List of Others

This is a list of Others that while mentioned in the Otherverse are not explicated. Some of these classifications may be misapplied and meant to be general while others are far more accurate.

Archetype

Alternatively called an Eidolon is a creation made by summoners that pours the needed spirits and power into the needed shape.<ref>There were books on basic summoning, the making of Others, the creation of an archetype or eidolon, which was a concept or an idea that wouldn’t exist unless summoned, and would pull in all the necessary spirits, power, and whatever to manifest.  More appropriate spirits and more appropriate situations, stronger summoning.   - Excerpt from False Moves 12.7</ref>

Bloody Mary

Descriptor for others that arguably deal with mirrors, woman and vanity.<ref name="BloMar">“Yeah. She’s one of something like nine different entities that are related to the whole ‘Bloody Mary’ urban legend. Even has the name right. All stemming from the same roots: vanity, mirrors, and women.” - Excerpt from Subordination 6.7</ref> Typically an Other that is summened and doesn't exist otherwise.<ref>Others who do not exist without being summoned, such as the typical Bloody Mary, will need to be summoned and held in place for the ritual’s duration. - Excerpt from Famulus, quoted in Bonus Material: Famulus Text</ref>

The urban legend is thought to be based from innocent encounters with nine originating entities, one of which is Mary Frances Troxler.<ref name="BloMar" />

Bloody Marvs are a possibility.

Compiler Error

Weird tech things, very very dangerous things that happen when you mess with things when try to update a Self or Other into a system. Other variants include the Overflow Error and the Resource Error.<ref>In the medium-sized circle, about ten feet across, a chest freezer, old television, and what could have been a computer server rose out of the floor.  They were all gathered together, the freezer left partially open, the television cracked, and the computer server a bit battered.  Within the freezer, dark behind the television screen, and in the gaps of the server, Lucy could see pink, translucent, skinless flesh threaded through with blue and canary yellow wires, periodically with dull illumination, as if a faint, flickering lightbulb had lit up in the recesses.  She could see something curled up within the television, with an exaggerated, outstanding spine that threaded out of the television and into the server, the ridges and points of it exaggerated and tangled up with the blue and yellow wires.  The machine hummed audibly and the organic part of it breathed, a part of the server expanding and contracting, bodily fluids running out of one part to the floor as one gap widened.  A single red light on the server blinked regularly.
[...]
absorbed by a Compiler Error and extruded, brain damaged, into the nearest appliance or container…”

As she walked by the techy Other, the freezer jerked, sliding toward her, and cracked open, fluids bubbling from one corner.  Mrs. Durocher reached across the circle and gave it a full-bodied shove, putting it right back where it had been.
[...]
“This is a Compiler Error.  It results from a failed attempt at transplanting or translating an Other or a Self to a system.  There are different kinds in Alchemy, like Seethes and Boils, and there are other kinds in ritual circles gone wrong, like the Dark Design or Umbrage.  Variants on the Compiler Error include the Overflow Error and the Resource Error.  It is material, feral and corrupts.”
[...]
The fridge thing jerked, then dragged itself forward.  It rose up, bulged with flesh, and popped, a printer or something bulging out the side.  Something that looked like intestine with wire running through it spilled out of it, pooling on the floor.
[...]
The thing loomed, growing, and touched the wall.  Wires behind the wall were ripped out, veins and wires snaking along their length, flesh expanding around the holes that had been left behind.  The chest freezer had opened, and flesh-tainted computer parts were spilling out on a tide of ambiguous, translucent flesh.

It approached Durocher, reaching.

“No,” she told it, with an edge to her voice.

It backed off, approaching students instead.  Durocher remained on stage, unflinching, watching.
[...]
More limbs were circling around the walls, films of skin reaching over windows.  The door- she looked back and saw it was already sealed, a hand growing out of the flesh, pressing against it.

It smelled, now that it was out of the circle.  Like meat that was a little off, like burning, and like there was metal in the air. - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.1</ref>

Conte

Main article: Conte

Can be thought of as predatory stories straining against their chains.

Cuimrech

A type of divine goblin that act as servants for certain gods, leaving around dead animals in the hopes that mortals will notice and start leaving sacrifices.<ref>“…think I’d peg your bunny-ears goblin as a cuimrech,” Liberty was saying.
[...]
“Gods like having servants, and really raw, rough, minor gods used to take these goblin-cousins as servants if they couldn’t get humans. You’d get a lot of them in caves and stuff, building shrines out of bones and whatever. They lurk and hunt and carry a kind of protection from those without Sight, but they’d spend it and lose that protection for a while in order to leave ominous signs and dead animals lying around.”

America added, “Leaving dead animals and ominous bloody signs by doorways to lay the breadcrumbs to lead people to the dark crevice or whatever with a whispering god inside. Ideal situation being that the humans start sacrificing animals to the god or whatever.”

Liberty nodded. “It sounds neanderthal but they still exist, they still do this in rural areas, even today. Numbers get thinner. But there’s always a market for a sniveling, groveling little handservant to the gods. I guess your Carmine found him and put him to work?” - Excerpt from In Absentia 21.2</ref> They can also make shrines to channel divine power.<ref>

“And the nests?” Verona asked.

“I think those were actually shrines. It’s tempting to think that has something to do with where goblins come from, but in this case, it’s just a shrine made to channel a source of divine power into creating more.”- Excerpt from In Absentia 21.2</ref>

Trivia

• the name could mean fetter or chain in gaelic.

Distillation

Alchemy derived creation when internal balances are upset and only the main components persist with everything else tied to their identity falling away.<ref>“For our Others, Gilkey’s in the back.  Shows up a bit.  Distillation.  If you overdo it with some alchemy your inner balances can tilt the wrong way the way a diagram can.  Apparently someone dosed him to try to get him to do something stupid.  The human bits of him, memories, Self, all sloughed away.  Leaving a human-shaped silhouette filled in with cruel poison.” - Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.4</ref>

Dragon

Main article: Dragon

These are (useually) thirty-foot long, fire-breathing lizards.<ref>- Crossed with Silver 19.4</ref>

Dryad

Embodiment of the trees in general or singularly. Connected to Nature and as varied as the trees themselves.<ref>Dryads may feed on other sentiments than the negativity laden scraps, such as connections, and build a human form from that. They typically come about when there is an excess of Nature in an area, and that excess combines with the aforementioned sentiments. Being of Nature, they are often linked to specific sub-facets, and can be unpredictable as a result. One could meet one interested in the sub-facet of breeding and sex, a flighty dryad with prey animal instincts, or they could meet one with a carnivorous, predator mindset, stalking those that invade her territory.- Bestiary [Gnarling]</ref> Most seem to be connected to the tree they inhabit with the environment and power of a place effecting them.<ref>“Uhhh, I won’t name names, because the teachers might have magical ears set out to keep us from dredging up too much of that stuff, but student A asked student B to look after a fragile and really important dryad. Student A’s dad offered access to some places that are warded off to anyone that isn’t from A’s family, if B would complete the job.”

