Danny is a member of the Paranormal Mysteries Club – and a, well, Werewolf. Werewolves are a bit different than a lot of folklore where they’re depicted as monsters and vicious killers. Seems like real Werewolves are just…people. People who happen to transform into wolves, that is….

Danny, unlike a lot of Werewolves, struggles to control his transformations. I get the feeling it’s less about ability and more about motivation. I kind of feel like the real issue is that he doesn’t really accept what he is in the first place.

‘PSI’ is one of the departments at the agency. They keep an eye on the Cryptics in their jurisdiction and investigate any Cryptic related shenanigans. All the interns at the agency work within this department.

Werewolves, it seems, aren’t really well liked by other species. It’s partly to do with the fact that they ignore laws about infecting others and do it as much as they want. It’s a little difficult to understand why they’d bother, but it seems like there’s a lot of strife between clans. I guess the fastest way to grow your own numbers is to infect people and bring them into the group. But I can kind of understand why that makes other people dislike them. It seems like it would be better for them to just find ways to work out their differences. But I guess it’s not that easy….

‘Wer’ is the proper way to refer to Werewolves, apparently. It’s just from the Middle High German ‘werwolf’ – wolfman. Ironically, the ‘wer’ part means ‘man’, though. Or maybe it’s not meant to be ironic. Maybe they claimed that part of the word as their label because they wanted to make sure everyone remembers they’re humans too – not some kind of vicious animals.

Lycanthropy – which is another word that means ‘wolfperson,’ though it’s from Greek this time – is the official name of the Werewolf virus. Interestingly, supernatural viruses can’t usually infect other Cryptics. At the very least, not ones with magic running in their veins.

Humans tend to be kind of a ‘blank slate’ since they don’t have magic. That’s what makes them so susceptible to supernatural viruses, and it’s also why they can interbreed with other species more easily than Cryptics can interbreed with each other. Weird.

Samhain – usually pronounced as ‘sow-in’ – is an ancient holiday that begins at sundown on the last day of October and lasts until sunrise. It’s been an important date since ancient times. It coincides with an increase in magic currents across the surface of the earth, which makes it an important date for paranormal creatures. It’s not the only overflow event during the year, though I’m not sure what all the others are.

Changelings are Faeries left in a human household to replace a baby that is spirited away by the Fae. Changelings can range from being an actual child Faerie to being an old Faerie made to look like the human baby it replaces. Oh, sometimes they’re logs. That version of the legend seems particularly cruel. A log is glamoured up to look like a baby, then over time, it appears to sicken and die, leaving the family to assume their child has died of natural causes when the real child is actually alive and well in Faerie.

Crimbils are a type of Faerie – they are left in place of human children and grow up isolated and alone due to their strange, misshapen appearances. They are known to have impressive talent for music, though. They’re a type of Changeling.

A Cait Sidhe (cait shee) is a Faerie creature from Scottish folklore. A Cait Sidhe, or Cat Faerie, is a black cat with a white patch on its chest. Said to feed on the souls of humans (sometimes, specifically, children) Cait Sidhe are thought to be Witches who can transform into a cat nine times during the course of their lives. Hence the idea of cats having nine lives. After the ninth transformation, they are doomed to stay a cat forever! In reality, it seems like they might just be a regular Faerie creature.

Glamour is a magic unique to Faeries. It’s an illusion magic that affects all the senses – meaning that a glamoured object is indistinguishable from whatever it’s glamoured to look like. Faeries use glamour for all sorts of things from changing their own looks to changing the looks of other objects. One reason you should never eat food offered by Faeries is that sometimes it’s actually poisonous mushrooms being made to look like real food. Because…Faeries are jerks, I guess.

Will-o-the-wisps are usually classified as Fae. There are tons of varieties of Faerie lights and wisps though – they range from evil to completely benign. Some lore suggests they could be malicious creatures that feed from life energy in a Vampire-like way.

??????

Faerie Hills or mounds are frequent dwelling places of the Fae. They appear all throughout folklore – there are even stories of entire hills being lifted on pillars at certain times of year so the Fae that live in them can celebrate. They are, of course, very dangerous for humans to enter as terrible things can happen. But that really goes for any Faerie dwelling or Faerie haunt.

Faeries seem to either love plants – or hate them. Faerie banes are plants Faeries absolutely hate – because of this, they can be used as a protection against them. One of the most common is St. John’s wort, which has been used since ancient times for a variety of medicinal purposes. It’s even still used to treat certain things like some types of depression.

A Glastic is a solitary Faerie that alternately likes herding cattle, tending children, and violently murdering any man she encounters. Because those are definitely three hobbies that mesh well. There are several variations, but in nearly all of them she wears a long green dress or skirt to cover goat legs, a cow’s tail, or webbed feet. Glastigs exhibit pretty typical Fae behavior in that even though they can ruthlessly murder people, they can also be very kind.

Many Fae are solitary creatures that sort of lurk about doing their own thing. But there are Faeries that group together and form massive courts. In some lore, the Faerie courts are only loosely organized groups. In others, they are highly organized courts similar to the old royal courts of human society. Two well-known courts are the Seelie and Unseelie. Unseelies are thought of as being evil and Seelies are thought of as being good. In the end, it seems like all Faeries fall into more of a grey area when it comes to morality, though.

Liminal spaces are defined as empty spaces that don’t exist for their own sake. Many things pass through liminal spaces however few things linger there long. Because the barrier between reality and paranormal is thinner, this makes them far more prone to the paranormal.

Ghost roads are a strange phenomenon. They’re also sometimes called Faerie Roads. Basically, they are an ‘other space’ – a space that is not a part of any specific world. Many Cryptics use them to travel around or just hang out in them. They’re really dangerous because they’re not visible to the human eye and most people can’t sense them. So, you can stumble into one completely on accident and you can’t always find your way out again.

Other realms are basically other realms than reality. For example, Faerie and the astral plan are both considered ‘other realms.’ In fact, there are many other realms besides these. However, no one is really sure how many other realms actually exist.

Drifters are creatures that float into Pine Hollow on the currents when they swell during certain times of the year. Many of them get stuck here due to the layout of the town and currents. They’re not evil necessarily, but they are strange and really have no sense of human ethics or morality. So, they just sort of do what they do. In that sense, they can be dangerous for mortals because they don’t understand simple concepts like ‘hey, maybe don’t eat that person just because you’re hungry…’ or whatever.

The Sophia Athenaeum is the world’s largest collection of paranormal research material and literature. It’s basically a huge library, and everything in it is related to the paranormal community. It’s actually Sophia, Bulgaria! It’s so weird thinking that I travel to Europe every single time I walk through that door in the club room. Anyway, Vilos Ioveanu works there along with a few other mysterious people I’ve never met. It’s super creepy and I never see anyone else there. You’d think it would be busier, but I guess not??

The Murder is a café in Pine Hollow that is actually…magical? It’s run by Corvin Beltran’s family of Wizard-brothers. Their café is just a front for the fact that they are a group of supernatural problem solvers and information finders, I guess. They’re well-known throughout the community as people who can help with pretty much anything, I guess. It’s weird imagining Corvin, of all people, being a part of something like that.