Setting details & lists List of mals named mals: agglo amphisbaena (two-headed, snakelike, live in shower heads, not that hard to deal with) anima-locusts anoxienta argonet (talons, nine eyes, armored plate, fist-sized teeth) benibel (eats human corpses) blood-clinger (tentacle) castigator (slimy limbs dripping with acid) chayenas (violet drool, from cheetah to hyena by way of water buffalo and rhinoceros, paralytic bite) chimaera (fire-breathing tail) clothworm copper-gnawer crawler cribba death wyrm demon digester disembodied wight djinn drencher (sopping wet and perfectly capable of dissolving the flesh off his feet and legs if he touched it on his own) eidolon (deep nightmare creature) ekkini eldritch-infested dingo flinger (three-eyed) gelidite (grows over things, killed by piercing core with enchanted fire arrow) glinder (billowing violet-pink cloud) glutinous maggot (can be found in rice pudding for instance; if you put a spoon in them they’ll go boiling up it and get half your fingers to the bone unless you fling it away quick enough, in which case usually they land on a dozen different students in the line and promptly start eating whatever flesh they land on and dividing into new swarms) golem gorger grogler (jelly-like tentacles with thin pink cords, big red knot in the middle, not known for patience or long-term strategy) grue harpy horka (slavers) hissingale (size of a tree, pulsing snaky limbs) hungerhowl incarnated flame isk (molten metal with exoskeleton, lays eggs in furnaces) jangler mite kaiden (deep nightmare creature) kerberoi kvenlik leskit (has twelve feet, hunts in packs, sounds like an angry ostrich) lockleeches (the adult spindly thing comes quietly down at night and pokes an ovipositor into any big clumps of hair, lays an egg inside, and creeps away. A little while later the leech hatches inside its comfy nest, attaches itself to your scalp almost unnoticeably, and starts very gently sucking up your blood and mana while infiltrating further. If you don’t get it out within a week or two, it usually manages to work its way inside the skull, and you’ve got a window of a few days after that before you stop being able to move) lyefly magma slug mallow (lives in tear ducts) manifestation maw-mouth miercels (these self-reproducing construct mals that look rather like wasps the size of my thumb. Their shells are made of a mana-infused metal) mimic (can imitate chairs, for instance) mindworm (infestation symptoms: mysterious and uncharacteristic foreign thoughts inserting themselves at unwanted and unpredictable times) naga nightcrawler nightflyer (hangs on ceiling, glides) numbing scorpion ooze (a glistening black ooze, for instance) pharmeth (deep nightmare creature) pipesucker (drains mana) polyphonic shrieker (tentacles, smells terrible) polyvore preycats pythagoran quattria (four animals squished together, reproduce by splitting in four) radriga rat-worm razorwing red speckled grelspiders rhysolite (dissolves bones) rilkes (their wings making the shrieking bird-noise, dripping blood beneath them like rain) scratcher (knife-fingers, metal) scuttler (round lemur eyes staring at me full of hungry longing, drooling from their mouths full of needle-teeth, gleaming stinger on rear) scuvara (hideous leathery bat wings) shrieker bloom shrike sirenspiders (sound like wind chimes, spin webs, freeze you into paralyzed horror with sirensong and suck your blood) slipslider (sheds skin to escape) soul-eater (a single one has taken out a dozen students in other years, and it’s an extremely bad way to go, complete with dramatic light show (from the soul-eater) and shrieking wails (from the victims)) spikegrubs striga suckerworm (car-sized, lamprey-like) treeks (small constructs) vipersac (can stretch out skinny and long; “hovering already fully inflated over the fourth row of seats like a magenta balloon that someone had Jackson Pollocked with spatters of blue. The blowdart tubes were starting to puff out”; three little eyestalks; goes pale pink before shooting; filled with highly flammable gases) voracitor (all creaking wood and antique bloodstained cast-iron machinery held together with bundles of intestine-like flesh, with long spindly arms and fingers, dozen eyes) wauria (slithering up out of the drain to latch on to our ankles) willanirga yarnbogle zjevarras (deep nightmare creature) unnamed mals: reading assignments that dissolve away your eyeballs mal that disguises itself as raisins the faint blue slick over the surface of the cream a six-armed thing vaguely like the offspring of an octopus and an iguana a horde of little squeaking