“What made the dryad so special?” Verona asked.

Corbin answered, “The tree was used in the killing of a lot of people, and all of them became strong Others who could sort of practice. But it was a lot of death energies, the tree had its own intelligence and a feminine body that acted separate and she got sick with the death energies. Anyway, that’s beside the point. Student B got a better offer than A’s dad was giving them, and took the dryad and her tree apart for materials and raw power, gave the materials to the rival of A, took the raw power, got a bunch of favors and stuff.” - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.4</ref><ref>The Dryad of Dryad Tree Market nodded. She stretched up, skin like bark, in varying thickness ranging from something that looked as soft as skin to bristling bark where a normal person would have clothes. She stretched easily, body blending into the tree behind her. A whole fairy colony had set up in the branches, like a huge, miniature treehouse. - Excerpt from Let Slip 20.9</ref>

Trivia

• A "tree" is a descriptive term, several unrelated plant species are called "trees" despite not being remotely related; an example of convergent evolution on masse.
• Dryad's are specifically the Nymphs of Oak trees but have become a general term for any tree spirit in public consciousness, further those dryads who had their lives tied to a tree as their Hallow or their physical body were called hamadryads, this term too has been used for different purposes.

Dwarves

Known for their superb crafting Magic Items,<ref name="Mag"/> Others that could be called dwarves can be found throughout the western world.<ref>Goblins of the European countries met and mingled with the little people of the wilderness here, as did a grouping of dwarves.  The ferocious mingled with goblins, and the canny mingled with dwarves.  Another sort of establishment. - Excerpt from Summer Break 13.2</ref> Though usually considered parts of the Faerie Courts.<ref name="Mag">Dwarves are fairy-adjacent Others who tap into elements to create great works, often elementally aligned. - PACT DICE: Elemental
[...]
Dwarves and Formorians are species of fairy and goblin, respectively, from the early ages, who specialize in craftsmanship, on a level that surpasses most in the modern era, sometimes treading into the territory of regularly making Grail-tier items. - PACT DICE: Magic Item</ref>

Trivia

• Though originating in Norse mythology most of the popular conception of dwarfs was formalized by authors like Tolkien and his literary descendants.

Elf

Fae beings that can be considered on the opposite end of the spectrum from fairies, powerful thinkers, schemers, and writers, extremely long lived and often found in the oldest and deepest parts of Fae realms.<ref>“Fae-related, but not a fairy. More… other direction, I would say,” Nina explained. “If small-f fairies are mischief, small thinkers, and temporary, not very prone to writing, Fae are schemers, complex thinkers, and lasting… they can write some wonderful poetry and clever pieces of literature, but often they’ll be distracted making the book pretty instead of making the contents richer. [...] Elves are at the opposite end of the spectrum from the small-f fairies. Deep thinkers, removed, very serious, rooted in the oldest places in the deepest parts of realms, particularly the most remote and intense Fae woodlands, mountains, chasms… [...] They write epics. I am an avid reader, as you can imagine. [...] And even those elven epics can be a little much for me. Take from that what you will. But everyone should read one in their lifetime. I imagine most mortals can only get through one in their lifetime.” - Excerpt from Crossed with Silver 19.13</ref> More Structural than most of their kind.

Fetch

A Fae construct, and thus made with Glamour, that can ape the identity of someone with good accuracy.<ref>Fall 2012, 2nd Incident – Found while in transition between homes (unknown if it was a hotel stay or a stay at a relative’s), a chipped unicorn figurine prompted dreams of increasing realism and depth every time she slept with it nearby.  By the two week mark, she was spending three days in the dream world for every eight hours spent asleep.  A ‘laughing prince’ on the other side eventually made a pitch, inviting her to stay with it, promising to send a fetch to be her apparent replacement in her life.  In the midst of the blame and upset over being accused as the source of the fire, Clem wrote a great deal about how she was considering the invitation, overlapping the issues and alienation noted in the next logged entry.  She ultimately refused for reasons not consigned to her journals. - [4.8 Spoilers] Dossiers</ref> Can be constructed as leaves or sticks.<ref>Estrella lunged, with a ferocity that didn’t suit her, shoving Seth against the blue-tinted glass double doors that served as the exit from the east wing.  He banged hard against the glass.

Then she tore him in half.  Seth broke away into murky dust and sticks that were tied into a rough human shape.

“Get back!” Estrella called out.

They backed away from the rolling cloud of dust.
[...]
Durocher moved her arm with enough force that veins stood out on the surface.  The wind rushed down the hall, toward the door, and rolled outside.  The twigs followed.  Estrella leaned against the metal bar that separated the two glass doors.

“There was a curse buried in that Fetch,” Nicolette said. - Excerpt from Break 1</ref>

Their ability to act human is contingent on their creators' own knowledge of human behavior and concomitant ability to 'program' the fetch.<ref>The books had outlined the method, the means of creating a copy of herself to serve a purpose.  Faerie used these sorts of puppets to cover their tracks.  If the glamour was good, a child could be stolen away and a double like this left in their place.  There were tells, and there were issues.  It took a skilled Fae to craft one that had rich emotions and the ability to convince even close family members.  That kind of skill tended to require more years than a human lifetime contained. - Excerpt from Fall Out 14.3</ref>

Fomorion

Isolationist goblin cognoscenti, smiths, and makers of great things that can require goblin materials, much closer to human proportions than other goblins known to live in the deep Warrens alone or in communities.<ref>Famhair

Famhair or fomorian goblins are more human in stature and frame than the common goblin, and eschew many of the clear physical modifications that define common goblinkind - they may have silhouettes that could be mistaken for human but are lumpier.  Often ill-tempered and aggressive toward humans, they favor dark recessed places, tending to occupy wet caves and deep underground lakes more than the Warren mud pits, and work with more solid materials.  They dress simply in robes, tunics, and dresses layered with necklaces or trinkets, but every camp is different and forms its own distinct culture.

