It speaks in a small curling trill, a catlike chirrup that makes listeners reflexively answer back before they realize they’ve done it, and the sound carries a gentle veneration that turns a raised voice into a lowered one, turns a clenched hand into an open palm, especially when the threat is standing in a patch of light that the gleamrunner can “warm” from the inside out. It has thin, strong fangs that peek from its upper lip, and it eats a narrow, specific diet: a common poisonous, hardened weed called saltwort leaf. Most folk avoid on instinct, but it can digest it without harm, the toxin transmuted into a faint luminant oil along the throat and chest that feeds its light-brightening gift, emphasizing its resilient nature. When danger won’t be reasoned with, it has a particular defense: it makes the lantern flare, makes eyes blink, makes hearts slow, and then it slips away in one clean bound. They will bond with whole households rather than a single person, and if it’s chased away, it will use its defense, only to return later with stubborn certainty, as if shooing it off was merely a suggestion it chose not to respect. While these creatures are normally elusive and prone to wanting their space, they will become fiercely protective of their household—its teeth are meant for more than just crunching through tough leaves.

Temperament: Clever and territorial hunters and scavengers.

Description: Gloamjaws are five-foot-long ambush scavengers that haunt Sunsnare Bay’s kelp forests and the deeper channels near the river mouth where salt and fresh water braid together, solitary and territorial around favored hunting grounds. Built thick and powerful rather than fast, they carry matte charcoal skin that drinks light, with faint gold speckling along the spine that brightens after feeding, as they scrape stolen bioluminescent residue into the grooves of their scales. Most of their meals are the bay’s castoffs, carrion, injured fish, and anything helplessly tangled in kelp or netting, making them a natural cleanup force with a blunt, necessary role in keeping the waters from turning foul. Clever in the way scavengers are clever, gloamjaws learn patterns around docks and boats, shadowing storm tides and cleaning sites, and they sometimes lure curious prey with a thin chin-filament that mimics the gentle shimmer of harmless schooling fish. They rarely waste effort on healthy swimmers, but they will investigate blood, panic, or struggle, and a careless person in the wrong water at the wrong time can be badly harmed or maimed, so bayfolk watch for the telltale dulling of nighttime sparkle that marks a claimed cove and keep their distance. Sometimes a shed gloamjaw tooth or a sliver of scraped scale can be dried and ground into a fine, dark powder used as a component in certain alchemical blends, granting brief concealment in low light when prepared correctly, though the effect is short-lived and the full method is left for practitioners to discover.

Temperament: Playful, intelligent, mischievous

Description: A small, slender mustelid that can range from solid mink-like colors to pointed and masked variants. Grapplepaw ferrets are named after the sticky, almost resin-like secretion that they produce from glands in their paws called "glair". This grippy substance lends well to the animal’s natural dexterity and enables it to be a formidable hunter and climber, easily scaling the sides of nearly sheer obstacles when chasing prey, sometimes taking down creatures up to twice its size. Their endearing antics and intelligent and affectionate nature has made them a popular pet amongst rural and city folk alike. Small, dried paw-prints on the sides of buildings can be found near fish markets and food vendor carts as feral grapplepaws take their ill-gotten gains out of the reach of humans. But to those who know better, they don't leave without payment. The substance produced by their paws can be scraped off once semi-dry and is used by alchemists in potions or enchantments that utilize dexterity or balance. Only well-fed and happy grapplepaws produce high enough quality glair to be used for alchemical purposes, so rather than being viewed as a pest, many feral grapplepaws are given a certain grace to take their fill in order to keep them coming around.

Veins of grimspar are close to the surface, easily missed as an unassuming grey, but those who know what to look for can recognize its subtle amethyst and silver veining that travels throughout natural formations when its crust has been shaved back. It’s easily mined by simple tools and lurks nearly everywhere, but the richest veins are found closest to the coastline. This mineral is commonly crushed, heated, and then pressed into more densely saturated bars for carrying in medical kits and survival gear. Grimspar is valued as a purifying agent, strong enough for instruments yet safe enough to use on living tissue as an antiseptic, when mixed with spirits and water, respectively.  It’s undramatic in its speciality, no fizz or bubble needed, just a light, briefly skin-staining, lilac and the sharp, crisp scent of the electrified air after a thunderstorm. Outriders have often toted it as something not to go into the wilderness without, as it can purify water faster than boiling. Though just because it’s safe to drink, it doesn’t mean it tastes pleasant; its strong metallic twinge is palatable, but seen as a last resort.

Temperament: Bold, clever scavengers that are more likely to test a boundary than fear it.

Description: Gryphlets are miniature gryphons about the size of a housecat, common throughout Embrathis’ urban districts and especially well known in busy neighborhoods, market streets, dockside roofs, and the warmer maze of chimneys, eaves, and narrow alleys where food and shelter are never far away. They vary widely in appearance, often resembling improbable little combinations of familiar creatures: bluejay-housecat gryphlets are sleek and quick, with blue-gray feathers blending into soft fur, bright watchful eyes, and the sort of darting, entitled energy that sees them snatch a pastry and vanish before the shouting starts; fox-seagull gryphlets are russet and cream with pale wings, sharp little muzzles, and shrill, needling cries, most often found near markets and harbors where they prowl with theatrical confidence; raccoon-pigeon gryphlets are scruffier, charcoal-feathered and striped-tailed, with a more awkward gait on the ground and a notorious fondness for refuse heaps, overturned baskets, and anything poorly fastened. All gryphlets are noisy, opportunistic, and uncommonly intelligent, building messy communal nests in rafters, abandoned lofts, bell towers, sea walls, and the hidden hollows of old buildings, and many city dwellers curse them almost as often as they feed them. Their reputation for being a nuisance has less to do with malice than with the simple fact that they are resourceful urban scavengers, always seeking easy food, dry shelter, and warm places to roost. They raid market scraps, steal cooling meat or fresh bread when they can manage it, tear into poorly secured refuse, and crowd chimneys, lofts, and rooflines for heat on cold nights. In harsher weather, they become especially bold, lingering near kitchens, stables, bathhouses, and bakery vents, wherever warmth and the scent of food gather strongest, which has earned them a reputation as persistent, practical little menaces of the city.

Temperament: Social, clever, curious

Description: The lunar swallow is a small nocturnal bird most commonly found in the upper boughs and silver-lit clearings of the Whisperwood, though it is common enough throughout Embrathis to be a familiar sight along rooftop eaves, garden walls, lantern hooks, and the fog-damp edges of Sunsnare Bay. It is a delicate, elegant thing at first glance, with soft silver feathers tipped in clean white and a pair of long trailing tail plumes that catch moonlight, lamplight, and sea-glow in shifting pearl, blue, and faint violet tones. Lunar swallows move in quick, graceful bursts, gathering in loose flocks after dusk to wheel through the trees or between chimneys and terrace rails, their calls soft and clear, like a thin chime heard through mist. They are social birds, alert and clever, more curious than tame, and while they rarely allow themselves to be handled, they are known to draw near places that feel calm, familiar, or gently lit. Their magic takes the form of a phenomenon often called lunarhush: wherever a lunar swallow lands, it leaves behind a brief glow that softens the immediate space around it, dulling harsh noise, easing sharp feelings, and making both shadow and light feel less oppressive for a few moments. If they land on something with a beating heart, the glow they leave behind will render the whole creature glowing for a few minutes, seen as a blessing to many. In the Whisperwood, this lends them an almost sacred reputation among late travelers, while in the city they are welcomed as small comforts of the night in the forest, city, and along the bay, where they can sometimes be seen skimming low over the fog to hunt insects and the drifting glow around young fogbell jellies.

Mistglass Pearls are rare finds from Sunsnare Bay’s oyster grounds and brackish mouths, reflective rather than luminous, with an inner sheen like calm water under cloud cover that seems to swallow glare instead of throwing it back. Merchants prize them for jewelry, but alchemists value them for stranger work, as powdered Mistglass can serve as a component in blends that grant brief clarity against illusions, helping a person pick out what is real when light and trickery overlap. The effect is short-lived and recipe-dependent.

Temperament: Slow and passive until threatened or handled.

Description: Moonpies are broad-bodied crabs found in warm coastal shallows, sea grass beds, sandy pockets, and the shadowed edges beneath dock pilings, where moonlight reaches in broken pieces. By day their armor is deep ocean-blue, almost black when wet, but at night a faint bioluminescent glow wakes along the seams and ridges of their shell, strongest after they’ve fed through surf-blooms and luminous plankton. Left undisturbed, Moonpies move slowly and passively, scavenging drift algae and broken shellfish, but they become aggressively defensive if cornered or handled, striking with heavy claws as a boundary rather than a hunt. They molt as they grow, leaving their old carapaces behind in the shallows like abandoned masks, and shoreline folk often collect only these discarded shells, especially after storms, to hang as soft lanterns, as the glow can persist for up to a week if kept dry and out of harsh sun. Alchemists grind the dried carapace into a fine dust used sparingly in inks, salves, or teas meant for study and navigation, where it is said to steady judgment and sharpen pattern-seeing rather than manufacture brilliance, though overuse can leave the mind feeling detached, as if watching itself from the shoreline.

Temperament: Elusive, highly intelligent, perplexing

Description: The morrclaw is the kind of creature that cannot be tracked so much as encountered, a black-feathered bird with an oil-slick iridescence that flashes green, violet, and midnight-blue when it turns in the light, and it can appear anywhere a story can happen: roadside stones, rooftops, forest boughs, ship rails, the forest, the mountains, market awnings, even the rim of a well like it owns the concept of depth. It is highly intelligent, unsettlingly observant, and behaves like a roaming test with wings, approaching travelers to pose a riddle that sounds simple until it’s lodged in your teeth, watching not just for the answer but for the honesty behind it. Those who respond well, clever or sincere, sometimes both, may be rewarded with a single feather offered like a pen at a contract table, and the feather holds unpredictable magic that stays dormant until it draws blood, at which point it burns to ash and releases its effect in a rush that can save a life or change the weather, granting anything from healing or protection to concealment, misdirection, or a sudden storm that arrives like a slammed door. No two feathers are reliably the same, and the old belief is that the Morrclaw’s “gift” is shaped by the riddle you were given and what you revealed in answering, which is why the wisest travelers treat it less like loot and more like a favor, because it remembers faces, it dislikes attempts to trick it, and it does not always give twice.

Temperament: Slow and stubborn; defensive in clusters when disturbed or pried loose.

Description: Pylon Whelks cling to half-sunk pylons and dock shadows throughout Sunsnare Bay, heavy-shelled and slow, feeding on soft rot and barnacled decay in tight clusters that leave cleaner wood behind. They defend themselves by sheer stubbornness and numbers, and by a glossy trail that, when scraped and cured, dries into a water-resistant film valued by dockworkers and fishers alike. That cured secretion is often used as a practical base in alchemical preparations for quick patch-seals, waterproofing, and short-term protection of gear against spray and sudden weather.

Temperament: Calm, elusive, too small to emote fully

Description: The rebreather is a sea slug that lives in tide pools and areas where water comes and goes. When water is present, it is a pale blue and silver color to blend with the shallow waters, and when the water dries it turns brown and its skin dries to mimic rock. It can breath in and out of water without issue, and can be harvested to create potions of temporary water breathing. However, this creature is elusive, well camouflaged, and mildly toxic. If prepared wrong potions can become poisons while failing to provide the expected benefit, which can be fatal to those who test it out without help nearby. 

[source: shy]

Temperament: Opportunistic hunters that avoid open conflict; strike fast, then vanish into moving water.

Description: Riptide Lancers haunt Sunsnare’s channel edges and rip currents, needle-slim predators that ride fast water like thrown spears, striking stunned baitfish and anything small enough to panic itself into exhaustion. They avoid open conflict, feeding quickly and vanishing back into the current before larger hunters arrive, which makes them easy to underestimate until you’ve watched a whole school turn a patch of water into a sudden frenzy. Their dried fin-spines are sometimes processed into an alchemical component used in certain preparations that briefly improve burst movement and clean escapes, especially in water or treacherous footing, though the full method is left undisclosed.

Temperament: Skittish, reactive, and easily alarmed by sudden movement.

Description: Ropewake eels are slender, brackish-water eels found around Sunsnare Bay’s dock pilings, kelp tangles, half-submerged rope, net piles, mooring lines, and quiet shallows where river water braids into salt. Their bodies are dark blue-gray with pale spiral markings that make them look like loose rope in dim water, and their skin produces a slick, fibrous slime that helps them cling to cordage, kelp, wood grain, and rough stone without being dragged away by the tide. They feed on tiny shellfish, fish eggs, and soft rot caught in knots and waterlogged rigging, which makes them useful cleaners when left alone. The trouble begins when they are startled. A frightened ropewake eel coils hard around whatever it touches, and its slime briefly encourages nearby flexible things to mimic that motion: ropes twist, nets draw tight, straps kink, fishing lines snarl, kelp wraps around ankles, and loose fabric or cords can cinch tight before anyone realizes the eel was there at all. The effect is short-lived, but in the wrong place it can foul a boat, trap a hand, pull a pack into the water, tighten a net around someone’s legs, or make a dockline snap taut hard enough to knock someone down. Fishers harvest dried slime from abandoned resting coils and use it in knot-setting compounds, quick-binding cord treatments, and alchemical preparations meant to hold a tie under strain.

Saltwort leaf is a low, hardy plant with dull blue-green leaves that look sprinkled in salt and are nearly impossible to break, easy to recognize and avoid. They are considered weeds and invasive pests, able to thrive in any environment from growing through cracks in stone to even barren soil. If you manage to break one between your fingers, it releases a sharp, metallic scent like rain on iron. To most animals and people it’s a known mistake if ingested: not deadly, but miserable, leaving the mouth numb, the stomach turning, and the head swimming with strange, bright thoughts for a few hours, so everyone learns to leave it alone. Herbalists can harvest it and use it as a numbing salve when ground into a paste with the proper ingredients, or in high quantity, it can be used to empty the stomach in the event of deadly poison being ingested.

Temperament: Territorial, aggressive, easily provoked

Description: The Seamstalker is a long-limbed predator with a lean, rangy frame, a narrow ribcage, low-hanging forelimbs, and a subtly uneven spine that never quite aligns with the world around it, its body appearing a fraction out of place, like something poorly remembered rather than fully seen. Its head is slim and tapering, with a long muzzle, hollow cheeks, slightly asymmetrical ears, and large, pale, glasslike eyes that catch warped light in sharp silver-white flashes, while its narrow mouth holds fine, crowded teeth like stitching needles. Its close, short coat is difficult to pin down in color, reading somewhere between wet charcoal, rippling silver, and bruised blue-black, with faint seam-like markings along the shoulders and flanks that look more like fractures in a reflection than natural striping. Its movements do not flow so much as skip, vanishing from one position and reappearing a breath later a few feet away, as though reality itself momentarily loses its grip on the creature. It favors the Boundary’s warped light, where reflections bend and depth becomes uncertain, and there it waits with unsettling patience, tracking not by scent or sound but by the small failures in human perception: hesitations, second glances, the moment an eye struggles to focus. When it strikes, it does so in those gaps, closing impossible distance in an instant, leaving victims unsure whether it moved at all or if they simply failed to see it coming. Tracks are unreliable, often stopping mid-stride or doubling back without explanation, and survivors speak of a lingering unease afterward, a quiet suspicion that the world itself might still be misaligned, as if the Seamstalker leaves a loose thread behind in the mind where certainty used to sit. Some say it is a protector of the boundary itself.