fleshy things like naked mole rats that appear from under the bed apparently hoping to nibble you to death nameless shadow a shadow-thing that didn't even have a chance to take enough form for you to recognize which variety it was tiny scuttling mals revealed up on the ceiling (probably agglos? but maybe scuttlers) some slithering mess that drops on your head from the ceiling tiles cursed artifacts something that makes a high-pitched shrilling, vaguely birdlike noise something that makes a lower snarling ridiculous cross-breeds in the bestial or hybrid category created when some excessively clever alchemist stuck together two incompatible creatures for fun and profit an eyestalk that comes up from the drains under the table, with a big watery green blob of an eye a handful of small scuttling things that make raspy clicking noises against the floor (definitely not agglos, maybe scuttlers but would be weird not to just call them that then?) ones with glowing eyes ones with drooling jaws ones with glinting metal scavengers that scoot away happily with the remains of dead mals tiny mals that squeak and squirm and hop mysterious cocoon tucked very carefully inside one of your bedsprings, waiting to become an unpleasant surprise vermin-class maleficaria on the shelves among my textbooks by the handful construct mal that can draw spell inscriptions drippy ectoplasmic cloud a vaguely Doberman-sized body with dachshund legs, covered with narrow cone-like spikes that had tiny holes at the tips, which put out some kind of gas mana-eating insects classes of mals: hybrid bestial vermin hydra construct eldritch psychic gaseous amorphous it was the kind of maleficaria that can animate wizard possessions, and it was also the kind of maleficaria that had a corporeal flesh-digesting body of its own—each of which is a significant branching on everyone’s favorite cladogram from Maleficaria StudiesList of enclaves List of spells [el] summon an army of scuvara [el] enslave an entire mob of people to do your bidding floor-washing charm [el] unravel souls start fire protective charm against poison make-and-mend dissolve small mal [el] supervolcano mind-tugging spell water calling trip wire water-spout dust-devil spell [el] raise a dozen incarnate flames incineration spell inner eye lullabye aegis ward sliding-scale spell to conjure magical fire spell for distilling clean water from dirty pulls in a bunch of spare electrons from the environment around you to deliver a good heavy electrical shock a few grooming cantrips—hair-plaiting, a bit of glamour, and a deodorant spell [el] crushing an entire pit’s worth of living victims into pulp mirror enchantment quick cleaning charm basic blunt-force spell we all learn in the second month of Maleficaria Studies animation spell on some rags and a mop timespear slickshield (only useful against oozes) communications spell à la mort simple gifts hymn gwen's meditation bread into cake phase-control enclave-building copying curse throat-soothing charm (on honey) restoring papyrus tanning leather [el] binding a cursed grimoire that would siphon off a bit of mana from every wizard every time they cast one of the spells inside mana amplifier malia-siphon unbreaking sleep spell hypno spell Allumez (flaming weapon) freezing spell binding spell infuse carbon into iron [el] disintegration curse yanker spell Revelatory Light spell refreshment of the spirit perimeter spell (dripped with clay jug) finding spell transport spells (like pneumatic tubes) [el] shrivel up significant parts of a boy’s anatomy into a single agonizingly painful lump fire blast [el] razing an entire city to the ground [el] flaying-and-sorting spell [el] an imperial Roman spell meant to eradicate a host of annoyances that are trying to get at you but are temporarily held back sniffer spell malia-sucking hex dividing earth from stone gwen’s circle healing this fantastic spell she’d got in her languages seminar that allowed you to get behind someone else’s spell and push migraine inducer immobilizing spell scrying artificer’s testing charm trip the next person who comes along hex healing charm (cast on water) levitation contraceptive spells (very unreliable) [el] moat of lava [el] putrefying rot withering spells [el] hurricane [el] orange-purple balefire spheres [el] seventh spell of binding from The Fruitful Vine [el] mummification spell a ward on the back door that zapped us if we tried to go through it alone telekinesis spell tone-keeper spell sweeping spell net spell evocation of refusal (translucent dome roughly seven feet across) honeypot spell amplification spell mindphone