Fomorian goblins have a tendency to make items with more permanence and effort behind them than the common goblin does, and may be the creators of famous goblin artifacts and weapons of war.  Remarkable goblins may be brought to them in weapon form or goblin form, to be taken apart and put together into these objects of power.  Lone Fomorian goblins may be retainers of knowledge, identifiers of mysterious things for Others in the deep dark recesses of the world, they may be builders of weapons of mass destruction or fabricators [of] important gates between realms.  Not all are evil or malign, but most are xenophobic and hard to get along with, even for an adventurous goblin.  They especially dislike those pedantic about spelling. - Wildbow on Discord</ref> Have a typical goblin distaste for niceties like spelling, are known for making especially dangerous curses and more.<ref name="DP11"> “Goblins fashion things.  I, as you may know or not know, am very good at putting tricks and trinkets together,” Toadswallow told them.  “Weapons, tools, distractions.  Gremlins dismantle and build mechanical things and work with the mechanical and technological.  Fomorian goblins deep in the Warrens conspire to make cursed things, raiding underground waters and organizing.  The Warrens themselves are dug out of muck, nightsoil, and dreck, supported by goblin will, the trampling of goblin feet helping to beat a trench downward, in a measure equal to the roof above.” - Excerpt from Dash to Pieces 11.11</ref>

Can be seen as Goblin counterparts to dwarves.<ref name="Mag"/>

Grasping

Main article: Grasping

A Grasping is a Collector, or simialar practitioner, who lacked the required power to finish a ritual so instead loses their Self and fuses with their items. Can be seen as a variant of a Trussed.

Ghend

A Ghend is an Other, normally an Echo, that has found a pearls of power or bright emotions in the Ruins and used it to gain power and clarity.<ref>“That’s a ghend,” Zed murmured.  “Random Other, usually an echo, finds things of power in the Ruins.  Pearls of power and bright emotion in the darkest muck… gets power, clarity, and meaning from tending to it like a flower in a place flowers shouldn’t grow.  Jessica mentioned it.”- Excerpt from Wild Abandon 18.z</ref><ref name=g2>The Ruins are a slice of the cosmos where the abstract is processed, reduced down to its constituent elements. When there is something abstract but, for lack of a better word, 'precious', the Ghend (drawn from proto-Indo-European 'to take, seize') are the covetous forces that seek to protect them.

Many Ghend start out as ghosts who are drawn to bright spirits, crystal clear echoes, and the tropes of the incarnate forces of the world. They keep these things, and may nurture them (feeding the living), build protective enclosures, or otherwise attend to them. Through this they draw power from them as a human might warm themselves by the fire. Often the 'fire' in this case will burn away the impurities and abstract, making Ghend gradually more clean, with less rough edges or 'echo' to their echoes. Many are naked (the clothes burned away) with very pale or dark skin with very little dirt or 'mess' on them, or have simple, clean clothing. They are moths that bear their own candleflames. Not especially powerful or influential, some may become merchants or thinking individuals, but they are mostly tracked by Ruins-delvers who know that where a Ghend is seen, their treasure is often hidden close by. - Wildbow on Discord</ref>

Gnarled

Main article: Gnarled

Wooden Fae-adjacent beings that make and sell magic items,<ref>“Dolls? A little helper?” a woman made of what looked like tree knots and only tree knots asked. Fine children’s dolls sat on the arrangement of shelves in front of her, two of them raising hands to wave at Cheryl. Cheryl waved back at one. - Pâté</ref> which can be cursed.<ref>Lastly, fairy and Fae markets and crossroads are a common venue to find magic items for sale, some Others make and sell them as their primary stock and trade, such as Gnarled, who are twisted wooden fae-adjacent craftsmen and craftwomen, or fleshmonglers, who turn flesh and meat into objects in the Warrens field of practice, sometimes powerful ones. Among these, one must be aware, are rapacious Others, including Peddlers (see Rapacious, above), who work through these systems to put cursed or otherwise problematic items out into the world. Caveat emptor. - PACT DICE: Magic Item</ref> Tess Hager's mother was enslaved to one, and described the being pajoritivly as 'little more than a walking curse'.<ref>My mother was traded to a Gnarling as a slave to make things for sale, in a wayside realm where Others hid, somewhere between the Faerie and Earth. She created toys and trinkets, enchanting them, and the Other would curse them, before selling them to the unwitting. The curses would do their work, upending lives and casting people to long torments, collect the misery, and make their way back to the Gnarling’s hands.
[...]
It would be another ten years before she told him that her Gnarling ‘mother’ had thrashed her violently with holly branches after every one of his visits, for wasting the resources and doing work so poor it wouldn’t hold a curse.
[...]
And that Faerie-cousin of a thing, already little more than a walking curse, was done and undone three times over by each curse in turn, until she was unmade. - Excerpt from Bedtime Reading</ref>

Hallow Man

When an Echo or similar ethereal being is placed in a visceral hallow, it can then be sent after a target along with persumably other tasks.<ref>“You’re kind of on our turf, Wye.  Turf we swore to protect.  Musser pinballed a zombie thing in our general direction yesterday, it caused a lot of chaos, brought Witch Hunters into close proximity with innocents,” Avery said.

“Yeah.  Just your bog-standard hallow man.  Echo or wraith in a fleshly vessel.”

“Innocents were put at risk.” - Excerpt from Summer Break 13.5</ref><ref>Her eyes fell on an Other who was standing in traffic.  She had one blue eye, and then two dark brown eyes that overlapped one another.  Her face looked like a blood clot, her hair so matted with blood the point skin stopped and hair began was impossible to tell.  The eyes and one ear were clean and bloodless on that mass, and white teeth were pressed into the vaguely head-shaped bloody mass, some with traces of blood on them, others pristine, approximately where teeth should be, a leering ear-to-ear grin.

Tattered skin caked in clotting blood was indistinguishable from ragged and torn clothing, and the woman stood at a slight angle, leaning just enough to the right that it looked doable, but like a fall in the next moment wasn’t impossible.  There were traces of echo-ness at the edges of her, dark and faint.