Shoalspike Urchins stud Sunsnare’s rocky shoals and oyster grounds like scattered caltrops, dark-bodied with long pale spines that break cleanly when stepped on, turning a careless wade into a slow, miserable return. They are not magical, just efficient, and their presence shapes the bay’s smaller life, including the Spineshelter Darter (see Spineshelter Darter), a small striped fish that lives safely between the urchin’s spines. The darter keeps its host clean by nibbling algae and parasites that would otherwise smother it, and in return gains a fortress few predators dare bite, and some practitioners prize stabilized traces of the darter’s protective mucus as a component in blends meant to reduce irritation from punctures and stings without erasing the need for proper care.

A cousin of the flax family, silkseed is a food, medicinal and fibre crop, both cultivated and found wild. It has white, cruciform flowers with a dark red center and veining through its petals. It's found naturally in wetland habitats or in crop fields closest to irrigation pumpworks, canals and watermills. While its bast fiber is not notable for spinning into cloth, it is highly prized as strong, body-safe material for sutures that can be soaked in spirits and run across a flame long enough to sterilize without destroying it. But its usefulness doesn't end there, its seeds, when boiled down with water and strained through muslin produce a clear gel-like substance that works wonders as a spreadable carrier for poultices or alone as a lubricant in animal husbandry, midwifery and other…extracurricular activities. These spent seeds are often used to supplement animal feed in birthing season or mashed down into a nutrient dense, toasted and nutty flavored porridge favored by postpartum mothers—becoming the subject many old wives tales that swear it helps recover strength; this same nutritional benefit making it a popular weaning food as well as something feed to the elderly or ill when the heaviness of ploughbeans are too much to handle.

Temperament: Skittish, school in large groups.

Description: Silverfin are small, shimmering fish that school in enormous, nervous clouds in the deep ocean, flashing like scattered coins whenever something large passes overhead. They are skittish by nature, turning as one body at the first shift of pressure or shadow, and when netted they are often taken in huge numbers simply because the schools are too dense to miss. Their scales catch light with a clean, silver sheen that dulls with time, and sailors sometimes wear a single scale as a luck charm, trusting it to lend a brief edge when choices tighten and timing matters. The charm is never permanent. It fades as the scale loses its shine, like fortune slipping back into the sea.

Sometimes called clatterwood or shield wood, this plant grows in large groves most often, is semi invasive, and used to make common household items because of its strength. The outside is a soft silver grey when young, maturing to a darker iron grey as it ages. The inside is hollow and segmented, coloured a muted blue, a colour craftsfolk call skeldblue. Despite its light weight the walls are dense and hard. When a grove sways in the wind, the stalks make a soft resonant clacking sound. 

[source: mikihiko]

Temperament: Social and curious in schools; retreats into urchin spines at the first hint of threat.

Description: Spineshelter Darters are small striped fish that live tucked between the long spines of Shoalspike Urchins (see Shoalspike Urchins), slipping through gaps too punishing for most predators to risk. They keep their hosts clean by nibbling algae and parasites that would otherwise smother the urchins, and in return they gain a mobile fortress that lets them feed and rest in relative safety. Practitioners who know what they are doing sometimes collect stabilized traces of the darter’s protective mucus as a component in certain preparations, valued for its ability to reduce irritation from punctures and stings for a short time when correctly combined with other ingredients.

A rare cousin to Skeldstave, Stormstave is a near slate-black blue stave plant with an almost electric blue wood inside. It grows in tight, thick groupings that are hard to find and slow to grow. It is resistant to lightning strikes and almost impossible to burn. It rarely grows anywhere that isn't touched by storm and wind. The wood is highly prized for its incredible strength and resistances. When Stormstave clacks together, it is like a wild flurry of fighting strikes. 

[source: mikihiko]

Temperament: Passive filter-feeders that grow in dense beds and shape the shoreline ecosystem.

Description: Sunsnare Oysters thrive in dense beds where the bay’s warm shallows drop fast into colder, richer currents, fattening on tides that bring both silt and plenty. They are a staple harvest that feeds half the markets in Embrathis, briny and firm with a clean mineral finish, and most are unremarkable except for how reliably they turn hard water into good drinking. Very rarely, after seasons of harsh glare and sudden fog, an oyster forms a Mistglass Pearl (see Mistglass Pearls), and locals treat it as honest luck that never changes the rule of the bay: respect the water, and it will feed you.

Sunwell Violets are less flower than phenomenon, crystal growths that bloom in places the earth forgot to finish closing, where a crack in stone lets sunlight thread down in thin veils and the cave learns what morning is. They begin as tiny facets like spilled sugar, then build into violet and deep-purple spires that can rise to a person’s height, their faces angular and clean as cut glass, yet warm-lit from within as though they’ve swallowed the sun and are slow-digesting it. By day they drink every stray ray, storing it in their bodies until the chamber seems to hold its breath, and by night they release it in a steady, gentle glow, turning black water into ink-lavender mirror and feeding whole little ecosystems of moss, fungus, and pale-rooted caveplants that would otherwise starve in the dark. Unlike most light-bearing minerals, Sunwell Violets retain their radiance even when a piece is broken free, so long as it continues to receive regular sunlight; carried in pockets, set in lantern housings, or tucked into windowsills, a shard can glow for nights on end after a single bright day.

Tideglass algae grows in thin, iridescent sheets over bay stones where waves keep the rock faces slick and clean, and at low tide it leaves behind a strange clarity like the water forgot how to be opaque. Where it clings thickest, the stone beneath turns glassy-translucent for a short while, revealing trapped shells, hairline cracks, and the faint shapes of anything small hiding in the crevices. Brewers dry the algae into brittle, pearled flakes and steep it into draughts that sharpen vision, making edges crisper and movement easier to track, especially in dim light or through drifting silt. It’s prized by sailors, divers, and shore-scavengers because it helps you see what’s already there, hidden from normal human vision: the slick step, the hidden hook of kelp, the glint of a dropped ring, the blink of something watching from under a rock.

Temperament: Highly intelligent, elusive, curious; skittish to disturbance; defensive when cornered.

Description: Veilspindles are rare, ten-limbed, boneless predators that haunt Sunsnare Bay’s kelp caves, pylon shadows, and deep drop-offs near brackish mouths, clever enough to learn boat patterns and elusive enough to vanish the moment a shadow changes shape. They wear velvet-slate skin that can flatten into kelp-fronds or ripple like fog, and they store harsh noon-glare in their shifting bodies to release at dusk as a soft, light-bending haze that turns pursuit into guesswork. When threatened, they exhale a thin fog-ink that does not stain, but warps outlines, making motion look like mirage for a few heartbeats, and tidefolk tell stories of them stealing hooks, coins, and any shiny thing left careless near the water. Very rarely, a Veilspindle leaves behind a shed veil-film or a dried ink-sac after feeding or molting, and those remnants are prized as alchemical components in certain preparations that can create single-use, visual illusions that will remain as they are for a full day.

While it's proper name is Velveted Halcyon Cerulean Inflorescence, this is rarely used outside of academic texts, widely referred to instead as winterblues. A hardy, indigo flowering plant found across Embrathis, most often thriving in woodland edges and damp shade, and commonly cultivated in courtyards and memorial gardens. Winterblues bloom year-round, remaining vibrant even in subzero temperatures; their stems are tough and fibrous. When cut, the stems weep a pale milky sap that can mildly numb skin and gums on contact; handlers and herbalists often wear gloves when harvesting large bundles. The petals are frequently used as a dye (deep indigo to dusky violet), while dried blossoms are a common alchemical ingredient in calming draughts and animal-settling tinctures. In high concentrations, the scent may attract and overstimulate draconic-adjacent species, causing catnip-like behavior (rolling, rubbing, fixation, territorial lounging).

Temperament: Territorial, intelligent, solitary.

Description: Wavewardens are 6-8 ft long deep blue drakes with a strong tail instead of back legs. These creatures live in deep waters but hunt in the shallows, trapping fish against the shore. They also go after nonaquatic or semiaquatic prey that linger in the shallows, and will use waves to hide their approach, earning their name. They rarely hunt humans, but if they’re hungry enough they will.
 
[source: shy]

A dense, slate-blue mineral shot through dull gold threads that feel warm in the hand. When powdered and mixed into a draught, it briefly “locks” the body’s resilience in place—granting temporary health and a short physical defense boost; when dissolved into oil or resin, it can be painted onto armor or weapons as a toughening coat that helps shrug off impact for a limited time. It only forms under extreme, slow pressure in unstable rock, and the richest veins tend to appear in collapse-prone tunnels that are deadly to work in.

Temperament: Solitary, shy, awkward

Description: Found typically anywhere with water, the Brineshade Turtle was discovered in recent history, being found by adventurer and historian Flinn Brineshade in 1124 EOW. Unlike other similar reptiles, these turtles have been documented to reside in both saltwater and freshwater, being able to inhabit and move between the two types of water without issue. It is typical for them to stay in the sea during the summer months, and rivers and lakes in the winter months. However, this is not a set migration. They are close to the size of a freshwater snapping turtle, though they are leaner and thinner in the arms and legs. Notable, however, is that their back legs are thicker than their front arms. With this advantage, they are fast and quick, using their back legs to propel themselves against the ground or rocks to quickly vanish if attacked or provoked. Brineshade turtles, like their namesake, are black in color, with browns and greens highlighting their undertones. This allows them to go unnoticed in the depths of the sea or large bodies of water, which likely led to their late discovery. They are solitary creatures, though are not aggressive to their own time. They are remarked as being shy, avoiding contact with humans and other animals. Their diet consists of small fish, shrimp, plankton, or aquatic plants. They can hold their breath up to 12 hours underwater, but still momentarily come to the surface to acquire oxygen.

[source: cosmic]

Temperament: Loyal, calm, protective of family.

Description: The camoskink are large herbivorous lizards with prehensile tails, growing up to two feet in length. These slow-moving creatures bond with a mate for life, raising young and traveling together. Mates will entwine their tails as they sleep and sunbathe, and are said to psychically know where their partner is if separated. Their main defense mechanism is camouflage, letting them blend almost seamlessly into their surroundings, with their default coloration being a dark brown. These are sometimes viewed as pests to farmers due to their diet of plants. It is considered good luck to see a mated pair before a wedding or other relationship milestone.

[source: shy]

Temperament: Gentle but mischievous, treating the grasslands like a playground as they weave between clouds in search of trinkets and small prey.

Description: In the open plains, cloud wyrms make their beds in the tall grass or tucked beneath sun-warmed stones, leaving only a faint chill and a scatter of stolen trinkets as proof they were ever there. They’re weasel-sized and serpentine with finned tails, always some shade of sky-blue, and they treat the grasslands like a playground with an intelligence that feels too pleased with itself. Gentle by nature but endlessly mischievous, they weave between low clouds and grass-tops hunting small prey and anything shiny, hoarding buttons, beads, and bright scraps in snug little nests, and they will absolutely barter if you tempt them with a better treasure. When startled or stalking, a cloud wyrm exhales cool vapor that rolls out in soft curls, masking its movement and muddying tracks like a living fogbank, using it to protect themselves from the hot sun of the grasslands as well. If you’re patient and polite, you can earn one’s curiosity, but if you’re rude, it will vanish into its own cloud and you’ll discover your cloak is missing a clasp you definitely had five minutes ago.

Best known by the name derived from its primary purpose, corpse coal is a layered, char-black rock that can be found along fault seams. It is highly combustible, but not volatile. It burns extremely hot, cleanly, and can be reused a number of times, making it the prized solution for cremation in Embrathis. The smoke from a corpse coal pyre is distinctively white and smells of a sweet yet sharp, woody scent that can easily burn itself into your mind as one of a kind. Outside of cremation, some alchemists and blacksmiths add corpse coal to their forges to liquify stubborn metals that don’t melt under other circumstances.

Creeping grass appears to the untrained eye as ordinary grass. It grows slower and shorter than most other grasses. To help compete with other plants, it has an unusual root system, capable of vining above the ground to choke out other plants. It’s considered a pest by farmers, but some with coin to spare enjoy using it as a yard grass since it will choke out weed plants on its own. 

[source: shy]

Everice Fern grows in low-lying flatland where snowfall piles deep and lingers, a silvery fern with shimmering fronds that seems to thrive on being buried, its leaves staying supple beneath the weight of winter as if the cold is a blanket it prefers. It is easiest to find by the faint glitter its fronds leave under fresh snow, and harvesters dig carefully, because the plant bruises easily and the sap is most potent when the stems are cut clean and kept from warming too fast. That sap is the fern’s real value, a clear, cold resin that can be cured into a thin glaze or mixed into forging oils, used to treat armor, tools, and blades so they resist frost bite and winter brittleness for a time, keeping metal from seizing and leather from cracking when the weather turns freezing

Frost Grass grows thick near creeks and ponds where the soil stays damp, a bright green blade with a silvery sheen that makes whole patches look like they’ve been kissed by morning frost even in summer. It feels velvety, and it carries a steady, refreshing coolness that never seems to leave, staying cold even under harsh sun. People braid it into wraps for overheated travelers, feverish children, and sore joints, and stablehands line watering troughs or resting mats with it so horses and dogs can cool themselves without having to seek shade. Gatherers take it early or at dusk when it is strongest, because if you dry it too aggressively, it loses its chill, and if you store it sealed without air it can sour and irritate skin.

Gleamroot is a fertile-soil plant prized for the faint, warmth-giving glow it releases when bruised or crushed, its leaves and knotted root holding a soft golden hue in daylight that intensifies the moment it’s disturbed. It is not a strong heat source, but it is reliable, and travelers sometimes keep a small wrapped bundle as a low-light aid, rubbing a pinch between their fingers to coax a brief, gentle shine that won’t blind the dark-adjusted eye. Healers and alchemists value Gleamroot’s mild, steady heat for salves and draughts meant to comfort sore muscles and cold hands, where its warmth works more like reassurance than fire, and the glow serves as a practical tell that the preparation has been properly activated. Gleamroot is also infamous for its flavor, a sweet-resin warmth with a bright edge that most people find dangerously pleasant, and properly dosed preparations can briefly steady the body with increased fortitude, helping hands stay surer and stamina hold a little longer. In higher concentrations, however, the same irresistible taste encourages overuse, and the warmth turns flushed and restless, heightening desire and making affection come easier, accompanied by a faint glow in the cheeks, not unlike the rosiness one might get from too much alcohol.

