Bonus: Ellenbrin's monster compendium

An excerpt from her notes

The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1970s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real

Previously: A crack monster hunting crew roam the badlands of Palinor, far beyond the safety of city walls, tracking down dangerous beasts that threaten settlements in exchange for coin. They survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the Six Blades (you can read their original storyline, ‘The Creature’, here).

What follows is a transcript from Ellenbrin’s notes on dangerous flora and fauna

Keeping this updated while on the road is an ongoing challenge! Ngarkh keeps teasing me for spending so much time scribbling and sketching. Maybe they’ll appreciate it when something I wrote in this book saves their ass.

Kengto Beast

I’ve been meaning to add an entry on the kengto for a while. We’d heard tales of evolved kengtos but had never had to directly deal with one until the London job. Ordinarily they are carefully farmed and culled before reaching stage four.

The entire strategy with a wild kengto is to deal with it in its larval state, or in one of its earlier forms. Leaving it too late significantly increases the difficulty. The beast’s unique physiology is rapidly adaptive to its surroundings, so strategies for neutralising it will depend entirely on which stage it is at.

All kengto have their own quirks, but commonly observed stages include:

Larval: Small grub, approximately the size of a human forearm. Still dangerous due to toxic residues. A swift axe chop will solve the problem.

Canine-sized reptile: The next stage becomes immediately more deadly, gaining legs, jaws and startling mobility. Still relatively small, the size of a typical household dog. Any bite or claw swipe is fatal within minutes without treatment.

Horse-sized, growing intelligence: Now with six legs and significantly increased strength, the kengto is a formidable physical opponent. Some are more pony-sized, but just as difficult to handle. The kengto’s quills are now fully developed: laced with toxins and able to fire them as projectiles. Apparently this is when their meat is tastiest and most tender, though if not prepared properly it’ll poison an entire wedding party. You’re not going to catch me putting it in my mouth.

Sub-dragon: At this stage the kengto is as large as a boat or caravan. Its middle legs cease to function and begin morphing into what will become wings. At this stage the middle legs are mostly useless and in a semi-raised position.

Mammoth-sized: Now the size of a small building, and membranes are visible stretching between the joints of the middle legs. Despite its size, the kengto’s powerful remaining legs and uniquely clawed feet enable it to climb almost any surface.

Dragon-sized: Now larger than most native fauna, the kengto’s wings become operative at this stage. With new aerial mobility, the kengto becomes a city-level threat. However, it is primarily restricted to gliding, rather than directed flight.

Kebro-sized: Now capable of full flight and twice the height of a three-storey building. At this stage you’re basically screwed, save for a complete military response.

From the canine-scale beast upwards, the kengto properly hates loud noises. Resonant frequencies should be used to disorient, then focus should be on disabling the wings (if present). The kengto will continue fighting until it is beheaded, regardless of injuries. It goes without saying that quill antidotes should be prepared and imbibed prior to battle.

Ngarkh would like me to note here that kengtos are ugly sons of bitches. There, I’ve made the note.

Flitters

Much like the problem that anyone who chooses to pick a fight with me encounters, the biggest challenge when up against flitters is to not be distracted by their startlingly attractive appearance.

A single flitter is harmless. The size of a butterfly, a flitter is a four-winged insect with a natural affinity for magic. This manifests as a hyper-local teleportation ability, hence the name ‘flitter’. At night a flitter can be spotted by the blue energy pockets left behind as it teleports through the air.

(Erik informs me that flitters have been central to portal research, in an attempt to understand and recreate the experiment that led to the Joining in the year 3000)

Problems arise when flitters swarm. Sometimes up to 1,000-strong, a swarm can be devastating as each of the flitters activates their local teleportation repeatedly. An entire field of crops can be decimated in seconds. A building’s core structure can be undermined. If a swarm engulfs a living creature, it will take chunks off it with each teleportation blip, removing limbs and stripping down to the bone in under a minute.

It’s unknown whether this is deliberate aggressive behaviour or a side effect of the flitter’s natural life cycle. That’s not really a consideration when encountering a swarm: the priority is to run.