A dark, grisly image for a slightly overcast summer afternoon.

And she was staring at Verona.
[...]
[Other presence in chapter] - Excerpt from Summer Break 13.5</ref>

Habiliment

Living outfits empowered by nearly any immaterial power source,<ref name=hab>A Habiliment is an Other that looks like an animated outfit, related to some animated armors and Dullahans. They can be rooted in any number of immaterial forces, such as omen, spirit, Lost, glamour, or echo, and use a strong connection to the outfit to maintain physical form. Oftentimes they are created as servants or assistants that also act as repositories for immaterial matter- a small battery of spirit, omen, Lost stuff, or ectoplasm that is taxed every day it is maintained. They'll see use when the mundane assistance they render and the convenience of having material that can walk itself to wherever it is needed or kept in reserve outweighs the negative of the tax.

Rapacious Habiliments seek to take over the wearer, leeching immaterial essence from that target while controlling them. They are difficult or impossible to remove, especially when their power exceeds the Self of the target. This can be the Halloween mask and cape that resist removal and slowly make the wearer act a certain way, forgetting their past self, or the wedding dress that, when tried on, becomes bloody, and has the would-be bride kill her romantic interest.

The longer a Habiliment is maintained (or maintains itself, in the case of rapacious ones), the more nuanced and developed its personality. Correlations can be drawn to hatched objects.

Depicted, an Ominous Habiliment bids a youth to wear the hat of one of his peers, while a third is depicted on the screen.
[...]
Could be they drain your defenses to the omen. - Wildbow on Discord</ref> with a personality that developes over time.<ref name="sh64">“My dad says I can’t get a familiar until I’m older,” Melody said, scratching Snowdrop. “I have to turn sixteen, then live with it for two years before I seal it with the ritual. [...] Little does he know, I already have one in mind. He’s a gentleman habiliment. [...] He’s an outfit, without the person to occupy it. Walks, does stuff, smokes a pipe and the smoke sorta… it fills in where his head and hands would be. I love the smell of pipe smoke. [...] He’s been looking after me since I was nine. The posh boarding school Corbin and I go to was pretty scary at first, especially when I was younger and half a country away from my parents.” - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.4</ref>

Just as there are outfits for every occasion one could say there are habiliments for every happenstance. Habiliments have several approaches, some are created by practitioners as batteries while others seek out power themselves as predators. Have been known to "wear" people as Jockeys.

Have a similarity to various animated armors, Hatched Objects and the Dullahan.

Known examples

• The Smoking Gent<ref name="sh64"/>
• Two Individuals on The Promenade<ref>A man with a high collar and top hat, with only misty shadow between collar and hat, the shadows suggesting features while evidencing nothing. There was a spider crammed into a business suit, somehow maintaining the angles that made the suit look like a person was inside it, one spidery leg reaching up to hold a bowler hat up roughly where it should be.

- Excerpt from One After Another 10.1</ref> (Speculative)

• Milagro,<ref>The first of the two on the ground floor looked vaguely like an echo, her black hair bleeding out wisps and blurring into itself, as it moved faintly, but was wearing solid clothes, a long black coat, and a good portion of her body was solid.
  [...]
  - Excerpt from Go for the Throat 23.5</ref> The Sable's Agent (Speculative)

Trivia

• Habiliment, a word of French and ultimately Latin origin, are those outfits associated with specific professions. A knight, nurse, nun or newsie for example.
• One can see animated outfits throughout all of fiction.

Havour

Main article: Havour

Things fallacious called super-echoes.

Homonculus

A homunculus is a type of alchemical Other.<ref>I’ve got this one thing that if it works out, might give me a homunculus for a few days.”- Excerpt from Left in the Dust 16.6</ref>

Styan

A type of homunculus that is used to prevent spying and augury, often made from its creator's own blood or flesh.<ref>styans are spying and anti-spying homunculi.  they give lots of false positives, pollute augury. sometimes people make them with their own blood and flesh to make it so anyone trying to track them tracks the styan too.

if you use clairvoyance or something and you see one, your practice can start screwing up and showing more styans, or the same one over and over.  they have mocking and weird faces because some say that helps make the pattern happen.- Excerpt from Left in the Dust 16.2</ref>

Immure

Clay creature that can contain other things, such as elemental or divine, able to create pseudo knots in an area..<ref>She looked properly up.  Not up and at the tree, or up and out at the sky.  Branches criss-crossed above the narrow path.  There was a dark patch in the middle, that she could have dismissed as a bird’s nest if she wasn’t as suspicious as she was.  The more Lucy stared using the Sight, the more the criss-crossing branches seemed to expand, the nest filling up more and more of her vision.

Something was inside that nest, and the more she looked at it, the more that something grew, swelling.  It had arms, legs, and body all curled up around one another, and a rounded head of roughly equal size to the rest of it, oversized.  It looked like crude, slapped-together clay in a rough baby shape, with bits of shore mud, twigs, and dry grass sticking out, giving it a very ragged silhouette.  Roots and branches stuck out from around it, extending into the foliage.
[...]
This was a thing that twisted the area around it.  It spread itself through environment, it created a snare, and it lurked… she wondered if it was lurking inside a twist of physical space.  Like spitting unchewable, unswallowable gristle into a napkin and then twisting up that napkin into a bulb.  That might be why it had a creeping, fishbowl effect on her field of vision when she stared at it, if that was why her awareness of its influence was so specific to her keeping her gaze around where it was.
[...]
To her Sight, the nest that cradled the thing was festooned with wooden spikes with ribbons tied to the end, and bones scraped down to have sharp edges, and stone blades with the sort of edges that could form if stones were struck together.  The staining was near-black.

The longer she stared, the more it expanded in her vision.  She’d thought at first it was roughly her size but she was getting the sense now that it was much, much bigger.

She started to realize that the width of it and its nest might be enough to take up the entire sky above this patch of path.  When she’d been scaling up the tree, taking flight, the branch had stopped her.