Temperament: Social, docile, and curious

Description: Gleamrunners are a rare, fox-like creature approximately the size of a medium dog, most often found haunting the edges of lived-in places and anywhere light reaches the ground. They’re sleek and long-limbed with slate-shadow fur and metallic, iridescent ring-markings on its slender legs and bushy tail. These remarkable animals drink in dimness and pay it back by making any light brighter, as if the world remembered how to glow—moonlight, sunlight, lanternlight, starlight, even the sparkle of a jewel or the shine in someone’s eyes. It speaks in a small curling trill, a catlike chirrup that makes listeners reflexively answer back before they realize they’ve done it, and the sound carries a gentle veneration that turns a raised voice into a lowered one, turns a clenched hand into an open palm, especially when the threat is standing in a patch of light that the gleamrunner can “warm” from the inside out. It has thin, strong fangs that peek from its upper lip, and it eats a narrow, specific diet: a common poisonous, hardened weed called saltwort leaf. Most folk avoid on instinct, but it can digest it without harm, the toxin transmuted into a faint luminant oil along the throat and chest that feeds its light-brightening gift, emphasizing its resilient nature. When danger won’t be reasoned with, it has a particular defense: it makes the lantern flare, makes eyes blink, makes hearts slow, and then it slips away in one clean bound. They will bond with whole households rather than a single person, and if it’s chased away, it will use its defense, only to return later with stubborn certainty, as if shooing it off was merely a suggestion it chose not to respect. While these creatures are normally elusive and prone to wanting their space, they will become fiercely protective of their household—its teeth are meant for more than just crunching through tough leaves.

Temperament: Playful, intelligent, mischievous

Description: A small, slender mustelid that can range from solid mink-like colors to pointed and masked variants. Grapplepaw ferrets are named after the sticky, almost resin-like secretion that they produce from glands in their paws called "glair". This grippy substance lends well to the animal’s natural dexterity and enables it to be a formidable hunter and climber, easily scaling the sides of nearly sheer obstacles when chasing prey, sometimes taking down creatures up to twice its size. Their endearing antics and intelligent and affectionate nature has made them a popular pet amongst rural and city folk alike. Small, dried paw-prints on the sides of buildings can be found near fish markets and food vendor carts as feral grapplepaws take their ill-gotten gains out of the reach of humans. But to those who know better, they don't leave without payment. The substance produced by their paws can be scraped off once semi-dry and is used by alchemists in potions or enchantments that utilize dexterity or balance. Only well-fed and happy grapplepaws produce high enough quality glair to be used for alchemical purposes, so rather than being viewed as a pest, many feral grapplepaws are given a certain grace to take their fill in order to keep them coming around.

Grasping grass appears to the untrained eye as ordinary grass, and is a version of the more common creeping grass (see Creeping Grass). However, the roots of the grasping grass can move surprisingly fast and feature short but sharp thorns. It thrives in areas of poor soil quality where other plants struggle to grow. To fertilize itself, its roots will attach to living organisms to kill and turn them into better quality soil. It has formed a symbiotic relationship with the mirapika (see Mirapika). 

[source: shy]

Veins of grimspar are close to the surface, easily missed as an unassuming grey, but those who know what to look for can recognize its subtle amethyst and silver veining that travels throughout natural formations when its crust has been shaved back. It’s easily mined by simple tools and lurks nearly everywhere, but the richest veins are found closest to the coastline. This mineral is commonly crushed, heated, and then pressed into more densely saturated bars for carrying in medical kits and survival gear. Grimspar is valued as a purifying agent, strong enough for instruments yet safe enough to use on living tissue as an antiseptic, when mixed with spirits and water, respectively.  It’s undramatic in its speciality, no fizz or bubble needed, just a light, briefly skin-staining, lilac and the sharp, crisp scent of the electrified air after a thunderstorm. Outriders have often toted it as something not to go into the wilderness without, as it can purify water faster than boiling. Though just because it’s safe to drink, it doesn’t mean it tastes pleasant; its strong metallic twinge is palatable, but seen as a last resort.

Heartweed is a common pest plant. It is dark green with red running through the leaves. These plants are relentless, managing to bounce back from nearly any attempt to kill them. They can be harvested as part of the ingredients to make potions of healing, vitality, and even fertility, though it takes large quantities of time and material to gain any value. Heartweed originated from the grasslands, but attempts to cultivate it in the city for easier harvesting resulted in the plant spreading throughout Embrathis. 

[source: shy]

Description: Hushgrain is a pale, dry-stalked plant that grows among ordinary grain and tall field grasses, disguising itself well enough that most people only notice it after something has gone wrong. Its stems are straw-gold at a glance, but the seedheads are slightly too white, with translucent husks that tremble even when the air is still. When brushed, crushed, cut, threshed, or shaken loose from hay, those husks split with a soft, papery crack and release a fine powder that smells faintly of flour, dry flowers, and old linen. Anyone who breathes in enough hushgrain dust may lose their hearing entirely for a short time, usually a few minutes to an hour. The effect is not simple muffling. Sound vanishes. Voices become moving mouths, footsteps disappear, warning shouts fail, and even one’s own heartbeat can feel strangely distant, leaving victims dependent on sight, touch, vibration, and whatever signals they can improvise. Mild exposure causes ringing, pressure in the ears, and delayed hearing, while heavier exposure can bring brief vertigo, poor balance, and a wool-thick confusion that makes crowded or dangerous places suddenly much harder to navigate. Animals dislike hushgrain intensely and may refuse hay or feed contaminated with it, though panicked livestock can kick, bolt, or crowd together if a seedhead bursts nearby. Farmers treat it as a harvest hazard and try to weed it out before threshing, but alchemists value carefully dried husks for stealth-type magic, or sound proofing an area. Harvesting requires a damp cloth mask, slow hands, and sealed jars, because one careless shake can turn a simple gathering into a silent field full of people shouting without hearing themselves.

Temperament: territorial, aggressive, spiteful

Description: A bread-loaf-sized grasslands boar with copper-dark, ridged bristles and the moral certainty of a tax collector, it sprints like a thrown rock and refuses to be intimidated by anything with a pulse. It digs up roots with loud, shameless enthusiasm, steals unattended lunches with the precision of a practiced thief, and will charge a horse purely out of principle, bristles flaring like it’s trying to start a feud with the concept of height. Boarlets travel in tiny gangs, one often posted as a lookout on a stone or fence rail as if it’s doing civic duty, and they announce a successful heist with quick tooth-clacks that sound like pebbles in a cup. Locals don’t bother trying to ‘teach them manners’ and instead collect shed bristles along fence-scrape routes, grinding them into Knickbristle Ink, a gritty mixture that cannot be altered with magic once written. The ink leaves a faint copper sheen in lamplight and a subtle roughness under a fingertip, which is how caravan masters know their signatures will still be there tomorrow, even if a boarlet has eaten the lunch they signed over.

Temperament: Alert, migratory herd-creatures, quick to flee predators, benevolent to non-threats.

Description: Lumilopes are lean, long-legged antelope of the grasslands with pale gray coats and dark flank-stripes, moving in alert, migratory herds that flee predators quickly but remain strangely benevolent toward non-threats. Their smooth curved horns glow with steady living light that flares when danger presses close, fresh water lies ahead, or safe shelter is near, making a herd a living barometer for the plains. What makes lumilopes truly valuable is what they leave behind, because the thin outer sheath of a horn naturally sheds in small translucent curls when they spar or battle with one and other with their horns, and those sheddings can be gathered without harm and ground into a rare component for preparations that briefly steady the nerves and sharpen judgment. Used well, that effect feels like a small inner light, a moment where fear does not steer your hands and false emotions do not hook your heart, granting a short-lived boost to inner clarity and a measure of defense against emotional manipulation by magical means.

Temperament: Playful and fiercely loyal to those it sees as family

Description: Lynkas are agile predators about the size of a large dog, with a sleek, muscular build covered in thick, silvery-gray fur. Its mane—a unique feature—is made up of bright white fur, giving it an almost ethereal presence. The lynka’s sharp eyes can see through the thickest snowstorms and torrential rain, making it an exceptional companion for those navigating in inclement weather. While it is a skilled hunter in the wild, the lynka is often kept as a pet, due to its desirable temperament. It possesses minor magical abilities, including the power to summon small bursts of icy wind, which can be used to cool down hot drinks or soothe injuries. Additionally, it can freeze small puddles of water, creating little patches of ice that it often uses to entertain itself. The lynka is highly valued for its companionship, both as a guardian and a source of warmth during harsh winters.

Temperament: Clever, careful, flighty.

Description: The mirapika is a small pika found exclusively in the presence of grasping grass (see Grasping Grass), which it has formed a symbiotic relationship with. These small herbivores only grow to be about 4-5 inches in length, and have many predators. But the mirapika has two defenses. It can create a single illusionary version of itself to increase the odds of a surprise attack failing to find the real creature. After that it will rush back to the grasping grass with the predator in pursuit to allow the vines of the grasping grass to attempt to restrain and devour the pursuer. Mirapika are also known to lure in travelers and other prey species to the grasping grass to feed their protector. 

[source: shy]

Temperament: Elusive, highly intelligent, perplexing

Description: The morrclaw is the kind of creature that cannot be tracked so much as encountered, a black-feathered bird with an oil-slick iridescence that flashes green, violet, and midnight-blue when it turns in the light, and it can appear anywhere a story can happen: roadside stones, rooftops, forest boughs, ship rails, the forest, the mountains, market awnings, even the rim of a well like it owns the concept of depth. It is highly intelligent, unsettlingly observant, and behaves like a roaming test with wings, approaching travelers to pose a riddle that sounds simple until it’s lodged in your teeth, watching not just for the answer but for the honesty behind it. Those who respond well, clever or sincere, sometimes both, may be rewarded with a single feather offered like a pen at a contract table, and the feather holds unpredictable magic that stays dormant until it draws blood, at which point it burns to ash and releases its effect in a rush that can save a life or change the weather, granting anything from healing or protection to concealment, misdirection, or a sudden storm that arrives like a slammed door. No two feathers are reliably the same, and the old belief is that the Morrclaw’s “gift” is shaped by the riddle you were given and what you revealed in answering, which is why the wisest travelers treat it less like loot and more like a favor, because it remembers faces, it dislikes attempts to trick it, and it does not always give twice.

Promiseroses are low, purple-flowering shrubs with matte green leaves, thornless stems, and soft layered blossoms that are not true roses, though they earned the name for their cupped, velvety petals and delicate summer fragrance. They thrive best in the heat of summer, when healthy bushes bloom so heavily they can seem almost swallowed in violet and plum-colored flowers, the petals ranging from dusky lavender to rich wine-dark purple with paler throats at the center. Promiseroses grow as separate male and female bushes. Male bushes are common, vigorous, and easy to cultivate, producing only flowers and later the seeds from which all future plants are grown. Female bushes are exceedingly rare and difficult to raise, since a female can only ever be produced from a seed borne by a male bush and cannot be dependably propagated any other way. Even when a female bush is successfully grown, not all of its flowers go on to become Whisperseed Pods (see Whisperseed Pods). Most simply fade and wither like ordinary spent blossoms, while only some begin to harden and draw inward into the clustered brown pods they are known for producing. Because of this, growers do not harvest the blossoms from female bushes until it is clear which flowers will never develop into pods, and only those spent blooms are gathered. This makes Promiseroses prized less for any magic of their own, of which they have none, and more for the patience they demand: male bushes for their beauty and abundance, and female bushes for the rare uncertain promise hidden among their stunning summer flowers.

Saltwort leaf is a low, hardy plant with dull blue-green leaves that look sprinkled in salt and are nearly impossible to break, easy to recognize and avoid. They are considered weeds and invasive pests, able to thrive in any environment from growing through cracks in stone to even barren soil. If you manage to break one between your fingers, it releases a sharp, metallic scent like rain on iron. To most animals and people it’s a known mistake if ingested: not deadly, but miserable, leaving the mouth numb, the stomach turning, and the head swimming with strange, bright thoughts for a few hours, so everyone learns to leave it alone. Herbalists can harvest it and use it as a numbing salve when ground into a paste with the proper ingredients, or in high quantity, it can be used to empty the stomach in the event of deadly poison being ingested.

Temperament: Territorial, aggressive, easily provoked

Description: The Seamstalker is a long-limbed predator with a lean, rangy frame, a narrow ribcage, low-hanging forelimbs, and a subtly uneven spine that never quite aligns with the world around it, its body appearing a fraction out of place, like something poorly remembered rather than fully seen. Its head is slim and tapering, with a long muzzle, hollow cheeks, slightly asymmetrical ears, and large, pale, glasslike eyes that catch warped light in sharp silver-white flashes, while its narrow mouth holds fine, crowded teeth like stitching needles. Its close, short coat is difficult to pin down in color, reading somewhere between wet charcoal, rippling silver, and bruised blue-black, with faint seam-like markings along the shoulders and flanks that look more like fractures in a reflection than natural striping. Its movements do not flow so much as skip, vanishing from one position and reappearing a breath later a few feet away, as though reality itself momentarily loses its grip on the creature. It favors the Boundary’s warped light, where reflections bend and depth becomes uncertain, and there it waits with unsettling patience, tracking not by scent or sound but by the small failures in human perception: hesitations, second glances, the moment an eye struggles to focus. When it strikes, it does so in those gaps, closing impossible distance in an instant, leaving victims unsure whether it moved at all or if they simply failed to see it coming. Tracks are unreliable, often stopping mid-stride or doubling back without explanation, and survivors speak of a lingering unease afterward, a quiet suspicion that the world itself might still be misaligned, as if the Seamstalker leaves a loose thread behind in the mind where certainty used to sit. Some say it is a protector of the boundary itself.

Sharpglis is a luminous wildflower whose petals are cool and smooth to the touch, almost appearing to be encased in glass. These petals, once harvested, can be left to dry and, upon breaking, dissolve into a fine shimmering powder that is coveted by many for its ability to enliven the world around you, as well as being floated as an aphrodisiac. Alchemists use it as a way to enhance sensory perception potions, but it has also found a home as an inhaled or ingested stimulant drug under the name "Sharp". Its high is crisply stimulating, and it is chemically addictive; it has become particularly popular amongst suppressed organics as a temporary way to lift the flatness of their world and sharpen it into focus.

Temperament: Elusive, opportunistic ambush insect, and nocturnal.