It’s almost impossible to destroy a swarm of flitters without direct support from a skilled magic wielder, who will need to suppress their teleportation instinct or hold them in place. Once contained, it’s a fairly trivial matter of incinerating the swarm.

Vaen’ka

These were thought extinct for over a century, to the point that they had become a cautionary tale to tell children. On the one hand you had humans making vaen’ka the ultimate bogeyman, coming to take you away in the night and suck your blood. On the other, aen’fa parents would make the plight of the vaen’ka a morality tale about the corrupting desire for power.

Everybody knows that aen’fa can’t wield magic, even if nobody is entirely sure why. Much like humans from Mid-Earth or Max-Earth are unable to gain wielding abilities, aen’fa are also in some way physiologically blocked. The leading explanation for non-Palinese humans is to do with dimensional frequencies being incompatible, which would also explain why wielders from Palinor are unable to tap into their abilities after transiting the other way through the portal to Mid-Earth. It’s all a bit beyond my skillset. This theory has, of course, been extended to aen’fa, with some notable academics suggesting that the entire aen’fa species are from another dimension altogether, stranded on Palinor at some point in the long-distant past.

There’s a certain logic to that, but fuck those guys, because we all know what they’re really saying. The coded message is that aen’fa don’t belong on Palinor, that we’re somehow intruders, that we don’t deserve magic or agency or the same rights afforded to others. It’s a way to use pseudo-history and science to justify the ongoing genocide of our people and shut us out of power.

Anyway.

Vaen’ka were a tribe of aen’fa that emerged from the far south-east. Their unique capability is to extract magic forcibly from others, draining and absorbing it. This gives a vaen’ka the ability to wield magic, but only temporarily. The need to draw from other beings grows over time, so they have to find an increasing number of victims to maintain their abilities.

A quirk of vaen’ka is that they can spread their ability to others through breeding or transfusion. For a time they spread across the continent, but the history books tell of their advance being halted and their entire kind wiped out.

They were thought extinct, until rumours of vaen’ka sightings began a year or two back. We’ve never encountered one — yet. Perhaps if we ever have a job that takes us within spitting distance of Lairn we can have a look around. Every time I mention it, though, Halbad shuts me down. Doesn’t want to discuss it. Ah well.

Little is known these days about how to deal with a vaen’ka. After they were assumed extinct they were also purged from records. I suppose those in power didn’t like aen’fa getting ideas. If we ever encounter one we’ll need to develop strategies on the fly, but I’m pretty certain they’ll include ‘don’t get bitten’.

Sclereshog Undead

These are a real oddity. Originally the creation of an ambitious and short-sighted mage, the undead of Sclereshog came to be as a result of reanimation experiments. Raised from the dead but very much not alive, these creatures did not function independently of some serious spells.

The mage thought he had control over them for that reason, but an aspect he hadn’t entirely considered was their inherent carnal requirements. The Sclereshog undead had no need for food, water or sleep, but they did like to have a lot of sex.

Turns out the offspring of reanimated corpses gain a closer approximation of actual life. Those children developed rapidly and independently of the mage’s control, ultimately turning on him. The undead horde continues to grow in number but keeps largely to itself, shuffling about on the far side of the steppes. Still, if they ever decided to visit civilisation we’d all be in a lot of trouble.

They are remarkably hardy, capable of continuing to fight even when injured to a level that would kill anything else. The removal of the head is necessary to stop one. Alone they’re fairly slow and can be dealt with, but in large numbers would be problematic.

Mer of the Tortaro

Usually keeping to themselves, the Mer-people off the coast of Tortaro have been known to make landfall. On such occasions violence tends to ensue.

The Mer have a latent ability to wield magic in the form of micrology, though they don’t do so in a conscious way or by weaving spells. Instead it is through their voice and song, which has a manipulative effect on the simple minded — or the horny — luring them into the water to their doom.