The creature’s mouth opened wider.  That weightless, awful feeling swelled.  Like standing on a bridge above a serious drop, no railing, feeling the lack of solid ground in front of her.  The amount of empty space behind that mouth, even though it didn’t look like that wide a gap- it had that kind of effect.
[...]
“For your edification, yes, it’s spiritual, and elemental, but there is a touch of the divine in it as well.  When deities spill their seed it can pave the way for things like this.  A bit of the life-bearing clay given seed enough for life, but nothing to shape it.  And because it’s divine, and because you’re in its realm…
[...]
The light was starting to shine through the trees again.  There was a cascade of mud with bones in it from the gut of the creature, as Gashwad did enough damage.  It really wasn’t a fighter. - Excerpt from Dash to Pieces 11.7</ref> Correct spelling is a bit hazy.<ref>“The Immure Lucy, Guilherme, and Gashwad faced down yesterday is a consequence of the shrines.  You’re building all the shrines on the one side of the perimeter so far…”
[...]
“Be careful.  Especially since that’s the direction the…”

“Immure.  According to Toadswallow.”

“Immure… right.  I need to look that up.  Is that E-M-?”

“No idea.” - Excerpt from Dash to Pieces 11.9</ref>

Internet Predators

Predatory animals such as lions and bears that live in the internet.<ref>“Raymond found me.  Or one of his apprentices did.  In my search for edgy crap online that I could bring up and show people I found some pretty messed up spaces that had some Others in them.  Group of internet predators was the first.  Literal lions, tigers, bear type predator, mind.  Some randoms online bailed me out.  Then a self-propagating image that started to creep into my everyday life.  Those internet randoms bailed me out again.- Excerpt from Shaking Hands 9.3</ref>

Kitsune

Fox Other that's realated to Oni.<ref>“Kitsune,” Yadira said, laying a hand over her heart.

“I don’t know… what’s the significance of that?” Lucy asked.

“Fox… spirit… thing?” Verona guessed, halting.

“Ayakashi, or Mamono.  Others of a particular stripe, close to the Oni,” Yadira said.  “You really had no idea?” - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.1</ref>

Komainu

Artificial guardian dogs, or stone lions,<ref>Guardian Spirits (Warden) - A text detailing three kinds of guardian - the Stone Lion, the Tutelary Spirit, and two types of animal spirit predisposed to protection, the Dog and Tortoise spirits. Some summoning rituals are included. - Pact Dice: Mile End Books collected</ref> that can be carved individually or as a set.<ref>“I’ve got-” Zachariah started, but his voice wasn’t strong. He held what looked like a keychain, with things that weren’t keys on it. Each of the things was a figurine, about three inches long, carved stone. He rested his wrist on the back of the bench, figurines dangling.

“I see… bookish old man-”

“Tutelary Statue.”

“And lion dog?”

“Komainu.”

“And gargoyle?”

“Grotesque. It’s a gargoyle only if it has a spout.” - Excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.9</ref><ref>of a Specific Line
Others of a consistent appearance, nature, and function will pick the same animals where possible.  This can be preferable to practitioners who wish to know what to expect, but they often have limited opportunities for growth in character or adaptation outside of their comfort zone, and this may lead to less affable Others for those who want friendly companionship or a Casual practitioner-Familiar relationship.  An example of this may be the Komainu, or the ‘stone lion’, a mass-manufactured guardian Other who protects and karmically benefits households.  Most are similar, though they may vary in size and shape, and a male Komainu will have a similar personality to another male Komainu.
[...]
The aforementioned Komainu are often created in matched pairs, and one could pick such a pair as their familiar. - excerpt from Famulus, quoted in Bonus Material: Famulus Text</ref>

Kravyad

Possibly anthropophagus mantid-people based on the single example seen.<ref>It was a woman with a jet black praying mantis’s head with eyes of gold, covered by a hood.  The hands that were visible out of the sleeve were slender, the same dark black.  Each had the fingers and a thumb of a normal hand, and four fingers that curled toward the back of the hand, with a scythelike claw where the thumb would be.  The sleeve had a bit of metal sewn into it that let the claw jut through without cutting cloth.
[...]
Kravyad, if she remembered correctly, ate the raw flesh of humans. - Excerpt from Pate</ref>

Trivia

• The name itself descends from a sanskrit term that can mean flesh-eater, whether a man-eating tiger, a flame, or some monster.

Lamia

Mentioned as a possibility by a relatively ignorant Revenant, actual specifics are unknown.<ref> - Excerpt from Mala Fide 10.2</ref>

Lockhorn

A fail state case where a long-term acrimonious hard possession has been fought so long that the body starts the Self, Soul and other important body parts give way creating a lamentable condition.<ref>The Lockhorn or Lockup, named for deer that entangle their antlers, was once mistaken for a subtype of horror, derived from cases of body theft, body swapping, divisions of self. However, it has been proven to be something else. In cases where internal struggle of multiple individuals over a single body is prolonged enough or enough of a stalemate, any willingness to compromise can be the single crack that turns a struggle into a loss, and when two individuals find themselves at that point, the struggle can exceed the blueprints of Soul and the bounds of logic and reason. What results is a being that is actively and continuously tearing themselves apart- using hands and teeth, and any other natural weapons that manifest from the now-ill defined form. The end result is berserk, may have some limited capabilities residual from its once-independent identities, and it is very dangerous and very volatile.