Description: The sicklegrass mantid foot-tall mantis that disappears into tall grass by turning its whole body into a lie, limbs banded in pale greens and straw-golds, head angled like a broken blade of reed. It stands perfectly still for long stretches, swaying with the wind so convincingly that even experienced travelers mistake it for a tuft of grass. Hunting typically around in the dark with heat-mapping sight, when prey gets close, the sicklegrass mantid strikes with scythe-forelimbs strong enough to sever small appendages in one clean snap, then drags its catch down into the roots where the grass hides the sound. It prefers insects and small animals, but it will test anything that blunders into its reach, including careless hands. After a kill, it cleans its blades with meticulous, almost offended patience, as if it can’t believe you made it do that. Most treat the sicklegrass mantid like bad luck with legs, and warn children not to run fingers along tall grass at night unless they’d like to learn a lesson that bleeds.

A cousin of the flax family, silkseed is a food, medicinal and fibre crop, both cultivated and found wild. It has white, cruciform flowers with a dark red center and veining through its petals. It's found naturally in wetland habitats or in crop fields closest to irrigation pumpworks, canals and watermills. While its bast fiber is not notable for spinning into cloth, it is highly prized as strong, body-safe material for sutures that can be soaked in spirits and run across a flame long enough to sterilize without destroying it. But its usefulness doesn't end there, its seeds, when boiled down with water and strained through muslin produce a clear gel-like substance that works wonders as a spreadable carrier for poultices or alone as a lubricant in animal husbandry, midwifery and other…extracurricular activities. These spent seeds are often used to supplement animal feed in birthing season or mashed down into a nutrient dense, toasted and nutty flavored porridge favored by postpartum mothers—becoming the subject many old wives tales that swear it helps recover strength; this same nutritional benefit making it a popular weaning food as well as something feed to the elderly or ill when the heaviness of ploughbeans are too much to handle.

Sometimes called clatterwood or shield wood, this plant grows in large groves most often, is semi invasive, and used to make common household items because of its strength. The outside is a soft silver grey when young, maturing to a darker iron grey as it ages. The inside is hollow and segmented, coloured a muted blue, a colour craftsfolk call skeldblue. Despite its light weight the walls are dense and hard. When a grove sways in the wind, the stalks make a soft resonant clacking sound. 

[source: mikihiko]

Temperament: Mischievous, flighty, playful.

Description: The slip fox is an uncommon but well-known nuisance with a penchant for stealing food and getting into trouble. These foxes are smaller than their normal kin, with dark coats that blend into the night. The slip fox can teleport itself a few feet away as long as no one is looking at it, which is where it derives its name. Even if a farmer catches it breaking into the hen house, one blink and the critter has vanished into the night with a hen in its jaw. While annoying, they're easily spooked and prefer going after trash or carrion. While they can be tamed, they have poor manners and boundless energy that can terrorize unprepared owners. 

[source: shy]

Description: Snapsill Cress is a hardy little plant that grows where feet, wheels, and weather have worried openings into stone, wood, packed dirt, plaster, or brick. It favors thresholds, stair edges, wall seams, window ledges, fence lines, road cracks, stable doors, shopfront gaps, and the dry borders of cultivated fields, forming low mats of pale green leaves and tiny bead-like seedpods that look harmless until disturbed. When brushed, stepped near, shaken by vibration, or startled by a sudden change in air pressure, the pods pop in a quick chain of sharp little snaps, scattering peppery seeds across the nearest surface. The sound is not dangerous, but it is excellent at ruining stealth, drawing eyes, and startling animals. The seeds can roll underfoot like grit, catch in hems and cuffs, and release a dry spice-scent that makes some people sneeze if they breathe it too close. Farmers and shopkeepers dislike it for the noise and the mess, but guards, innkeepers, and cautious householders sometimes cultivate thin lines of it near doors or windows as a cheap living alarm. Alchemists dry the seedpods carefully and use the powder in mild alertness draughts, wakefulness salts, and harmless distraction pellets that pop when thrown.

Stormreed grows tall across open plains and grasslands, blue-green blades rising in dense stands that bend without breaking, and when wind rushes through it the reeds hum softly as if the field is holding one long, steady note. In fair weather, it’s simply sturdy grass with a strange voice, but when storms gather the stalks begin to spark with faint static, tiny prickles of light that jump between reed and reed. People say you can feel the weather turning by watching the herds, because grazing animals will grow restless and drift away from Stormreed patches before the first thunder breaks, avoiding the charged air the reeds seem to drink in. Alchemists value Stormreed for its valuable protection, drying and steeping the fibers into certain draughts that briefly render a drinker more resistant to lightning and electrical harm.

Sunwell Violets are less flower than phenomenon, crystal growths that bloom in places the earth forgot to finish closing, where a crack in stone lets sunlight thread down in thin veils and the cave learns what morning is. They begin as tiny facets like spilled sugar, then build into violet and deep-purple spires that can rise to a person’s height, their faces angular and clean as cut glass, yet warm-lit from within as though they’ve swallowed the sun and are slow-digesting it. By day they drink every stray ray, storing it in their bodies until the chamber seems to hold its breath, and by night they release it in a steady, gentle glow, turning black water into ink-lavender mirror and feeding whole little ecosystems of moss, fungus, and pale-rooted caveplants that would otherwise starve in the dark. Unlike most light-bearing minerals, Sunwell Violets retain their radiance even when a piece is broken free, so long as it continues to receive regular sunlight; carried in pockets, set in lantern housings, or tucked into windowsills, a shard can glow for nights on end after a single bright day.

Temperament: Elusive, scavenging, timid

Description: In the open grasslands, tumblefangs keep to dirt dens and shallow dug burrows, staying elusive in daylight and moving like nervous little ghosts through the tall grass when the world feels too big. They’re small, coyote-like scavengers with sharp senses and sudden bursts of speed, feeding on small prey and carrion and rarely holding their ground unless they have absolutely no choice. Their real defense is absurdly effective: when startled, a tumblefang curls tight into a compact ball and rolls away like a living tumbleweed, bouncing over uneven ground with startling momentum, vanishing into the plains before a predator can decide whether to laugh or chase. Tracks are easy to lose after a roll, and hunters swear the creatures choose routes that intentionally break line of sight, popping up only once they’ve reached safer cover. A patient traveler can sometimes coax one close with food left near a den, but reach too fast and it will fold into itself and go ricocheting off into the grass like your dignity just got punted into the horizon.

Temperament: Goofy, startle easily, social

Description: Uncommon in the grasslands where lynka ranges brush tumblefang territory, the tumbelynka is a wild-blood hybrid with silvery, gray peppered fur and a partial white mane that never lies flat, as if the wind has been styling it for years. Lean and shepherd-dog sized, it bonds fiercely once it decides you are “pack,” but it has the tumblefang’s dramatic startle reflex, which means it will sprint toward you with joyous loyalty and then immediately panic-roll away if you sneeze, a wagon creaks, or a bird looks at it judgmentally. When it tumbles, it releases a harmless little gust of cold air that frosts the ground in a brief spiral, slick enough to confuse pursuit for a heartbeat but mostly used for play, because tumbelynka adore sliding, spinning, and bowling into tall grass like living snowballs. Most have taken to calling it “giggle-gusts”. They are relentless comedians, and many travelers learn to read their behavior as an early warning for storms and danger, because a tumbelynka will get louder and loopier when weather turns and will plant itself stubbornly in your path or roll in circles around you as if to say, “No, we are not walking into that.” If treated with patience and allowed wide space, a tumbelynka becomes a loyal companion for couriers and scouts, bright-eyed and brave in the moments that matter, and absurd in the moments that keep you human.

Temperament: Swift opportunitisic ambush predators. Generally neutral, but will attack if threatened or in raids over food.

Description: The vashireb is a black-feathered hawk with a clean white belly and the attitude of a thief who’s never once been punished for it, known for being the fastest creature in the wilds. It hunts like a lightning strike: startling, sudden, and already gone by the time your nerves finish shouting. It will skim low behind ridgelines and tall grass, tuck its wings at the last second, and strike with a snatch-and-rip precision that steals a kill or a ration bundle without ever offering you a clean target to swing at. When it raids, it doesn’t go for the biggest prize; it goes for the easiest to carry, and it loves anything fresh that still smells like effort. The only reliable defense is preparedness: keep food covered, keep your kill close, and don’t give it a clean line over your shoulder, because once it commits, you’ll get one blink to regret being careless.

While it's proper name is Velveted Halcyon Cerulean Inflorescence, this is rarely used outside of academic texts, widely referred to instead as winterblues. A hardy, indigo flowering plant found across Embrathis, most often thriving in woodland edges and damp shade, and commonly cultivated in courtyards and memorial gardens. Winterblues bloom year-round, remaining vibrant even in subzero temperatures; their stems are tough and fibrous. When cut, the stems weep a pale milky sap that can mildly numb skin and gums on contact; handlers and herbalists often wear gloves when harvesting large bundles. The petals are frequently used as a dye (deep indigo to dusky violet), while dried blossoms are a common alchemical ingredient in calming draughts and animal-settling tinctures. In high concentrations, the scent may attract and overstimulate draconic-adjacent species, causing catnip-like behavior (rolling, rubbing, fixation, territorial lounging).

Whisperseed Pods grow from low, purple-flowering bushes called Promiseroses (see Promiserose) in quiet, isolated places. The bush looks unremarkable until you get close, when you notice the faintest shimmer of sound around it, like the air is remembering what it heard last. When someone touches the flowers or leaves of the female promiserose bush, it may take an imprint of their voice, and when the blossoms die back, five small brown pods emerge together at the end of the stalk, always in a cluster of five, like a careful handprint. Warmed between fingers or held close to the ear, an intact pod releases a soft echo of the last voice it captured, often only a few syllables or a tone-fragment, but distinctive enough to be unmistakable. To store the voice, one must speak into a small crack in the pod. Harvesting is delicate work, because the voice sits in the seam of the pod, and cracking it too sharply can spill the sound into nothing, leaving the pod permanently silent.

Temperament: Fearless and resourceful; will attack if actively threatened or sick; especially when defending a nearby nest.

Description: The bonegnawer is a stocky, large, burrowing rodent with thick insulating fur and powerful jaws capable of crunching through even the densest bones, allowing it to thrive in areas with limited fresh food sources. Highly resourceful and adaptable, they can live almost anywhere they find suitable, often swiping scraps from pails of offcuts when a butcher’s back is turned. While some from the city view them as nothing but pests, their ability to break down the toughest carcasses, even in winter, makes them an essential part of the ecosystem, contributing to the decomposition of organic material and keeping the environment clean.

Temperament: Skittish, food-motivated, curious.

Description: The bookwyrm is a small winged lizard, only about 10 inches long. Bookwyrms are most often shades of tan and brown to blend in with bark and wood. These arboreal insectivores are known for their ferocious appetite and earned their name after being found to eat various insects that destroy books. While there is a strong wild population, many bookwyrms are kept as pets by librarians or by anyone in need of keeping insect populations at bay. Bookwyrms are capable of short periods of flight, but more often will glide from place to place. They enjoy climbing and exploring, though they are quick to flee when startled. 

[source: shy]

Temperament: Skittish thieves, chaotic, clumsy

Description: The chimnari is a lean, serval-like urban feline with long legs, large ears, and a coat patterned in soot-speckled gold and alley-brown, most often seen slipping along rooflines, chimney ledges, and the tops of old stone walls where warmth gathers. It hunts city pests with quick, springing precision, but it is still a little poorly mannered, prone to overcommitting to jumps, misjudging narrow landings, and then acting as if the cobbles offended it. Chimnari are drawn to sound, especially jingling metal, and will sometimes snatch keys, loose charms, or bell tags in the confused belief that noise is a rival creature, returning the object later when the ‘enemy’ stops fighting. Most keep their distance from people, but some become half-tame around patient households, accepting scraps and leaving small ‘gifts’ of pest carcasses on doorsteps with solemn pride. If cornered, they do not seek a fight so much as an exit, hissing once and vanishing into the nearest gap, which is why cityfolk consider them skittish rather than dangerous, and why rooftops occasionally echo with the soft, unmistakable thump of a Chimnari learning the limits of its own confidence.

Temperament: Bold, scavenging, thrives around people.

Description: A soot-feathered pigeon that roosts on rooftops, eaves, and roof gutters, favoring chimneys and warm brick where it can tuck itself out of the wind and watch the city like it owns it. Bold and shamelessly scavenging, it thrives around people, hopping close for crumbs, pecking at market scraps, and strutting through alleys with the confidence of a creature that has never once paid rent. Its feathers are streaked with gray and charcoal, often mistaken for ash, and on damp mornings, it can look like a little puff of smoke that learned to walk. Despite its scrappy nature, its guano is valued as a potent fertilizer by rooftop gardeners and stubborn city growers, who tolerate the bird’s attitude in exchange for the kind of lush growth that makes neighbors glare.

Temperament: Docile, elusive, curious, and empathic.

Description: A tiny bird with pale gray feathers dusted in warm brass speckling and a brass-bright beak tip so hard, it's nearly metal. Clinkwrens perch on lantern hooks, railings, gutters, and clocktower seams, tapping bright notes against metal and stone. They sense emotional “weather” nearby and respond with sound: during negative emotion (fear, panic, dread, shame), they strike a single sharp bell-note onto metal that seems to echo only for the person it’s meant for, pulling attention back into the present moment. During happiness, they tap out the clinkwren’s song, a tiny melody often played on the hard, shiny objects they collect for their nests like a miniature instrument, any metal nearest to it. If a listener is fortunate enough to hear the Clinkwren’s song during true happiness, it magically imprints the feeling with the sound. Later warning-rings will make the listener recall that recorded feeling, reminding them joy exists and can return. Clinkwrens are solitary by nature until they choose a mate, and they mate for life. They will bring a bright crystal shard to their prospected mate, and if accepted, they'll play their song together. Paired birds share a single nest-hoard and will play their songs in alternating turns, as if answering each other. They do poorly in captivity; confined birds grow quiet and distressed, losing their ringing entirely, and most consider it bad luck and bad ethics to cage one.

Glassbark trees are a species of drought-resistant tree with smooth yet peeling or flaking bark. While native to the marrows, its beautiful appearance, hardy nature, fragrant bark, and edible pitted fruit make it a common sight throughout the city as functional landscaping. The dusty brown, fig-shaped fruits called “friss” are a favorite of wildlife and humans alike, either enjoyed on their own or baked into desserts. The aromatic bark is used to derive popular incense and perfumes. This bark, however, is often coated in a sticky, sweet-smelling, clear resin that when dried, looks like the trees are encased in glass. This resin, when concentrated, is highly psychoactive when ingested, and some more enterprising figures have gone to cutting it with Sharp (see Sharpglis) powder to make it a new, dangerously addictive stimulant and hallucinogen called “Shatter” for the anxiety, fatigue, and sadness that often follow the euphoric high.