There is an unusual range of Mer physiology, which affects the balance of the individual’s appearance and abilities. Some are almost entirely fish-like, resembling elongated dolphins more than anything else, and more attuned to water breathing. Those are rarely seen near the coastline. Then there are Mer who could almost pass for human, or aen’fa, possessing legs and arms and mammal-like features. Most Mer exist somewhere in-between, perhaps half-half with a fish tail but a human torso, or vice versa. Some reports talk of even wilder combinations, such as half-Mer-half-koth, but I’ve never seen actual evidence of that. They’re a highly adaptable species no matter how you look at it.

There are two rules when dealing with an unruly Mer: never fight them in water, and always remember your earplugs.

Koth Prime

When a koth hive reaches a certain maturity, there arises the potential for a koth prime to emerge. If you encounter one, run. That was the advice Ngarkh gave me.

Fortunately they rarely venture from the hive, instead staying to defend it from all threats. This means you’re unlikely to ever cross paths with a koth prime unless you’re past the Appilan Wastes and messing about in their territory. Koth don’t tend to live in hives in the same way when settling in city states, which means there’s no potential for a koth prime to manifest.

My understanding is that the individual doesn’t have any choice over the matter, it being a purely biological impulse. The increased size and strength comes with it a cost of a drastically shortened lifespan. Even without direct conflict, a koth prime will usually only live for another ten years, regardless of how old they were at the point of turning.

Dopur

These give even me the creeps.

You know what they call a group of dopur?

A field.

I thought that was a joke when I first heard it, but it’s true.

These are the the hyper-aggressive rugs of the northern steppes. Slow and seemingly harmless, they hunt via stealth, lying in wait for an unsuspecting traveller to walk into what looks like a lush field of grasses. Once you enter a dopur field, you don’t come out again. They hunt in packs, and specialise in surrounding their prey before they’ve even been noticed. There’s a reason the locals don’t ever camp outside in the wild up there.

Dealing with dopur is all about not getting close. You want to use fire or other elemental attacks to take them out from afar. Typical weapons won’t do much, though — total disintegration is required, or they’ll just keep going, like a clump of grass chopped into two.

And above all, don’t get surrounded. In fact, it’s best not to take on dopur unless you are able to get airborne.

Durgon

Highly unusual, this is a dual symbiote monomind creature. Which translates to: two bodies, one brain. The two parts of a durgon are able to operate individually but have complete operational awareness of each other. This makes them superb hunters and it is almost impossible to sneak up on a durgon, because one can always watch out for the other.

Feathered with short limbs, the durgon isn’t able to properly fly but damn can it scuttle. It’s also a professional tunneller, able to dig through solid rock at a ridiculous pace. They will often try to confuse both prey and attackers by acting as two separate creatures and splitting a party or herd.

Also referred to as a southern sea dragon, even though they’re rarely seen in water. You probably have seen them in countless paintings from the east, though.

Deeply poisonous, so prepare ahead of time. Taking them down can be tricky due to their mobility and shared awareness, but that monomind is also their greatest weakness: injure one of the bodies and the other feels it just as acutely. An effective tactic can be to immobilise one, enabling you to focus on the other.

I’ll add some more updates the next time we make camp.

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Thank you for reading!

Well, that was all kinds of fun. Next week I’m travelling so there’s a good chance of no Triverse chapter on Friday. Rather than start a new storyline and leave it hanging, I thought this bonus chapter would be a fun angle. Normal service will resume the other side of the Easter school holidays.

(I’m also going to be returning to the video guides soon, with the next Scrivener instalment, so stay tuned for those)

Last Monday I had the bright idea of doing an AMA — ask me anything — about writing serial fiction. I wouldn’t have dared try it a year or two back, because it would have been absolute crickets and really awkward. Even now, having built up this newsleter, I was nervous about a deathly silence. Turns out I needn’t have worried as tons of great questions and discussions came in from the wider writing community. Being able to do something like that is only possible due to having a newsletter that has been building for several years. If you’re a writer and don’t yet have your own newsletter, start today! Here’s the discussion, which is well worth digging through:

I've been writing serial fiction for 9 years. Ask me anything!