Lesser Lockhorns are a briefly lived Other that doesn't carry the process out very far- there isn't much time for Soul to break down, and most power is spent on the internal struggle. They remain berserk and volatile, but if bound, sealed away, or warded off, they tend to die in minutes, hours or days, literally tearing one another apart as they share a body and its resources.

```In cases where the individual is fully or partially restored in the midst of transforming between Selves, where there is some other means of ongoing restoration (such as a demesne both forms have access to), or any number of other linked rituals (common enough to various rapacious and hollow practices that could become Lockhorns), the struggle can become nigh-eternal, and the Soul fully breaks down, sense of scale can distort, and they can get big and unwieldy. These are Greater Lockhorns.

The true volatility of the Lockhorn is that any engagement with it risks tipping that ongoing internal balance. If damage done to it is enough to hand the victory to one side in the conflict, what invariably results is that the other side wins, immediately or very quickly tilting that way, and it remains soulless, flexible in form (often with extraneous teeth and limbs), with all the latent capabilities of both sides, and its berserk nature turns it against the nearest target- its effective and frequently unwitting rescuer. - Wildbow on Discord.</ref>

Mimeisthai

Main article: Bugge

Mimeisthai are a type of emergent ritual that forms out of patterns created by innocents.<ref>“You might be thinking of Anima Hysteria or something like that.  But Mimeisthai[sic] would be my guess,” Reid rasped.  “Imitated thing.  Like a fancy, or an urban legend.  Humans draw a lot of stupid things, come up with random ideas.  Emergent rituals- do you know emergent rituals?”

“No.”

“Easiest to think of them as rituals innocents create by accident.  A large group of civilians repeat the same action or develop a pattern.  Urban legend takes hold and gets cemented in.  Innocents can’t practice but a million innocents doing the same thing can have meaning.  Usually has to be isolated.  City architecture can be that.  Schoolkids take to drawing the same thing, like some angular S, and it picks up steam, is niche enough and popular enough to start appearing in places it wasn’t drawn.  Some say that there’s hundreds that appear every day, but they’re all short-lived, too unintelligent to maintain or conserve power.  On occasion one finds a power source or gets associated with an event like a sensational murder, gets big enough to take over a town, occupy people’s thoughts, twist the aesthetic.  Practitioners like my family have to step in.”
[...]
“I don’t think he’s exactly that.  A Mimeisthai, a practice relevant meme, it’s like that, but focuses in on a singular point.  An accidental ritual that concentrates all power and creates the supporting architecture to create something like… well, that.”
[...]
Reid Musser wasn’t wrong.  One game designer and two different artists had coincidentally released images for a stylized face that resembled one another so closely that audiences were deeply confused about the origin.  The discussions had taken hold in comic communities, in question and answer sessions where many had recognized the face, an impossible question to stump even experts.  Faceful had manifested out of spirit and sentiment as a result. - Excerpt from Break 3</ref> In roughly the same basic typing as Bugges and related entity's that interact with information.<ref>“For your talents.  As a scrivener, you work with fancies, mimeisthais, bugges, buggane, and a variety of Others who confound and poison information.” - Excerpt from Fall Out 14.z</ref><ref>“Much like Turtle Queen, but it doesn’t spread, it’s a single entity that grows, feeding into itself instead of infecting and converting. Which isn’t to say they don’t pull in the weak minded,” Miss said.
[...]
Verona chimed in, happy to have something to latch onto and sink her teeth into. “Think giant lizards or monkeys that trample cities, but take the animal out of it and replace that part of them with really good branding, imagery, or symbols. Oh, and when you pop them, they can explode into hundreds of Bugges- like mini Turtle Queens. Or baby versions of themselves, which can grow up to be full-on Mimeisthais.”

“How in the blackest hell is any city still standing?” Matthew asked. “The shit we deal with.”

“They tend to have enough weight that they have depressions, which we’ve talked about a lot. Pushing the fabric of things down beneath them so they’re constanly in a crater that fills up with appropriate power and spirits and whatever. Basically altered reality all around them. Which is good, in a way, because it helps shield them against Innocent attention, take a chunk out of things before sealing it around themselves, becoming a pocket realm or whatever. But also bad because they’re powerful in those spaces. You know, obviously, stands to reason, right?” - Excerpt from Loose Ends E.3</ref>

Known Examples

• Faceful
• Januray March

Moonstruck

Creatures tied to insanity the moon and thus also to tides.<ref>

Catherine was forced to establish a careful relationship with a Bedlam Belle, otherwise known as a Moonstruck or the unsavory term Lunatic, in 1690.  Infected with contagious madness that could spread if conditions were met, the Belle was prone to disturbing the construction of levies, dams, and bridges.  As her influence spread across their small town, she bid others to do the same, and had some effects on reality.  Catherine lacked the knowledge to bind the Belle, got little help from Other and practitioner, and could not convince the Belle to be bound, nor could she slay the girl that had been taken in by the church, using its protection.  The familiar relationship was a compromise, and Catherine bound the Belle to herself, in a proportionate dynamic.

Catherine’s life from that point on was an ordeal, as the Belle jockeyed with her for power in their dynamic.  She moved inland, which distressed the Belle and turned it hostile, and whenever it rained or if she spent too long looking into water, her own sanity would slip.  With her passing of pneumonia at 46, the Belle was freed, and bid three families to drown themselves before passing herself, as a carriage was driven off a bridge and she died in the crash. - excerpt from Famulus, quoted in Bonus Material: Famulus Text</ref>

Navigator

Living practice.<ref> Pact Dice Bestiary: Navigator</ref><ref>“Meh. If you asked around you’d probably hear something like how my family’s a bunch of magic janitors. [...] The rest of the time, we travel around, checking the old barriers aren’t growing legs or wearing out, and corking up any warren holes. [...]“Legs, uh… it’s not common, but spirits can get tangled up in barriers. Then you’ve got a smart barrier that’s adapting. If it gets really out of hand you can end up with a magical jailer that’s tied into the perimeter or door, sapient and capable of being tricked, corrupted, or distracted. Happens more if you leave a barrier for a long time or if it has more moving parts, so to speak.” - Excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.6</ref>

Plague Doctor

Little is known about Plague Doctors but are probably linked in some way to Pestilence and therefore Nature.<ref>Nibble and Chloe had a scrap with a plague doctor Other up at the top of Bowdler.  We’ve been treating the roads as the only port of entry for practitioners and potential witch hunters, and forests as the means of approach for Others, but it’s not that simple.  We’re lucky they had a nose for it.”

“Thank you,” Matthew told the ghouls.

“Give the thanks to Chloe,” Nibble said, he sounded surprisingly normal.  “She sniffed it out, thought it was food.” - Excerpt from Shaking Hands 9.2</ref>