Temperament: Social, docile, and curious

Description: Gleamrunners are a rare, fox-like creature approximately the size of a medium dog, most often found haunting the edges of lived-in places and anywhere light reaches the ground. They’re sleek and long-limbed with slate-shadow fur and metallic, iridescent ring-markings on its slender legs and bushy tail. These remarkable animals drink in dimness and pay it back by making any light brighter, as if the world remembered how to glow—moonlight, sunlight, lanternlight, starlight, even the sparkle of a jewel or the shine in someone’s eyes. It speaks in a small curling trill, a catlike chirrup that makes listeners reflexively answer back before they realize they’ve done it, and the sound carries a gentle veneration that turns a raised voice into a lowered one, turns a clenched hand into an open palm, especially when the threat is standing in a patch of light that the gleamrunner can “warm” from the inside out. It has thin, strong fangs that peek from its upper lip, and it eats a narrow, specific diet: a common poisonous, hardened weed called saltwort leaf. Most folk avoid on instinct, but it can digest it without harm, the toxin transmuted into a faint luminant oil along the throat and chest that feeds its light-brightening gift, emphasizing its resilient nature. When danger won’t be reasoned with, it has a particular defense: it makes the lantern flare, makes eyes blink, makes hearts slow, and then it slips away in one clean bound. They will bond with whole households rather than a single person, and if it’s chased away, it will use its defense, only to return later with stubborn certainty, as if shooing it off was merely a suggestion it chose not to respect. While these creatures are normally elusive and prone to wanting their space, they will become fiercely protective of their household—its teeth are meant for more than just crunching through tough leaves.

Temperament: Docile but easily startled, quick to flee and hide from attention.

Description: The Lanternkin’s warm-season larval form (see Lanternkin Moth), Glowgrubs are common, heat-seeking little creatures that behave more like tiny lizards than typical caterpillars. They bask on sun-warmed stone, brass, and sheltered stoops, scooting toward warmth with simple instinct, and retreating into cool cracks when the heat fades. Glowgrubs are soft-bodied and pale cream with tiny gold flecks, fuzzed along the ridge like pollen caught in down. They feed on spent nectar residue and sap-sweet traces left behind in gardens, acting like tidy little scavengers of sweetness. In late summer, they spin a paper-lantern cocoon of thin, parchment-like silk that glows faintly from within; once the moth emerges, the husk hardens into a light, durable shell. When warmed in the palms or held near a flame, a husk gives off a steadying presence that can soothe fear and anxiety.

Temperament: Playful, intelligent, mischievous

Description: A small, slender mustelid that can range from solid mink-like colors to pointed and masked variants. Grapplepaw ferrets are named after the sticky, almost resin-like secretion that they produce from glands in their paws called "glair". This grippy substance lends well to the animal’s natural dexterity and enables it to be a formidable hunter and climber, easily scaling the sides of nearly sheer obstacles when chasing prey, sometimes taking down creatures up to twice its size. Their endearing antics and intelligent and affectionate nature has made them a popular pet amongst rural and city folk alike. Small, dried paw-prints on the sides of buildings can be found near fish markets and food vendor carts as feral grapplepaws take their ill-gotten gains out of the reach of humans. But to those who know better, they don't leave without payment. The substance produced by their paws can be scraped off once semi-dry and is used by alchemists in potions or enchantments that utilize dexterity or balance. Only well-fed and happy grapplepaws produce high enough quality glair to be used for alchemical purposes, so rather than being viewed as a pest, many feral grapplepaws are given a certain grace to take their fill in order to keep them coming around.

Temperament: Territorial, aggressive, easily startled

Description: A Greenthorn Civet is a medium-large predatory mammal with the long, sinuous body of a civet and the weighty, muscular presence of a lynx, usually found along the edges of the Whisperwood, in abandoned greenhouses, ruined orchards, and overgrown garden walls. Its coat ranges from dark chestnut to near-black, mottled like wet bark, while a ridge of hollow venom quills runs from the nape to the base of the tail, supported by shorter defensive quills at the shoulders, forelegs, thighs, and tail, all of which can lift when threatened and catch green-gold in lanternlight. Solitary, territorial, and clever enough to test traps, the Greenthorn prefers to ambush from walls, hedges, and roofs, dropping onto prey with startling force. Its venom, called thornsleep, causes burning pain, spreading numbness, muscle weakness, and in heavy doses can lock the chest badly enough to kill, though when carefully refined, it is highly valued by healers and alchemists as a potent ingredient to health potions. The creature’s shed quills also retain a trace of root-magic and can be ground into varnishes, inks, or compounds that encourage stubborn plant growth, making the Greenthorn Civet as prized as it is dangerous.

Veins of grimspar are close to the surface, easily missed as an unassuming grey, but those who know what to look for can recognize its subtle amethyst and silver veining that travels throughout natural formations when its crust has been shaved back. It’s easily mined by simple tools and lurks nearly everywhere, but the richest veins are found closest to the coastline. This mineral is commonly crushed, heated, and then pressed into more densely saturated bars for carrying in medical kits and survival gear. Grimspar is valued as a purifying agent, strong enough for instruments yet safe enough to use on living tissue as an antiseptic, when mixed with spirits and water, respectively.  It’s undramatic in its speciality, no fizz or bubble needed, just a light, briefly skin-staining, lilac and the sharp, crisp scent of the electrified air after a thunderstorm. Outriders have often toted it as something not to go into the wilderness without, as it can purify water faster than boiling. Though just because it’s safe to drink, it doesn’t mean it tastes pleasant; its strong metallic twinge is palatable, but seen as a last resort.

Temperament: Bold, clever scavengers that are more likely to test a boundary than fear it.

Description: Gryphlets are miniature gryphons about the size of a housecat, common throughout Embrathis’ urban districts and especially well known in busy neighborhoods, market streets, dockside roofs, and the warmer maze of chimneys, eaves, and narrow alleys where food and shelter are never far away. They vary widely in appearance, often resembling improbable little combinations of familiar creatures: bluejay-housecat gryphlets are sleek and quick, with blue-gray feathers blending into soft fur, bright watchful eyes, and the sort of darting, entitled energy that sees them snatch a pastry and vanish before the shouting starts; fox-seagull gryphlets are russet and cream with pale wings, sharp little muzzles, and shrill, needling cries, most often found near markets and harbors where they prowl with theatrical confidence; raccoon-pigeon gryphlets are scruffier, charcoal-feathered and striped-tailed, with a more awkward gait on the ground and a notorious fondness for refuse heaps, overturned baskets, and anything poorly fastened. All gryphlets are noisy, opportunistic, and uncommonly intelligent, building messy communal nests in rafters, abandoned lofts, bell towers, sea walls, and the hidden hollows of old buildings, and many city dwellers curse them almost as often as they feed them. Their reputation for being a nuisance has less to do with malice than with the simple fact that they are resourceful urban scavengers, always seeking easy food, dry shelter, and warm places to roost. They raid market scraps, steal cooling meat or fresh bread when they can manage it, tear into poorly secured refuse, and crowd chimneys, lofts, and rooflines for heat on cold nights. In harsher weather, they become especially bold, lingering near kitchens, stables, bathhouses, and bakery vents, wherever warmth and the scent of food gather strongest, which has earned them a reputation as persistent, practical little menaces of the city.

Heartweed is a common pest plant. It is dark green with red running through the leaves. These plants are relentless, managing to bounce back from nearly any attempt to kill them. They can be harvested as part of the ingredients to make potions of healing, vitality, and even fertility, though it takes large quantities of time and material to gain any value. Heartweed originated from the grasslands, but attempts to cultivate it in the city for easier harvesting resulted in the plant spreading throughout Embrathis. 

[source: shy]

Temperament: Quiet, nocturnal, and wary of sudden movement; they’ll linger if approached gently, but they do poorly in captivity and prefer to come and go on their own.

Description: Hushlings are palm-sized, dusk-gray, fuzzy-bodied creatures with layered petal-like wings and a long tail ending in a soft brush tuft; they roost near steady lanternlight and shed a fine wing-dust called somnidust that, when inhaled in sleep, nudges dreams toward certain dream conditions (comfort, vividness, release, or a lucid edge that can restore a small sense of control). Their dust can be safely collected from favored roosts (window ledges, beams, lantern casings) and is used in gentle dreamwork and alchemical sleep aids; some neighborhoods consider them bad luck because hushlings sometimes prey on Lanternkin moths, while others treat them as a mercy-creature that helps the mind unstick from distress dream loops.

Temperament: Docile creatures that do not startle easily, remarkably intelligent for an insect.

Description: A common cold-season moth found throughout Brighthollow Terrace and anywhere lanterns burn into the evening. Lanternkin are small and pale, with a fuzzy white body and folded wings veined in soft gold; in daylight their glow is faint as embers, but at dusk they read as living warmth. They circle light sources to “sip” heat and carry it for a short while in their wings, leaving a faint trail of warm dust that can melt a whisper of frost where it settles. Lanternkin have a subtle calming effect simply by being near them, like a steady lantern flame for the nervous system; one moth is gentle, but a small drift of them can noticeably soften fear and anxiety, easing breathing and quieting the urge to scan for danger. When threatened, they can release a brief heat pulse and a glare-flash that startles predators and lets them vanish into the lantern’s halo. Perhaps their most remarkable trait is their long lifespans, stretching up to five years, and are sometimes kept as pets.

Temperament: Social, clever, curious

Description: The lunar swallow is a small nocturnal bird most commonly found in the upper boughs and silver-lit clearings of the Whisperwood, though it is common enough throughout Embrathis to be a familiar sight along rooftop eaves, garden walls, lantern hooks, and the fog-damp edges of Sunsnare Bay. It is a delicate, elegant thing at first glance, with soft silver feathers tipped in clean white and a pair of long trailing tail plumes that catch moonlight, lamplight, and sea-glow in shifting pearl, blue, and faint violet tones. Lunar swallows move in quick, graceful bursts, gathering in loose flocks after dusk to wheel through the trees or between chimneys and terrace rails, their calls soft and clear, like a thin chime heard through mist. They are social birds, alert and clever, more curious than tame, and while they rarely allow themselves to be handled, they are known to draw near places that feel calm, familiar, or gently lit. Their magic takes the form of a phenomenon often called lunarhush: wherever a lunar swallow lands, it leaves behind a brief glow that softens the immediate space around it, dulling harsh noise, easing sharp feelings, and making both shadow and light feel less oppressive for a few moments. If they land on something with a beating heart, the glow they leave behind will render the whole creature glowing for a few minutes, seen as a blessing to many. In the Whisperwood, this lends them an almost sacred reputation among late travelers, while in the city they are welcomed as small comforts of the night in the forest, city, and along the bay, where they can sometimes be seen skimming low over the fog to hunt insects and the drifting glow around young fogbell jellies.

Temperament: Playful and fiercely loyal to those it sees as family

Description: Lynkas are agile predators about the size of a large dog, with a sleek, muscular build covered in thick, silvery-gray fur. Its mane—a unique feature—is made up of bright white fur, giving it an almost ethereal presence. The lynka’s sharp eyes can see through the thickest snowstorms and torrential rain, making it an exceptional companion for those navigating in inclement weather. While it is a skilled hunter in the wild, the lynka is often kept as a pet, due to its desirable temperament. It possesses minor magical abilities, including the power to summon small bursts of icy wind, which can be used to cool down hot drinks or soothe injuries. Additionally, it can freeze small puddles of water, creating little patches of ice that it often uses to entertain itself. The lynka is highly valued for its companionship, both as a guardian and a source of warmth during harsh winters.

Temperament: Elusive, highly intelligent, perplexing

Description: The morrclaw is the kind of creature that cannot be tracked so much as encountered, a black-feathered bird with an oil-slick iridescence that flashes green, violet, and midnight-blue when it turns in the light, and it can appear anywhere a story can happen: roadside stones, rooftops, forest boughs, ship rails, the forest, the mountains, market awnings, even the rim of a well like it owns the concept of depth. It is highly intelligent, unsettlingly observant, and behaves like a roaming test with wings, approaching travelers to pose a riddle that sounds simple until it’s lodged in your teeth, watching not just for the answer but for the honesty behind it. Those who respond well, clever or sincere, sometimes both, may be rewarded with a single feather offered like a pen at a contract table, and the feather holds unpredictable magic that stays dormant until it draws blood, at which point it burns to ash and releases its effect in a rush that can save a life or change the weather, granting anything from healing or protection to concealment, misdirection, or a sudden storm that arrives like a slammed door. No two feathers are reliably the same, and the old belief is that the Morrclaw’s “gift” is shaped by the riddle you were given and what you revealed in answering, which is why the wisest travelers treat it less like loot and more like a favor, because it remembers faces, it dislikes attempts to trick it, and it does not always give twice.

Paperwasps are a narrow-waisted wasp that nests under awnings, eaves, barns, and the dry lips of roof gutters, building its comb from whatever the city sheds, receipts, posters, torn letters, old notices, even the corner of a love note someone ripped up and thought was gone. The nest looks like layered parchment lacquered with spit and stubbornness, and if you get close you can sometimes see half-words and ink-strokes trapped in the walls like fossils, little evidence the city didn’t mean to keep. Paperwasps aren’t aggressive unless you grab at their archive, but they will defend it with theatrical fury, dive-bombing intruders and leaving sharp welts that itch like guilt. Apothecaries, archivists, and bookbinders prize abandoned combs, pulping them into a pale, sticky paste used to mend torn pages and repair book spines, because it dries flexible instead of brittle. Anyone with secrets learns to hate the species on principle, since paper left near a nest has a habit of going missing.

Saltwort leaf is a low, hardy plant with dull blue-green leaves that look sprinkled in salt and are nearly impossible to break, easy to recognize and avoid. They are considered weeds and invasive pests, able to thrive in any environment from growing through cracks in stone to even barren soil. If you manage to break one between your fingers, it releases a sharp, metallic scent like rain on iron. To most animals and people it’s a known mistake if ingested: not deadly, but miserable, leaving the mouth numb, the stomach turning, and the head swimming with strange, bright thoughts for a few hours, so everyone learns to leave it alone. Herbalists can harvest it and use it as a numbing salve when ground into a paste with the proper ingredients, or in high quantity, it can be used to empty the stomach in the event of deadly poison being ingested.

Sometimes called clatterwood or shield wood, this plant grows in large groves most often, is semi invasive, and used to make common household items because of its strength. The outside is a soft silver grey when young, maturing to a darker iron grey as it ages. The inside is hollow and segmented, coloured a muted blue, a colour craftsfolk call skeldblue. Despite its light weight the walls are dense and hard. When a grove sways in the wind, the stalks make a soft resonant clacking sound. 

[source: mikihiko]

Temperament: Mischievous, flighty, playful.