Other stuff I’ve been reading:

• Jacqueline Saville
  writes about maps and the way we internally map a space in Maps of fictional spaces.

• Jenny Homan
  said some nice things about Triverse which obviously got my ego-dar pinging at the top of the latest chapter of her serial Bottled Embers. Jenny describes it as ‘Star Trek meets DBZ’, which is intriguing. I particularly like how Jenny has provided a quick index at the top of the chapter. I like this intro from the first chapter, and will be reading more:

My small bare feet pound the crunchy snow. They are bleeding, again. Wet blood squelches between my toes with each footfall, half-frozen already and leaving behind bright red smears as it crumbles off with the contact. I frown, thinking half-formed curses, as I realize these cuts must be from where I slipped on the rocks on the banks of the stream. That was half a league ago, which means half a league of bloody footprints to enflame the hunting dogs, making them that much faster once they get here.

• I find it almost impossible to write freehand due to having appalling handwriting and being much faster on a keyboard. When typing, I feel like the words are able to keep up with my brain. Freehand feels slow and cumbersome, though that is possibly not always a negative thing if this excellent article from

  T K Hall
  is anything to go by. I’m working with Tim on an upcoming article, which is going to be packed full of interesting bits and bobs.

• Kerry Jane
  put together some useful how to not be a dick tips for direct messages. Specifically about Substack’s latest feature, but applies happily to any corner of the internet. This in particular happened to me a lot when DMs were introduced to Substack:

You are sitting in the comfort of your home, pleasantly minding your own business. Suddenly, there is a knock at the door. When you open the door, the person says “Hey” and then walks away.

What was wrong:

This was a pointless interaction that interrupted your peace.

• It’s been a comics frenzy this month, with new issues of Transformers, Cobra Commander and Void Rivals from the Energon series. This grand experiment continues to be far better than it should, hitting all the nostalgia buttons while managing to do something new and be internally coherent despite being based on toy lines from the 1980s. Very clever adaptation, and I’m excited to see

  Kelly Thompson
  is joining the party soon with Scarlett.

• Having bounced off it years ago due to being an idiot, I returned this month to The Return of the Obra Dinn and played through it with my wife. We managed to solve all the deaths in about 10 hours of play and it was enormously satisfying. Although we completely overlooked the hammock-and-shoe clue and now feel very silly.

• The recent Steam Sale has been fairly cataclysmic for my wallet. I’ve finally succumbed to Baldur’s Gate 3, which could prove disastrous for my productivity generally. Also added to the ridiculous not-yet-played list are The Case of the Golden Idol (which seems to have Obra Dinn vibes), A Highland Song from wonderful Cambridge-based Inkle Studios, Venba, Mediterranea Inferno, The Wreck and The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood. Ostensibly these are games to play on the plane next week, but we’ll see.

That’s enough ramblings. As always, if you can afford to support the newsletter you can hit the button below. On to the behind-the-scenes chapter notes…

Author notes

When I started writing Triverse back in the mists of time (aka 2021), I hand grand intentions to put out bonus chapters every few weeks, or between major storylines. Turns out that wasn’t quite possible, because far from being ‘breaks’ from the hard work of writing the main prose, they actually tend to require more production time due to the novelty factor.

Hence, I could have just stuck with the text for today’s chapter but I really wanted to build a prop. Which is how we ended up with Ellenbrin’s compendium in physical form, complete with sketches and silly commentary.

The creatures mentioned here are a mix of previously established and brand new. We’ve had major storylines based on the kengto and dopur, while some of the others have only been briefly mentioned. I like there being lots of detail in the Triverse world building that exists around the edges, and which may or may not prove to be important. It creates the sense of a living world beyond the borders of the main plot.

So far the story has focused on the city state of Bruglia, which is close to the portal to London. As such we haven’t really seen some of the crazier aspects of Palinor, so these bonus chapters are a fun opportunity.

I hope it made for a fun diversion! Next week is likely to be a break, then I’ll be back for the big conclusion to the current season.