Selkies

Those seals that can take human form, usually need lessons about human society first of course.<ref name=":4">Terrence Hegh is not an anecdote drawn from ancient times, but a relatively modern example of the unconventional relationship.  Awakened, Terrence was forbidden from taking a familiar without family approval.  Driven by a fascination with the sea, in part due to his belief that he could reunite with a drowned lover if he could find her body, Terrence met and forged a deal with a Selkie, Graeme.  Every seven days, they met on the shore and mingled blood, each teaching the other one thing.  Functionally, the effect was similar to that of a familiar bond.  Both men carried on this way for some time, slicing their arms and holding the wounds to one another, each answering questions for the other.

Terrence eventually reached the point where he could draw on the Selkie’s power, and took to the water.  Graeme, however, felt he had much more to learn before he could traverse the cities of man, and felt betrayed in the deal.  He found and hid the body of Terrence’s lover, hoping to extort the rest of the information he needed from the young man.  When Terrence found the body, the Selkie guarded it, keeping him from approaching.  Terrence tricked the Selkie, giving him ‘a book with more information than he had shared in all their conversations’, a farmer’s almanac, and told him it had to be kept dry or it would be useless. Stuck with one hand held above water, the Selkie could not swim after Terrence without losing his prize.

Terrence was ultimately interrupted by the Selkie in the midst of the ritual to revive his partner.  Death energies carried him to the edge of death, where he was left suspended, turned into a brine ghoul.  The Selkie, too tired to withstand the onslaught of the loose energies, was slain.  Before he could come to his senses, Terrence devoured the waterlogged corpse of both Selkie and lover, sealing his fate as a lonely undead creature. - excerpt from Famulus, quoted in Bonus Material: Famulus Text</ref>

Shackler

A broad category of rapacious Other, though typically a spirit and with subordinate others that help them, it seeks out a partner of some kind, sometimes though a romantic angle sometimes as a familiar to a practitioner.<ref> There are Others who prey on practitioners in similar manners to how Rapacious practitioners prey on humans. For every mechanism described on these pages, there’s likely an Other who is using it to fight or exploit practice or exploit innocents by similar means. There are Jockeys who seek to be hosted within a practitioner’s hallow and have the tools to turn the tables on the one hosting them, Shacklers seek to be made familiars or other formalized relationships and then trap the individual. Some invade dreams or lay snares, or send items into the world to harm the unwary and then bring the stolen power back. In fact, there are many rapacious practices where the line between a practitioner and Other’s methodology is so fuzzy as to be nonexistent. - PACT DICE: Rapacious</ref> Their partner is essentially grist for the cosmic mill to the realm the shackler serves; the partner will in turn serve their entire lives thus effectively serve the interests and improvement of the specific pocket realm.<ref name="sha1">[Shackler]

Much as the Jockey reflects a troubling side of the Host relationship and possession, the [Shacklers] are Others of a general class, often spirits, who exploit and face off against the bonded relationship.  Some seek marriage, others familiar relationships, and yet others seek familial ties.  By picking those of any importance or power and convincing or forcing them to bond themselves to the Other by some tie or agreement, they can draw that individual to a private or secluded world where they act as a power source.

Most [Shacklers] are Deals-type Others and operate by two very different dichotomies, depending on whether they are seeking their partner or if they have their partner.  The seeking [Shackler] is often personable or a force of personality, offering power, favors, gifts, or subterfuge on the potential partner's behalf, tormenting bullies or acting against unfair parents.  They may offer limited access to a realm as a form of escape.

Once they have their target by one fashion or another, however, they reveal their true strength and influence - often pocket realms that are hard to leave, surrounded by bramble patch mazes, doorways out of a painted world, or some such.  They may have domineering personalities, or a cohort of subordinate Others in a subordinate realm who occupy the new partner with activity enough they can never truly devote themselves to the task of riddling or persevering their way free of the kingdom.  Often the pocket realm will be an estate in decline, reflecting the [Shackler]'s need for the partner; without a partner they lose power, but when they have one, they have their other half and the kingdom starts to flourish. At least, until the child bride grows too old or the Self of the naive young man falters and he falls to madness and frailty before crumbling altogether. - Wildbow on Discord</ref> Can be thought of as almost the reverse of a Demiurge as they don't have control of their Realm, while a Demiurge does; usually having created the realm, while a Shackler could well have been created by a given realm.

The Shackler is the other while the Shackled is their partner who's traped in the deal.

Shadow

Can mean several things including a person or object's shadow either leftover or having achieved independence.<ref>[Raquel]’d summoned an Other, someone’s shadow that had gone its own way, leaving its owner bereft.  The shadow was more red than black now, bleeding from open wounds.
[...]
In an arc toward Raquel.  He pulled on his claim to the knife, the shadow moved to intercept, and between the two attempts at helping, the shadow got the knife through the hand instead of catching it.

And a chainsaw through the middle.  Elise shoved it into his back while it was turned to her, and toward Raquel, who threw herself into the garden just outside some dentist’s or doctor’s office to avoid it.
[...]
Elise kicked the shadow in the rear end, knocking it onto Raquel.
[...]
Raquel, picking herself up, followed by the shadow Other, came to stand by them.  “Does anyone need healing?” - Excerpt from False Moves 12.z</ref>

Solid spirit

The bridge between the conceptual spirits and the largely anthropomorphic Anima.<ref name=ssq1>Anthem had to climb up the snowbank and trudge across snow to approach it.

“Solid spirit,” he called back. “Halfway between spirit and animus.”

“Check it’s not a thinking, feeling living thing?” Lucy asked, standing on her tip-toes to look over the partially collapsed wall of plowed snow.

“Spirits like this rarely are. That’s not me being a prejudiced practitioner either, I’m reasonably sure,” Anthem said, his voice getting quieter as he approached the tree. “You don’t see as many of these as you used to. They’re the appendages of simple gods…”- Excerpt from False Moves 12.z</ref> While presumably able exist without sustenance they don't evidence any particular abilites. <ref>A clawed hand with white flowers growing out of it reached out of the side of the snowbank. Lucy kicked it aside while putting Verona out of the way.

McCauleigh, a step behind, kicked the elbow of the outstretched hand, so it bent the wrong way.

The thing moved, blurring as it did, becoming an indistinct, vaguely human shaped mess of greyish skin and white flecks that blended into darkness and snow. It retreated, over snowbank, the damaged arm fixing itself as it blurred.

Anthem, emerging from the door and noticing the Other, threw a knife.