Description: The slip fox is an uncommon but well-known nuisance with a penchant for stealing food and getting into trouble. These foxes are smaller than their normal kin, with dark coats that blend into the night. The slip fox can teleport itself a few feet away as long as no one is looking at it, which is where it derives its name. Even if a farmer catches it breaking into the hen house, one blink and the critter has vanished into the night with a hen in its jaw. While annoying, they're easily spooked and prefer going after trash or carrion. While they can be tamed, they have poor manners and boundless energy that can terrorize unprepared owners. 

[source: shy]

Temperament: Watchful, skittish, and difficult to approach. Sliverglass geckos prefer to observe from reflective surfaces and will flee rather than attack unless trapped or handled.

Description: Sliverglass geckos are rare urban reptiles no longer than a handspan, with translucent skin, silver-flecked bones visible beneath the surface, and broad toe pads that cling easily to glass, mirror, polished stone, lacquered wood, glazed tile, and any smooth surface that holds even a faint reflection. They are most often found in old apartments, bathhouses, theaters, jewelers’ shops, council buildings, abandoned conservatories, windowed stairwells, and other places where people pass by reflective surfaces without truly looking at them. A sliverglass gecko does not turn invisible so much as borrow the reflection behind it, making its body appear as a tiny flaw in the surface: a crack that was not there, a smear of light, a second blink in a mirror, or a movement seen through a window that does not match the room. When startled, it sheds a dusting of glass-fine scales that briefly confuses reflections nearby. For a few moments, mirrors may show someone half a step delayed, windows may reflect someone standing where they are not, polished surfaces may reveal motion from the wrong angle, and hidden movement can become easier or harder to notice depending on where the eye lands first. The effect is disorienting rather than directly harmful, but the gecko itself is not safe to handle carelessly. Its clear, silvery blood is irritating and mildly toxic on direct skin contact, leaving a sharp cold sting, numbness, and glittering rash-like marks that can linger for hours if not washed away quickly. Because of this, even its escape defense has a risk: when a sliverglass gecko drops its tail, the shed tail may twitch and flash with false reflections while leaking enough blood to make grabbing it barehanded a mistake. Killing one is equally unsafe, as broken skin can spatter reflective blood across nearby surfaces, hands, clothing, or tools. Alchemists collect shed scales from abandoned sleeping spots and use them in illusion work, misdirection magic, inks, and preparations meant to reveal or distort truth, but any work involving blood, tails, or bodies requires gloves, sealed glass, and more sense than curiosity. Catching a live one is difficult, because the gecko will drop its tail in a flash and flee across the nearest surface while everyone is looking at the wrong version of it.

Sluicesilver Vine is a pallid, metallic-silver creeper that only takes root where the city discards itself, sewer seams, drainage culverts, gutter mouths, and the slick black margins beneath refuse chutes, feeding on rot-sweet runoff and mineral grime as if filth is the price of its shine. Its leaves are thin and slick as foil, its stems cold to the touch, and when disturbed, it releases a sharp, clean scent that feels wrong in a place that smells like everything else. Brewed carefully, its dried leaf and sap become the basis of an honesty draught that peels away practiced lies and forces the drinker’s words to match their intent, but the vine itself has an ugly little rule: it recoils from truth the moment it hears it. Spoken plainly in its presence, a true statement makes the leaves curl inward and clamp tight, the silver biting itself shut like a mouth that can’t tolerate being caught, and those who work the sewers learn to use it as a barometer for cowardice, because the vine thrives in waste and flinches at honesty, shiny on the outside, rooted in refuse, and allergic to clean daylight.

Description: Snapsill Cress is a hardy little plant that grows where feet, wheels, and weather have worried openings into stone, wood, packed dirt, plaster, or brick. It favors thresholds, stair edges, wall seams, window ledges, fence lines, road cracks, stable doors, shopfront gaps, and the dry borders of cultivated fields, forming low mats of pale green leaves and tiny bead-like seedpods that look harmless until disturbed. When brushed, stepped near, shaken by vibration, or startled by a sudden change in air pressure, the pods pop in a quick chain of sharp little snaps, scattering peppery seeds across the nearest surface. The sound is not dangerous, but it is excellent at ruining stealth, drawing eyes, and startling animals. The seeds can roll underfoot like grit, catch in hems and cuffs, and release a dry spice-scent that makes some people sneeze if they breathe it too close. Farmers and shopkeepers dislike it for the noise and the mess, but guards, innkeepers, and cautious householders sometimes cultivate thin lines of it near doors or windows as a cheap living alarm. Alchemists dry the seedpods carefully and use the powder in mild alertness draughts, wakefulness salts, and harmless distraction pellets that pop when thrown.

Temperament: Elusive and skittish, will attack when confronted, but forms bonds with some humans.

Description: A cat-sized, winged drake that nests in warm brickwork. It feeds on vermin and city pests of all sort, and comes in every color imaginable, from mottled alley-grays to jewel-bright hues. When startled or angered, light flickers beneath its scales in a soft glow, casting patterned shadows across walls and rooftops. City alchemists and artificers harvest its shed scales for heat-resistant varnish, and only dare try a pluck a scale if they don't have any attachment to their fingers.

Temperament: Highly intelligent, loyal, territorial.

Description: The sundrake is a sleek, gray-scaled, canine-like wingless predator. It communicates by body language, subsonic rumbles, and subtle heat displays, senses heat trails and vibrations, and exhales brief bursts of blistering, desiccating heat (not flame). Loyal to small family packs, some bond with them to guard temples, caravans, archives, and storage halls, or to share their steady, dragon-like warmth. Pack-bonded sundrakes can become brazenly possessive of their chosen people, shadowing them heel-to-knee and “claiming” them with head-bumps, dramatic sprawls, and a tiger-like chuff that fills a room.

Sunwell Violets are less flower than phenomenon, crystal growths that bloom in places the earth forgot to finish closing, where a crack in stone lets sunlight thread down in thin veils and the cave learns what morning is. They begin as tiny facets like spilled sugar, then build into violet and deep-purple spires that can rise to a person’s height, their faces angular and clean as cut glass, yet warm-lit from within as though they’ve swallowed the sun and are slow-digesting it. By day they drink every stray ray, storing it in their bodies until the chamber seems to hold its breath, and by night they release it in a steady, gentle glow, turning black water into ink-lavender mirror and feeding whole little ecosystems of moss, fungus, and pale-rooted caveplants that would otherwise starve in the dark. Unlike most light-bearing minerals, Sunwell Violets retain their radiance even when a piece is broken free, so long as it continues to receive regular sunlight; carried in pockets, set in lantern housings, or tucked into windowsills, a shard can glow for nights on end after a single bright day.

Temperament: Goofy, startle easily, social

Description: Uncommon in the grasslands where lynka ranges brush tumblefang territory, the tumbelynka is a wild-blood hybrid with silvery, gray peppered fur and a partial white mane that never lies flat, as if the wind has been styling it for years. Lean and shepherd-dog sized, it bonds fiercely once it decides you are “pack,” but it has the tumblefang’s dramatic startle reflex, which means it will sprint toward you with joyous loyalty and then immediately panic-roll away if you sneeze, a wagon creaks, or a bird looks at it judgmentally. When it tumbles, it releases a harmless little gust of cold air that frosts the ground in a brief spiral, slick enough to confuse pursuit for a heartbeat but mostly used for play, because tumbelynka adore sliding, spinning, and bowling into tall grass like living snowballs. Most have taken to calling it “giggle-gusts”. They are relentless comedians, and many travelers learn to read their behavior as an early warning for storms and danger, because a tumbelynka will get louder and loopier when weather turns and will plant itself stubbornly in your path or roll in circles around you as if to say, “No, we are not walking into that.” If treated with patience and allowed wide space, a tumbelynka becomes a loyal companion for couriers and scouts, bright-eyed and brave in the moments that matter, and absurd in the moments that keep you human.

While it's proper name is Velveted Halcyon Cerulean Inflorescence, this is rarely used outside of academic texts, widely referred to instead as winterblues. A hardy, indigo flowering plant found across Embrathis, most often thriving in woodland edges and damp shade, and commonly cultivated in courtyards and memorial gardens. Winterblues bloom year-round, remaining vibrant even in subzero temperatures; their stems are tough and fibrous. When cut, the stems weep a pale milky sap that can mildly numb skin and gums on contact; handlers and herbalists often wear gloves when harvesting large bundles. The petals are frequently used as a dye (deep indigo to dusky violet), while dried blossoms are a common alchemical ingredient in calming draughts and animal-settling tinctures. In high concentrations, the scent may attract and overstimulate draconic-adjacent species, causing catnip-like behavior (rolling, rubbing, fixation, territorial lounging).

Temperament: Fearless and resourceful; will attack if actively threatened or sick; especially when defending a nearby nest.

Description: The bonegnawer is a stocky, large, burrowing rodent with thick insulating fur and powerful jaws capable of crunching through even the densest bones, allowing it to thrive in areas with limited fresh food sources. Highly resourceful and adaptable, they can live almost anywhere they find suitable, often swiping scraps from pails of offcuts when a butcher’s back is turned. While some from the city view them as nothing but pests, their ability to break down the toughest carcasses, even in winter, makes them an essential part of the ecosystem, contributing to the decomposition of organic material and keeping the environment clean.

Temperament: Loyal, calm, protective of family.

Description: The camoskink are large herbivorous lizards with prehensile tails, growing up to two feet in length. These slow-moving creatures bond with a mate for life, raising young and traveling together. Mates will entwine their tails as they sleep and sunbathe, and are said to psychically know where their partner is if separated. Their main defense mechanism is camouflage, letting them blend almost seamlessly into their surroundings, with their default coloration being a dark brown. These are sometimes viewed as pests to farmers due to their diet of plants. It is considered good luck to see a mated pair before a wedding or other relationship milestone.

[source: shy]

Temperament: Docile, elusive, curious, and empathic.

Description: A tiny bird with pale gray feathers dusted in warm brass speckling and a brass-bright beak tip so hard, it's nearly metal. Clinkwrens perch on lantern hooks, railings, gutters, and clocktower seams, tapping bright notes against metal and stone. They sense emotional “weather” nearby and respond with sound: during negative emotion (fear, panic, dread, shame), they strike a single sharp bell-note onto metal that seems to echo only for the person it’s meant for, pulling attention back into the present moment. During happiness, they tap out the clinkwren’s song, a tiny melody often played on the hard, shiny objects they collect for their nests like a miniature instrument, any metal nearest to it. If a listener is fortunate enough to hear the Clinkwren’s song during true happiness, it magically imprints the feeling with the sound. Later warning-rings will make the listener recall that recorded feeling, reminding them joy exists and can return. Clinkwrens are solitary by nature until they choose a mate, and they mate for life. They will bring a bright crystal shard to their prospected mate, and if accepted, they'll play their song together. Paired birds share a single nest-hoard and will play their songs in alternating turns, as if answering each other. They do poorly in captivity; confined birds grow quiet and distressed, losing their ringing entirely, and most consider it bad luck and bad ethics to cage one.

Creeping grass appears to the untrained eye as ordinary grass. It grows slower and shorter than most other grasses. To help compete with other plants, it has an unusual root system, capable of vining above the ground to choke out other plants. It’s considered a pest by farmers, but some with coin to spare enjoy using it as a yard grass since it will choke out weed plants on its own. 

[source: shy]

Temperament: Fearless, loyal, intelligent, protective and keenly attuned to their chosen person.

Description: Though outwardly resembling ordinary horses of any color or size, Dire Horses are selectively cultivated in the farmlands to be stronger, faster, more agile, and notably fearless, with a sharp intelligence that lets them read a rider’s intent in the smallest shifts of weight and breath. They do not exist in the wilds and are never found feral, bred and raised in controlled lines for generations until the temperament is as much a tool as muscle, loyal, protective, brave, and keenly attuned to a chosen partner. Once bonded, a dire horse rarely accepts another rider, forming a partnership that becomes fierce and unshakable, the kind of trust that turns chaos into coordination and makes dangerous terrain feel navigable.

Everice Fern grows in low-lying flatland where snowfall piles deep and lingers, a silvery fern with shimmering fronds that seems to thrive on being buried, its leaves staying supple beneath the weight of winter as if the cold is a blanket it prefers. It is easiest to find by the faint glitter its fronds leave under fresh snow, and harvesters dig carefully, because the plant bruises easily and the sap is most potent when the stems are cut clean and kept from warming too fast. That sap is the fern’s real value, a clear, cold resin that can be cured into a thin glaze or mixed into forging oils, used to treat armor, tools, and blades so they resist frost bite and winter brittleness for a time, keeping metal from seizing and leather from cracking when the weather turns freezing

Frost Grass grows thick near creeks and ponds where the soil stays damp, a bright green blade with a silvery sheen that makes whole patches look like they’ve been kissed by morning frost even in summer. It feels velvety, and it carries a steady, refreshing coolness that never seems to leave, staying cold even under harsh sun. People braid it into wraps for overheated travelers, feverish children, and sore joints, and stablehands line watering troughs or resting mats with it so horses and dogs can cool themselves without having to seek shade. Gatherers take it early or at dusk when it is strongest, because if you dry it too aggressively, it loses its chill, and if you store it sealed without air it can sour and irritate skin.

Temperament: Hostile when threatened and territorial during breeding season, otherwise generally unbothered by adult humans

Description: Gaurators are large, crocodilian reptiles that frequent saltwater, freshwater, and the banks between. From nose to powerful tail, adults measure roughly twelve feet long. Their streamlined body is corded with powerful muscles and armored in stony, non-overlapping scales, making its hide nearly impenetrable with a normal blade. Their elongated snouts are filled with sharp teeth, and their jaw muscles are easily capable of crushing shells or bone. While technical omnivores, their diets mainly consist of fish, crustaceans, and smaller vertebrates that wander too close to shore, relying on vegetation only in leaner times. They generally do not view adult humans as prey enough to actively pursue, but they will defend themselves or their nests with dogged determination. In summer, gaurators can be found in the warm water shallows of the ocean or sunning themselves on rocky outcroppings near shore or along canal breaks. In the colder seasons, gaurators swim upstream and inland to bury themselves in mud to ride out the frost. When the weather warms again, gaurators will use these same sites for laying eggs. While breeding can occur every year, female gaurators commonly lay clutches of twenty eggs every other year, and both parents will guard the territory surrounding the mud-hollow, only taking brief breaks for hunting. During breeding season, male gaurators will often compete fiercely for female attention in impassioned duels. These are rarely deadly; instead, they are used to display strength and virility to the female they are trying to impress. Most hostile interactions with humans happen when gaurators swim inland to brumate and breed, or when someone has decided the reward outweighs risk, as armor made from gaurator skin is some of the toughest out there.

