THE BESTIARY HALL
Supplies for this class: everything this class asks you to gather, by level, lives on the Bestiary supplies page.
Class SuppliesVisit Professor Rookmere's OfficeThe Bestiary Archive
Welcome to the Bestiary Hall. I am Professor Sable Rookmere, and I keep this school's creature records — every beast and being that people have set down in earnest as true of the world, from the lion of the old beast-books to a being born in the newspapers in your own lifetime.
This class studies the creatures themselves, one being at a time: what each being is, when and where it was first told of, the tales told of it, the sightings people reported, the superstitions that gathered around it, what it actually is, why it is still with us — and its pictures, followed through history from the first copied drawings to the photograph. The records are how we know all of that, and this hall keeps them all: chronicles, trial reports, ships' logs, letters, and — on one shelf among them — the medieval bestiaries, the old beast-books this class is named for. Lesson by lesson you will write the entries of a bestiary of your own — and at the end of the class, your entries and the school's will stand between the same covers.
The class is for everyone, of any age, who has ever wondered where a dragon came from — not the dragon, but the idea of the dragon, which has a birthday, a birthplace, and a paper trail. No prior study is needed. Lesson 1 meets the first creature — the lion — and teaches the keeper's marks, T, S, and F, on him, before the small people follow.
A Note from Professor Rookmere
A word before you open the first lesson, because it will save you confusion later: nothing in this hall asks you to believe in anything. It asks you to attend — to each creature carefully, kindly, and with the dates attached. The people in these records were not fools. They were working, as you will work, from the best evidence they had. Judge their evidence as you would want yours judged.
Keep your own bestiary from the first lesson, and keep it honestly. What you cannot observe, write as unobserved. What the record does not say, leave unsaid. A keeper's whole reputation is in those two habits.
The Bestiary
Bestiary Keeper
What You Will Need
Keep at hand:
- A notebook that will become your bestiary
- Pencils, and a pen you like writing with
- A red pencil or red pen, for the correction pass
- A ruler, for ruling your entry pages
- A hand lens or magnifying glass, if your house has one
- Access to a library, or to the sources listed at each lesson's end
For Level One, that is the whole of it: this is a class about creatures, studied through their records, and its supplies are mostly paper. Level Two — the castle road — adds a leather journal for the fair copy, quill and ink, and a field satchel for the observation walk. Both roads, with the keeper's rules, are laid out on the class supplies page.
A Note on Observation
Twice in this class you will be sent to look at the real world: Lesson 15, where you observe a real animal and write its entry twice, and the capstone. The keeper's rules govern both, and they are not negotiable: observe, never collect. No living creature is caught, kept, handled, or harmed for this class, ever. Wild animals are watched from a distance that keeps them calm; domestic animals, with their owner's permission. And what you cannot observe honestly, you write as unobserved — the class's whole discipline, in one line.
Course Learning Objectives
By the end of this class, scholars will be able to:
- Meet any creature the class's way, in six parts — the creature itself, when and where it was first told of, the tales, the reported sightings, what it actually is, and why it is still with us.
- Mark any account, line by line, with the keeper's marks — T for a tale, S for a sighting, F for a fact — and defend each mark.
- Read a creature's map and timeline, and its pictures through history, and say what they can and cannot prove.
- Weigh the records behind a creature — chronicles, trial records, ships' logs, official reports, letters — by who wrote them, for whom, and why.
- Set the tales told of a creature beside the facts of the creature, line by line, without mocking the hands that told them.
- Document a being of their own choosing to the full class standard, in their own bestiary, in their own hand.
The Curriculum
Meeting the creatures, and how we know about them: the lion first — what he is, his tales, his pictures through history — and the keeper's marks, T, S, and F, learned on him; then the small people, whose trails run closest to home — fairies, hidden folk, household helpers, and Paracelsus's elementals — and, last, the made: beings shaped by human hands and knowledge, not born — the golem, the homunculus, and Frankenstein's creature. Six lessons, and your bestiary begun.
The creatures of the land, met in turn: unicorn, griffin, basilisk, manticore, giants, centaurs, wild men, and Bigfoot and the yeti in a lesson of their own — and a final lesson that turns to real animals, observed and written up twice, the tales beside the facts. Nine lessons.
Unit III: Creatures of the Waters
Kraken, mermaids, selkies, kelpies, sea serpents, the lake monsters — Nessie, Champ, and Ogopogo, each lake's file kept apart — and two beings with paperwork from the far side of the world — taught from bishops' histories, ballads, and ships' logs. Seven lessons.
Two dragon traditions kept apart by their records, the skeptical phoenix, the roc, the thunderbird, and the winged peoples — ending with a documented case of two beings merging into one. Six lessons.
Werewolves, vampires in two complete records — the investigations and the literature — the ghouls who crossed a translation to reach Europe, and the zombie: Haiti's zonbi and America's film creature, kept apart on every page. Five lessons, and the heaviest documents in the class.
Ghosts, revenants, the mummy, the banshee, marsh lights, and the poltergeist's modern case files — ending with three beings born in living memory, watched forming in newspapers in real time. Seven lessons, then the capstone — eight in all.
Each unit closes with a quiz, found at the end of its last lesson. The class test waits on the capstone page: The Unfinished Page, where the final entry of your bestiary is a being of your own choosing.
The Bestiary Archive
Every being this class teaches is indexed in the Archive — all one hundred twelve of them, with the lesson where each is met — free to browse whether or not you are taking the class.