Pinning the Other to the first tree it got close to. It didn’t look solid, but even so, the knife worked, glowing faintly in the gloom.- Excerpt from False Moves 12.z</ref> Supposedly the cat's-paw of "simple gods".<ref name=ssq1/> Note that while Anima have been called Solid spirits as well they have never been called the only solid spirits.

Strangeling

Main article: Strangeling

An other related to Fae and Nature.<ref>“Would you please check on your baby daughter and make sure a strangeling isn’t knifing her in her crib?”- Excerpt from Wild Abandon 18.c</ref>

Transient Others

Only present under certain conditions, such as during a particular type of weather.<ref>“Transients as in Others who are only present part of the time,” Ken said.  He craned his head, looking, then pointed.  “There.”

Avery made her way over, careful of her every step.

The ‘there’ Ken had pointed out was a mining pick, embedded in the dirt.  The grass had flattened into a vaguely human silhouette.

“These were men by mist.  Miners, by the looks of them.  There are others, John said, that only exist by dust storm, or by rainfall.  They appear for short times, then go, carrying their collected coin with them.  Some work for coin.  Some romance.  Some raid, pirate, or bedevil, like these did.  All move on when the weather does, heading to their next location of choice, if they’re capable of moving.”- Excerpt from Shaking Hands 9.3</ref>

Typhlotic Other

Main article: Typhlotic

Often found in the Ruins eaters of echoes.<ref>There were nearby typhlotic Others, the eyeless Ruins-dwellers - Excerpt from Let Slip 20.b</ref>

Unicorn

Very dangerous, more so then just being a gigantic wild horse with a horn that could easily gore people.<ref>“And I want a unicorn,” Kerry said, dead serious.  “I’ll trade you.”

“That’s not an even trade and I’m pretty sure unicorns are actually pretty scary if you ever met one,” Avery said. [...]  “Unicorns are more than horses with horns.”

“They are, and she’s right,” Zed said, over the laptop, startling Avery.  “Very scary in reality.”
[...]
“I like how this unicorn thing is being treated so seriously,” Sheridan said. - Excerpt from Shaking Hands 9.3</ref> Still beloved by children of course.<ref>“When I was four I realized that Mrs. Morrow was fond of me, and our father wanted something from her.  I drew her a picture.  When she asked me to describe it and explain what I drew, I pulled myself up onto the chair next to her and put the picture in our laps.  Then, as the conversation continued, I sat, good as gold, my head leaning against her arm.  Our father never told me I did a good job, but I distinctly remember a unicorn ride afterward.  Might be the closest I ever got.”

“I do think he told me.  That you did a good job.  Not in so many words, but our father never used so many words.”

Fernanda shifted her posture, hands clasped behind her back, shifting her weight behind her foot.  She hated that she cared enough to want to know more.  She didn’t know what to say, so she offered him an airy, “I wanted so badly to ride on that unicorn alone, but I was obviously too small.  Our father made the maid ride with me.” - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.z</ref>

Urban Legend

A often abused classification accurately applied to sapient motile stories that perpetuate and cultivate themselves.<ref>Practitioners often confuse urban legends and bugges, and they were once classified as the same thing, before distinctions were drawn.  An urban legend is simply a story that gets powerful enough, until it becomes reality.  The Bugge is a symbol, not a story, that finds traction without having the roots to anything concrete or identifiable.  A static charge without a means of being grounded, building up in intensity.  The Turtle Queen is the latter at heart, but being an urban legend too doesn’t hurt matters.
[...]
[Countdown Cassandra] was an urban legend, a story passed around by way of word of mouth.  She could track that and encourage or strangle it.
[...]
The Driscolls were historians, students of patterns that extended across cities and events.  They were among those who were better at dealing with urban legends and Bugges. - Excerpt from Left in the Dust 16.z</ref>

Visage

A mobile predatory face, the only example seen so far is Drowne, can impose features of their face on surfaces including people, different specimens doubtlessly have different abilities.<ref name=":0">giving the Visage Drowne the space to sit down.
[...]
Drowne had lived a long time as just the face.  A parasitic, slimelike mass of face that attached itself to others, or polluted a place, the knots and lines in wood grain twisting until it resembled his stretched-out face.  Anger and passion had boiled up, at times, sufficient for Drowne to flood a building, not with water, but with roiling flesh and repeated elements of his face, crawling up from basement, through the house’s walls, to attack the house’s resident.  He’d haunted the descendants of that original family, acting the very first moment they showed signs of inheriting their parent’s ugliness, and he’d protected his love, and his love’s descendants.  He’d worked out the rules to how these things worked, making it a game, always providing a chance to figure out his history, unravel what he was, and stop him.  Sometimes it worked and he was driven back, reduced to a fist-sized mass of flesh with a face on it, creeping into a crack in the wall, but it was fair. - Excerpt from False Moves 12.z</ref> Might be rooted in the Self given the importance of face in identity.

Wishmaster

A larger category of Others that includes examples such as Envoys.<ref name=":10">Wishmasters are an umbrella category of Other that, like Envoys, give great wishes, sometimes for a price. They are less pinned to the idea of a specific incarnation and may grant a greater variety of wishes, and may draw power from any one of a variety of sources, including Fae, divine, or spiritual. Envoys essentially fall under this broader umbrella, but it should be noted that there are a wealth of Others with similar methodology that aren’t specifically Envoys. Just remember that as great as the wish may be, these things aren’t free, and there’s usually some angle at play. - Pact Dice Bestiary: Envoy</ref>

Wisp

A particular type of spirit that's been concentrated to a point, briefly lived but strong they can be made to stay around longer.<ref>“The how is simple.  A lot of lesser Others caught.  Brainless spirits, echoes, and things, lashed to wards or turned into wisps with a void around them they felt compelled to fill.”

“[...]  Wisps are a form of spirit.  Concentrated and drawn to a point.  Briefly lived but strong.  Some places and things concentrate them.”

Avery thought of the group thing with Zachariah.  “Statues?”

“And shrines and natural phenomena.  But a spirit wants to persist.  The circles I would use to form the wisp would create and seal the void, making it part of the wisp.  I would make it so it could only be filled with one thing.  A specific arrangement of things.  Sometimes dust, sometimes branches, and sometimes spiderwebs.  Given time, the dust would gather and concentrate until it was like stone.  The spiderwebs would disappear but the memory of them would remain.”

“That sounds like a lot of work.”

“I made a means of collecting spirits small and immaterial enough, and I arranged it so they would be concentrated into wisps without my being there.  Send them out so they would stop just beyond Kennet’s borders.  They would turn away the people who could find them, or outsiders, or cloud scrying attempts.  Each ward a little push for a person, a bit of resistance for an outsider, a speck of dust in the sight of a scryer.” - Excerpt from Back Away 5.4</ref>

References

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