Glassbark trees are a species of drought-resistant tree with smooth yet peeling or flaking bark. While native to the marrows, its beautiful appearance, hardy nature, fragrant bark, and edible pitted fruit make it a common sight throughout the city as functional landscaping. The dusty brown, fig-shaped fruits called “friss” are a favorite of wildlife and humans alike, either enjoyed on their own or baked into desserts. The aromatic bark is used to derive popular incense and perfumes. This bark, however, is often coated in a sticky, sweet-smelling, clear resin that when dried, looks like the trees are encased in glass. This resin, when concentrated, is highly psychoactive when ingested, and some more enterprising figures have gone to cutting it with Sharp (see Sharpglis) powder to make it a new, dangerously addictive stimulant and hallucinogen called “Shatter” for the anxiety, fatigue, and sadness that often follow the euphoric high.

Gleamroot is a fertile-soil plant prized for the faint, warmth-giving glow it releases when bruised or crushed, its leaves and knotted root holding a soft golden hue in daylight that intensifies the moment it’s disturbed. It is not a strong heat source, but it is reliable, and travelers sometimes keep a small wrapped bundle as a low-light aid, rubbing a pinch between their fingers to coax a brief, gentle shine that won’t blind the dark-adjusted eye. Healers and alchemists value Gleamroot’s mild, steady heat for salves and draughts meant to comfort sore muscles and cold hands, where its warmth works more like reassurance than fire, and the glow serves as a practical tell that the preparation has been properly activated. Gleamroot is also infamous for its flavor, a sweet-resin warmth with a bright edge that most people find dangerously pleasant, and properly dosed preparations can briefly steady the body with increased fortitude, helping hands stay surer and stamina hold a little longer. In higher concentrations, however, the same irresistible taste encourages overuse, and the warmth turns flushed and restless, heightening desire and making affection come easier, accompanied by a faint glow in the cheeks, not unlike the rosiness one might get from too much alcohol.

Temperament: Social, docile, and curious

Description: Gleamrunners are a rare, fox-like creature approximately the size of a medium dog, most often found haunting the edges of lived-in places and anywhere light reaches the ground. They’re sleek and long-limbed with slate-shadow fur and metallic, iridescent ring-markings on its slender legs and bushy tail. These remarkable animals drink in dimness and pay it back by making any light brighter, as if the world remembered how to glow—moonlight, sunlight, lanternlight, starlight, even the sparkle of a jewel or the shine in someone’s eyes. It speaks in a small curling trill, a catlike chirrup that makes listeners reflexively answer back before they realize they’ve done it, and the sound carries a gentle veneration that turns a raised voice into a lowered one, turns a clenched hand into an open palm, especially when the threat is standing in a patch of light that the gleamrunner can “warm” from the inside out. It has thin, strong fangs that peek from its upper lip, and it eats a narrow, specific diet: a common poisonous, hardened weed called saltwort leaf. Most folk avoid on instinct, but it can digest it without harm, the toxin transmuted into a faint luminant oil along the throat and chest that feeds its light-brightening gift, emphasizing its resilient nature. When danger won’t be reasoned with, it has a particular defense: it makes the lantern flare, makes eyes blink, makes hearts slow, and then it slips away in one clean bound. They will bond with whole households rather than a single person, and if it’s chased away, it will use its defense, only to return later with stubborn certainty, as if shooing it off was merely a suggestion it chose not to respect. While these creatures are normally elusive and prone to wanting their space, they will become fiercely protective of their household—its teeth are meant for more than just crunching through tough leaves.

Temperament: Territorial, aggressive, easily startled

Description: A Greenthorn Civet is a medium-large predatory mammal with the long, sinuous body of a civet and the weighty, muscular presence of a lynx, usually found along the edges of the Whisperwood, in abandoned greenhouses, ruined orchards, and overgrown garden walls. Its coat ranges from dark chestnut to near-black, mottled like wet bark, while a ridge of hollow venom quills runs from the nape to the base of the tail, supported by shorter defensive quills at the shoulders, forelegs, thighs, and tail, all of which can lift when threatened and catch green-gold in lanternlight. Solitary, territorial, and clever enough to test traps, the Greenthorn prefers to ambush from walls, hedges, and roofs, dropping onto prey with startling force. Its venom, called thornsleep, causes burning pain, spreading numbness, muscle weakness, and in heavy doses can lock the chest badly enough to kill, though when carefully refined, it is highly valued by healers and alchemists as a potent ingredient to health potions. The creature’s shed quills also retain a trace of root-magic and can be ground into varnishes, inks, or compounds that encourage stubborn plant growth, making the Greenthorn Civet as prized as it is dangerous.

Veins of grimspar are close to the surface, easily missed as an unassuming grey, but those who know what to look for can recognize its subtle amethyst and silver veining that travels throughout natural formations when its crust has been shaved back. It’s easily mined by simple tools and lurks nearly everywhere, but the richest veins are found closest to the coastline. This mineral is commonly crushed, heated, and then pressed into more densely saturated bars for carrying in medical kits and survival gear. Grimspar is valued as a purifying agent, strong enough for instruments yet safe enough to use on living tissue as an antiseptic, when mixed with spirits and water, respectively.  It’s undramatic in its speciality, no fizz or bubble needed, just a light, briefly skin-staining, lilac and the sharp, crisp scent of the electrified air after a thunderstorm. Outriders have often toted it as something not to go into the wilderness without, as it can purify water faster than boiling. Though just because it’s safe to drink, it doesn’t mean it tastes pleasant; its strong metallic twinge is palatable, but seen as a last resort.

Heartweed is a common pest plant. It is dark green with red running through the leaves. These plants are relentless, managing to bounce back from nearly any attempt to kill them. They can be harvested as part of the ingredients to make potions of healing, vitality, and even fertility, though it takes large quantities of time and material to gain any value. Heartweed originated from the grasslands, but attempts to cultivate it in the city for easier harvesting resulted in the plant spreading throughout Embrathis. 

[source: shy]

Temperament: Temperamental, solitary, stubborn

Description: The hedgerow grumper is a badger-sized, mud-brown burrower that makes its home in stone wall gaps and root-tangled hedgerows, where it keeps fields cleaner than most farmers realize by devouring grubs, rats, and the fat larvae that ruin root crops. It is stout, stubborn, and generally uninterested in conflict, but when startled it produces its signature defense, an explosive, kettle-like scream that startles predators into dropping whatever bad idea they were having, and startles farmers into dropping entire pails. Grumpers are not aggressive unless cornered, yet they are famously uncooperative about being relocated, returning to the same hedgerow night after night as if personally offended by boundaries drawn on maps. Most rural folk tolerate them with grudging affection, because even if the creature screams like a haunted teapot, it earns its keep.

Description: Hushgrain is a pale, dry-stalked plant that grows among ordinary grain and tall field grasses, disguising itself well enough that most people only notice it after something has gone wrong. Its stems are straw-gold at a glance, but the seedheads are slightly too white, with translucent husks that tremble even when the air is still. When brushed, crushed, cut, threshed, or shaken loose from hay, those husks split with a soft, papery crack and release a fine powder that smells faintly of flour, dry flowers, and old linen. Anyone who breathes in enough hushgrain dust may lose their hearing entirely for a short time, usually a few minutes to an hour. The effect is not simple muffling. Sound vanishes. Voices become moving mouths, footsteps disappear, warning shouts fail, and even one’s own heartbeat can feel strangely distant, leaving victims dependent on sight, touch, vibration, and whatever signals they can improvise. Mild exposure causes ringing, pressure in the ears, and delayed hearing, while heavier exposure can bring brief vertigo, poor balance, and a wool-thick confusion that makes crowded or dangerous places suddenly much harder to navigate. Animals dislike hushgrain intensely and may refuse hay or feed contaminated with it, though panicked livestock can kick, bolt, or crowd together if a seedhead bursts nearby. Farmers treat it as a harvest hazard and try to weed it out before threshing, but alchemists value carefully dried husks for stealth-type magic, or sound proofing an area. Harvesting requires a damp cloth mask, slow hands, and sealed jars, because one careless shake can turn a simple gathering into a silent field full of people shouting without hearing themselves.

Temperament: Quiet, nocturnal, and wary of sudden movement; they’ll linger if approached gently, but they do poorly in captivity and prefer to come and go on their own.

Description: Hushlings are palm-sized, dusk-gray, fuzzy-bodied creatures with layered petal-like wings and a long tail ending in a soft brush tuft; they roost near steady lanternlight and shed a fine wing-dust called somnidust that, when inhaled in sleep, nudges dreams toward certain dream conditions (comfort, vividness, release, or a lucid edge that can restore a small sense of control). Their dust can be safely collected from favored roosts (window ledges, beams, lantern casings) and is used in gentle dreamwork and alchemical sleep aids; some neighborhoods consider them bad luck because hushlings sometimes prey on Lanternkin moths, while others treat them as a mercy-creature that helps the mind unstick from distress dream loops.

Temperament: territorial, aggressive, spiteful

Description: A bread-loaf-sized grasslands boar with copper-dark, ridged bristles and the moral certainty of a tax collector, it sprints like a thrown rock and refuses to be intimidated by anything with a pulse. It digs up roots with loud, shameless enthusiasm, steals unattended lunches with the precision of a practiced thief, and will charge a horse purely out of principle, bristles flaring like it’s trying to start a feud with the concept of height. Boarlets travel in tiny gangs, one often posted as a lookout on a stone or fence rail as if it’s doing civic duty, and they announce a successful heist with quick tooth-clacks that sound like pebbles in a cup. Locals don’t bother trying to ‘teach them manners’ and instead collect shed bristles along fence-scrape routes, grinding them into Knickbristle Ink, a gritty mixture that cannot be altered with magic once written. The ink leaves a faint copper sheen in lamplight and a subtle roughness under a fingertip, which is how caravan masters know their signatures will still be there tomorrow, even if a boarlet has eaten the lunch they signed over.

Temperament: Playful and fiercely loyal to those it sees as family

Description: Lynkas are agile predators about the size of a large dog, with a sleek, muscular build covered in thick, silvery-gray fur. Its mane—a unique feature—is made up of bright white fur, giving it an almost ethereal presence. The lynka’s sharp eyes can see through the thickest snowstorms and torrential rain, making it an exceptional companion for those navigating in inclement weather. While it is a skilled hunter in the wild, the lynka is often kept as a pet, due to its desirable temperament. It possesses minor magical abilities, including the power to summon small bursts of icy wind, which can be used to cool down hot drinks or soothe injuries. Additionally, it can freeze small puddles of water, creating little patches of ice that it often uses to entertain itself. The lynka is highly valued for its companionship, both as a guardian and a source of warmth during harsh winters.

This plant thrives where the world stays damp and generous, along riverbanks and rich soil that holds water, a plain-looking plant until the light hits it and you see the rounded silver leaves with soft gray speckling like a cloudy moon. Up close it carries a sweet scent that clings to your fingers, and the leaves dry easily, ready to be brewed into a sweet and earthy tea or inhaled in a careful pinch, the kind of warmth that loosens a tight chest and takes the sharp edges off the day without turning you into a ghost of yourself.

Most people use it carefully. Too much can leave you heavy-lidded and slow, and the sweetest calm can turn into fog if you treat it like a dare instead of a tool.

Temperament: Elusive, highly intelligent, perplexing

Description: The morrclaw is the kind of creature that cannot be tracked so much as encountered, a black-feathered bird with an oil-slick iridescence that flashes green, violet, and midnight-blue when it turns in the light, and it can appear anywhere a story can happen: roadside stones, rooftops, forest boughs, ship rails, the forest, the mountains, market awnings, even the rim of a well like it owns the concept of depth. It is highly intelligent, unsettlingly observant, and behaves like a roaming test with wings, approaching travelers to pose a riddle that sounds simple until it’s lodged in your teeth, watching not just for the answer but for the honesty behind it. Those who respond well, clever or sincere, sometimes both, may be rewarded with a single feather offered like a pen at a contract table, and the feather holds unpredictable magic that stays dormant until it draws blood, at which point it burns to ash and releases its effect in a rush that can save a life or change the weather, granting anything from healing or protection to concealment, misdirection, or a sudden storm that arrives like a slammed door. No two feathers are reliably the same, and the old belief is that the Morrclaw’s “gift” is shaped by the riddle you were given and what you revealed in answering, which is why the wisest travelers treat it less like loot and more like a favor, because it remembers faces, it dislikes attempts to trick it, and it does not always give twice.

Temperament: Docile, loyal, gentle by nature.

Description: A rare farmland breed of an all-white cow and bull with broad shoulders, heavy bones, and a faintly opalescent sheen along the muzzle and ears, as if moonlight once got trapped in the hair and never fully left. They are gentle with familiar hands and stubborn with strangers, and when the herd is threatened they do not bolt, they lock together shoulder-to-shoulder and begin a low, vibrating rumble that can be felt through fenceposts and soil like a warning traveling ahead of the danger. That rumble is their gift, a brief field of steadiness that blunts panic and muddles deceit, making it harder for predators or people to move unseen or create convincing illusions while the herd stands its ground. With their glossy black horns present on both cows and bulls, the oathudders are forces to be reckoned with. Their milk is alchemically potent even before any mage’s magic touches it, used to brew draughts of clarity and courage, and their rendered tallow makes an exceptional base for enchanted salves, enhancing their effectiveness. Horn shavings and dried blood are both harvestable reagents, prized for being able to write with ink that can only be revealed with a song that was hummed while it was being written. Farmers treat an Oathudder herd like living infrastructure, because a pasture guarded by that rumble is a pasture that refuses to be quietly taken.

Paperwasps are a narrow-waisted wasp that nests under awnings, eaves, barns, and the dry lips of roof gutters, building its comb from whatever the city sheds, receipts, posters, torn letters, old notices, even the corner of a love note someone ripped up and thought was gone. The nest looks like layered parchment lacquered with spit and stubbornness, and if you get close you can sometimes see half-words and ink-strokes trapped in the walls like fossils, little evidence the city didn’t mean to keep. Paperwasps aren’t aggressive unless you grab at their archive, but they will defend it with theatrical fury, dive-bombing intruders and leaving sharp welts that itch like guilt. Apothecaries, archivists, and bookbinders prize abandoned combs, pulping them into a pale, sticky paste used to mend torn pages and repair book spines, because it dries flexible instead of brittle. Anyone with secrets learns to hate the species on principle, since paper left near a nest has a habit of going missing.

A hardy farmland legume grown in tidy rows after heavier crops, prized less for glamour than for the quiet way it repairs tired earth, its roots knotting with soil-friendly bacteria that return richness to fields that have been worked too hard. The plant is squat and stubborn, with small pale blossoms and pods that dry firm in the sun, and rural families harvest it by the sackful because the beans keep well, cook down thick, and turn into the kind of meal that makes a body feel steadier from the inside out. Eaten warm, especially in porridge or stew, ploughbeans are said to ‘put boards back in your bones,’ granting a brief, reliable surge of constitution that helps with long workdays, cold weather, and recovery after illness, though too many at once can leave the stomach heavy and the limbs pleasantly sluggish. Farmers rotate ploughbean through their fields the way they rotate hope, not flashy, not fast, but dependable enough that whole regions credit it with keeping both soil and people from giving out.

Promiseroses are low, purple-flowering shrubs with matte green leaves, thornless stems, and soft layered blossoms that are not true roses, though they earned the name for their cupped, velvety petals and delicate summer fragrance. They thrive best in the heat of summer, when healthy bushes bloom so heavily they can seem almost swallowed in violet and plum-colored flowers, the petals ranging from dusky lavender to rich wine-dark purple with paler throats at the center. Promiseroses grow as separate male and female bushes. Male bushes are common, vigorous, and easy to cultivate, producing only flowers and later the seeds from which all future plants are grown. Female bushes are exceedingly rare and difficult to raise, since a female can only ever be produced from a seed borne by a male bush and cannot be dependably propagated any other way. Even when a female bush is successfully grown, not all of its flowers go on to become Whisperseed Pods (see Whisperseed Pods). Most simply fade and wither like ordinary spent blossoms, while only some begin to harden and draw inward into the clustered brown pods they are known for producing. Because of this, growers do not harvest the blossoms from female bushes until it is clear which flowers will never develop into pods, and only those spent blooms are gathered. This makes Promiseroses prized less for any magic of their own, of which they have none, and more for the patience they demand: male bushes for their beauty and abundance, and female bushes for the rare uncertain promise hidden among their stunning summer flowers.

Remembrance is an illegal deep red, bulbous mushroom found on the dead bodies of those which consume it. In the wild it is found in the Marrows. However it is mainly found and farmed in the farmlands. In small doses it can be brewed into potions that increase memory recall and intelligence, often purchased by upper class students and apprentices seeking a boost for their education. In larger doses it brings back pleasant memories of the past, luring users into a calm and nostalgic state of mind. It has been growing in popularity as an addictive drug among deviants and variants as it can bring back pleasant memories of those long dead. Overuse can lead to the victim slipping into a state of remembrance so deep they pass from neglecting their own needs, causing the mushroom to sprout from their corpse. It is farmed by feeding the mushroom to small creatures such as mice, chickens, and more.

[source: shy]

Saltwort leaf is a low, hardy plant with dull blue-green leaves that look sprinkled in salt and are nearly impossible to break, easy to recognize and avoid. They are considered weeds and invasive pests, able to thrive in any environment from growing through cracks in stone to even barren soil. If you manage to break one between your fingers, it releases a sharp, metallic scent like rain on iron. To most animals and people it’s a known mistake if ingested: not deadly, but miserable, leaving the mouth numb, the stomach turning, and the head swimming with strange, bright thoughts for a few hours, so everyone learns to leave it alone. Herbalists can harvest it and use it as a numbing salve when ground into a paste with the proper ingredients, or in high quantity, it can be used to empty the stomach in the event of deadly poison being ingested.

Sharpglis is a luminous wildflower whose petals are cool and smooth to the touch, almost appearing to be encased in glass. These petals, once harvested, can be left to dry and, upon breaking, dissolve into a fine shimmering powder that is coveted by many for its ability to enliven the world around you, as well as being floated as an aphrodisiac. Alchemists use it as a way to enhance sensory perception potions, but it has also found a home as an inhaled or ingested stimulant drug under the name "Sharp". Its high is crisply stimulating, and it is chemically addictive; it has become particularly popular amongst suppressed organics as a temporary way to lift the flatness of their world and sharpen it into focus.

Temperament: Content and docile until nests are approached, fiercely protective of their eggs.

Description: The shimmer hen is a plump farmland hen with feathers that catch sunlight like brushed gold, shimmering along the breast and wing edges as it struts through dust and clover with the calm confidence of a creature that has never once considered existential dread. Most of the year it is content and docile, easily handled and happy to be bribed with grain, but when its nesting space is approached the temperament turns fierce, the bird becoming a compact storm of wings and righteous fury that will defend its eggs with startling bravery. The eggs are a coveted rural luxury, rumored to grant increased advantage for a short time when swallowed raw, a trick favored by outriders, hunters, and anyone about to attempt something they’d rather not fail, though the taste is notoriously rich and leaves the throat feeling faintly warm. Even more prized are the shells, which hold raw magical residue, and when dried and ground they serve as a potent booster in salves and tinctures, lending a sharper effect to healing blends and making protective mixtures set faster and last longer, which is why farmers guard shimmer hen nests like they’re tiny vaults with beaks.

Shroud Moss grows in lush, shaded places along flowing freshwater where the air stays damp and the stones never quite warm, a soft silvery mat that looks innocent until you touch it and realize it’s holding heat. It clings to river-rock and roots near the bank, cool on the surface but strangely warm within, and when gathered and dried it keeps that gift, trapping body warmth close when worn under layers or laid beneath a bedroll. Outdoorsfolk swear by it in winter, turning biting cold into something survivable.

A cousin of the flax family, silkseed is a food, medicinal and fibre crop, both cultivated and found wild. It has white, cruciform flowers with a dark red center and veining through its petals. It's found naturally in wetland habitats or in crop fields closest to irrigation pumpworks, canals and watermills. While its bast fiber is not notable for spinning into cloth, it is highly prized as strong, body-safe material for sutures that can be soaked in spirits and run across a flame long enough to sterilize without destroying it. But its usefulness doesn't end there, its seeds, when boiled down with water and strained through muslin produce a clear gel-like substance that works wonders as a spreadable carrier for poultices or alone as a lubricant in animal husbandry, midwifery and other…extracurricular activities. These spent seeds are often used to supplement animal feed in birthing season or mashed down into a nutrient dense, toasted and nutty flavored porridge favored by postpartum mothers—becoming the subject many old wives tales that swear it helps recover strength; this same nutritional benefit making it a popular weaning food as well as something feed to the elderly or ill when the heaviness of ploughbeans are too much to handle.

Sometimes called clatterwood or shield wood, this plant grows in large groves most often, is semi invasive, and used to make common household items because of its strength. The outside is a soft silver grey when young, maturing to a darker iron grey as it ages. The inside is hollow and segmented, coloured a muted blue, a colour craftsfolk call skeldblue. Despite its light weight the walls are dense and hard. When a grove sways in the wind, the stalks make a soft resonant clacking sound. 

[source: mikihiko]

Temperament: Mischievous, flighty, playful.

Description: The slip fox is an uncommon but well-known nuisance with a penchant for stealing food and getting into trouble. These foxes are smaller than their normal kin, with dark coats that blend into the night. The slip fox can teleport itself a few feet away as long as no one is looking at it, which is where it derives its name. Even if a farmer catches it breaking into the hen house, one blink and the critter has vanished into the night with a hen in its jaw. While annoying, they're easily spooked and prefer going after trash or carrion. While they can be tamed, they have poor manners and boundless energy that can terrorize unprepared owners. 

[source: shy]

Sluicesilver Vine is a pallid, metallic-silver creeper that only takes root where the city discards itself, sewer seams, drainage culverts, gutter mouths, and the slick black margins beneath refuse chutes, feeding on rot-sweet runoff and mineral grime as if filth is the price of its shine. Its leaves are thin and slick as foil, its stems cold to the touch, and when disturbed, it releases a sharp, clean scent that feels wrong in a place that smells like everything else. Brewed carefully, its dried leaf and sap become the basis of an honesty draught that peels away practiced lies and forces the drinker’s words to match their intent, but the vine itself has an ugly little rule: it recoils from truth the moment it hears it. Spoken plainly in its presence, a true statement makes the leaves curl inward and clamp tight, the silver biting itself shut like a mouth that can’t tolerate being caught, and those who work the sewers learn to use it as a barometer for cowardice, because the vine thrives in waste and flinches at honesty, shiny on the outside, rooted in refuse, and allergic to clean daylight.

Description: Snapsill Cress is a hardy little plant that grows where feet, wheels, and weather have worried openings into stone, wood, packed dirt, plaster, or brick. It favors thresholds, stair edges, wall seams, window ledges, fence lines, road cracks, stable doors, shopfront gaps, and the dry borders of cultivated fields, forming low mats of pale green leaves and tiny bead-like seedpods that look harmless until disturbed. When brushed, stepped near, shaken by vibration, or startled by a sudden change in air pressure, the pods pop in a quick chain of sharp little snaps, scattering peppery seeds across the nearest surface. The sound is not dangerous, but it is excellent at ruining stealth, drawing eyes, and startling animals. The seeds can roll underfoot like grit, catch in hems and cuffs, and release a dry spice-scent that makes some people sneeze if they breathe it too close. Farmers and shopkeepers dislike it for the noise and the mess, but guards, innkeepers, and cautious householders sometimes cultivate thin lines of it near doors or windows as a cheap living alarm. Alchemists dry the seedpods carefully and use the powder in mild alertness draughts, wakefulness salts, and harmless distraction pellets that pop when thrown.

Sunwell Violets are less flower than phenomenon, crystal growths that bloom in places the earth forgot to finish closing, where a crack in stone lets sunlight thread down in thin veils and the cave learns what morning is. They begin as tiny facets like spilled sugar, then build into violet and deep-purple spires that can rise to a person’s height, their faces angular and clean as cut glass, yet warm-lit from within as though they’ve swallowed the sun and are slow-digesting it. By day they drink every stray ray, storing it in their bodies until the chamber seems to hold its breath, and by night they release it in a steady, gentle glow, turning black water into ink-lavender mirror and feeding whole little ecosystems of moss, fungus, and pale-rooted caveplants that would otherwise starve in the dark. Unlike most light-bearing minerals, Sunwell Violets retain their radiance even when a piece is broken free, so long as it continues to receive regular sunlight; carried in pockets, set in lantern housings, or tucked into windowsills, a shard can glow for nights on end after a single bright day.

Temperament: Stubborn, generally docile, rams can get territorial during breeding season.

Description: The tallowback goat is a sturdy, common farmhouse goat bred for hardiness and high-fat milk, most often kept in small herds along the farmlands where it thrives on scrub, hedge leaves, and whatever it can reach with enough determination. Tallowbacks are built plain and practical, thick-shouldered, sure-footed, and notoriously difficult to keep out of pantries, but farmers value them because nearly every part of their care yields something useful. Their milk is rich enough to turn into dense cheeses and cultured creams, and when the fat is rendered and clarified it becomes a clean, stable base for salves and poultices, taking infused herbs and powders well and helping mixtures spread smoothly and keep longer. Apothecaries and alchemists prize tallowback tallow for the same reason, it holds difficult components without ‘fighting’ them, making it an ideal carrier for alchemical reagents and for enchanted compounds alike, a mundane foundation sturdy enough to host magic without being magical on its own. The hide is commonly cured into tough, flexible leather for straps and tack, the horns often ground into grit for grinding grime off of metal materials.

Temperament: Goofy, startle easily, social

Description: Uncommon in the grasslands where lynka ranges brush tumblefang territory, the tumbelynka is a wild-blood hybrid with silvery, gray peppered fur and a partial white mane that never lies flat, as if the wind has been styling it for years. Lean and shepherd-dog sized, it bonds fiercely once it decides you are “pack,” but it has the tumblefang’s dramatic startle reflex, which means it will sprint toward you with joyous loyalty and then immediately panic-roll away if you sneeze, a wagon creaks, or a bird looks at it judgmentally. When it tumbles, it releases a harmless little gust of cold air that frosts the ground in a brief spiral, slick enough to confuse pursuit for a heartbeat but mostly used for play, because tumbelynka adore sliding, spinning, and bowling into tall grass like living snowballs. Most have taken to calling it “giggle-gusts”. They are relentless comedians, and many travelers learn to read their behavior as an early warning for storms and danger, because a tumbelynka will get louder and loopier when weather turns and will plant itself stubbornly in your path or roll in circles around you as if to say, “No, we are not walking into that.” If treated with patience and allowed wide space, a tumbelynka becomes a loyal companion for couriers and scouts, bright-eyed and brave in the moments that matter, and absurd in the moments that keep you human.

While it's proper name is Velveted Halcyon Cerulean Inflorescence, this is rarely used outside of academic texts, widely referred to instead as winterblues. A hardy, indigo flowering plant found across Embrathis, most often thriving in woodland edges and damp shade, and commonly cultivated in courtyards and memorial gardens. Winterblues bloom year-round, remaining vibrant even in subzero temperatures; their stems are tough and fibrous. When cut, the stems weep a pale milky sap that can mildly numb skin and gums on contact; handlers and herbalists often wear gloves when harvesting large bundles. The petals are frequently used as a dye (deep indigo to dusky violet), while dried blossoms are a common alchemical ingredient in calming draughts and animal-settling tinctures. In high concentrations, the scent may attract and overstimulate draconic-adjacent species, causing catnip-like behavior (rolling, rubbing, fixation, territorial lounging).

Whisperseed Pods grow from low, purple-flowering bushes called Promiseroses (see Promiserose) in quiet, isolated places. The bush looks unremarkable until you get close, when you notice the faintest shimmer of sound around it, like the air is remembering what it heard last. When someone touches the flowers or leaves of the female promiserose bush, it may take an imprint of their voice, and when the blossoms die back, five small brown pods emerge together at the end of the stalk, always in a cluster of five, like a careful handprint. Warmed between fingers or held close to the ear, an intact pod releases a soft echo of the last voice it captured, often only a few syllables or a tone-fragment, but distinctive enough to be unmistakable. To store the voice, one must speak into a small crack in the pod. Harvesting is delicate work, because the voice sits in the seam of the pod, and cracking it too sharply can spill the sound into nothing, leaving the pod permanently silent.

Temperament: calm, determined, accepting by nature but not blindly obedient, protective of herd members

Description: A large, muscular bison-like creature that has a soft, brown hair-like coat with a prominent mane on the neck and forehead and horns on both sexes that curve upward while projecting outwards and forward. Originating from the more hospitable areas of the marrows, these well-built browsers are now raised and kept commonly in the farmlands for draught work, textile purposes, and to a lesser extent, consumption. The Wisentoch’s steady, grounded personality and incredible strength lend it well to physical labor, but make no mistake, crossing one is a dangerous gamble; their mass unforgiving and their powerful legs and horns built for fighting. While they are herd animals, they are incredibly tolerant of other herbivores and easily share pasture space with other species with some herders integrating them with herds of meaker-willed creatures as herd guardians. Their wool is naturally prized for its softness, durability and breathability and garments made of wisentoch wool are sought after as a base layer for enchanted padded armors, but isn't magical on its own. The hair gathered from their ears is often used for paint brushes and their long, coarse tail hair is often used in ornaments, fishing lures or braided/twisted into supple yet durable lariats and ropes.