Worldbuilding

In The Measure of a Soul, dæmons are known as souls for two important reasons:

• All of the great worldbuilding in Aramán about souls (that they are the part that goes to the afterlife / walks the Old Path / gets taken by warlock patrons, etc.) now by inference becomes true about dæmons.

• There are demons in Aramán and it’s just too confusing to have another word that’s so similar.

Some general worldbuilding principles of this AU:

• All the Shaped mortals have souls in the form of dæmons, except for the beastfolk, who are different because they were Awakened, not Shaped, according to the CR lore keepers. Instead, the beastfolk's souls / links to Dust are tied to natural phenomena, e.g., Teor to a particular star that his father pointed out to him. Dæmons do not take the form of magical creatures like dragons, only of mundane animals.

• The dogma of the Shaper religion held that the Shapers shaped dæmons for their people, and Omra Awakened soul-ties to nature in the beastfolk. The druids of the Old Path deny this, saying that these have always existed, and that dæmons' forms represent an animal that you were in a past life or that you may become in a future life, and that the soul-ties of the beastfolk have always guided them from one life to the next. (Though of course, just as the Old Path can transform human knights into Hounds of the King, it can transform souls from dæmons to ties to natural phenomena to the vital spark of an animal.)

• Rather than a scar on the back, the Tachonis mark that a soul belongs to them now is a collar, band or tag on a dæmon (or if a beastfolk is soul-tied to a tree or a mountain, a symbol carved into that.)

Thaisha Lloy and Khaluz

Khaluz doesn’t mean anything in particular, but it fits the sound of Rungjani names we’ve heard so far, and I wanted to fit Aabria’s pattern with “Thaisha” being hard to pronounce by the standards of a monolingual English speaker.

Khaluz is a bottlenose dolphin (female, because as noted in His Dark Materials, not everyone has a different-gender dæmon.) I chose this form because:

• Dolphins have a very complex social structure, with pods joining together in mega-groups and splitting again in new configurations. Thaisha is very sociable and seems clearly at ease in a variety of social situations.

• Dolphins are noted for their caring and altruistic behavior. They will defend sick members of the pod from sharks and bring them up to the surface to breathe if they’re too weak. They will even help protect other species, like whales and humans, from sharks. Thaisha is a caring person called to a life of service to the greater good.

• Bottlenose dolphins are always on the move. Many of them migrate long distances, and even those that don’t tend to move around a lot within their home area. They’re not territorial and they change social groups and go with the flow. They’re also very adaptable and live in many places around the world. I think this fits with how much more comfortable Thaisha clearly feels with an active, adventurous lifestyle on the move, rather than settled down in familiar Dol-Makjar the way Hal prefers.

• Dolphins are famously playful, and Thaisha loves to joke and tease, sometimes arguably taking it too far (pour one out for Ingrid Einfasen.)

• Dolphins defend themselves and their pods decisively, even against terrifying threats like sharks, not hesitating to team up against sharks larger than themselves. Bottlenose dolphins have been known to pick fights with other species for no discernible reason. Thaisha is confident, protective, stands her ground, and sometimes lashes out and gets in people’s faces (sometimes understandable and justified, sometimes less so.)

• On a symbolic level, dolphins are associated with saving people. Famously, dolphins have been known to come in after a shipwreck and rescue people. Thaisha’s calling to save the world from the blight of the Barrowdells resonates with that, I think.

Khaluz’s form is obviously not a very convenient one. I think in this AU, most people in Thaisha and Khaluz’s situation just move to a seaside town or take up the sailing life forthwith. However, Thaisha and Khaluz come from a family of master artificers, so they have more options. Khaluz has piercings all down the trailing edges of her dorsal fin, flippers, and tail, and the metal in those is imbued with magic that helps her float in the air. Whenever they are back in Dol-Makjar, Khaluz gets her piercings replaced with freshly charged ones at the Lloy estate.

Occtis Tachonis and Moonbeam

Moonbeam had a pixie-style name, like Thimble, Twig, or Honeysuckle (Thimble named her). I use the past tense because she is no more; she was unravelled during the failed ritual to turn Occtis into a celestial.

Moonbeam took the form of a water deer, which is a very small deer (about half a meter at the shoulder) that lives around rivers and swamps. All of them have fangs instead of antlers that curve down from the snout. I chose this form because:

• Water deer are mostly solitary animals. Occtis, clear introvert, likes to be the only guy awake and reading his little wizard books. Yet despite being solitary, water deer do use alarm calls to warn any other water deer that might be around of approaching predators. Occtis is not exactly warm or affectionate or friendly but he does try to help people around him in his distant, awkward way.

• Water deer live in rivers and swamps so they can disappear among the reeds and remain unseen. Generally Occtis prefers to keep his head down and not be noticed; that was his whole approach to his family’s hostility until he left for the Penteveral.

• In accordance with this, water deer don’t do the loud lowing and roaring that big deer like elk might do, but they do make quieter sounds, to communicate in safer ways.

• However, during breeding season only, water deer do become territorial and aggressive with each other. I think that fits with the way Occtis is very heads-down when it comes to tense and difficult situations… until it comes right down to the really important stuff. He does occasionally snap, like when he snapped at Hannan and when he pulled rank on Gaya Seremai.

• While water deer very much stick to their reedy habitat and stay hidden, they have play behaviors that tend to be triggered by novel stimuli, like experiencing snow for the first time (cute). I thought that was a nice symbol of Occtis’s intense curiosity and nerdy excitement that can break through his otherwise quiet and circumspect nature.

On a symbolic level, water deer are sometimes known as “vampire deer” because of the fangs, which is a fun combination of cute and spooky for Occtis.

Wicander Halovar and Eulalia

Eulalia means “sweetly speaking” or “well-spoken".

Eulalia is a small eggar moth, though up through the beginning of the story of Campaign 4, she has been an eggar moth caterpillar. I chose this form because:

• Eggar moth caterpillars are highly social in a completely non-hierarchical way. Caterpillars laid by different mothers will form social groups together; they do not discriminate by relatedness, and their social groups work as an equal collective rather than a dominance/submission hierarchy. This to me fit with how Wick genuinely tries to be friendly with everyone he meets, no matter how strange, and doesn’t buy into his family’s status or hierarchy in any way.

• Eggar moth caterpillars communicate and collaborate in a very straightforward way: they lay scent trails as they go out from their collective nest looking for food, and if they find food, they lay an extra scent trail on the return trip to reinforce the path. Other caterpillars will smell the reinforced trail and follow it, reinforcing it again if they also find food. They also huddle in the nest together for warmth and protection. Most social animals have elaborate and subtle communication systems to coordinate their groups, but these very straightforward ways felt more suited to Wick.

• There are other caterpillars with similar lifestyles (southern tent caterpillars, processionary moths) but most of them are very hardy and adaptable to the point of being pests / invasive species, and let’s face it, Wick is neither hardy nor adaptable. Small eggar moths depend exclusively on hedgerows, and the destruction of hedgerow habitat has done a number on them. They are very delicate outside their favored environment (and so is Wick.)

• On a more symbolic level, there’s a lot of great stuff to work with for moths. They metamorphose into a winged form, just like Wick did at Hawthorn’s Glade. They fly toward light, as a means of navigation by stars and moon at night, but they get confused by big bright electric lights and end up spiraling toward them to their doom. It passes the vibe check.

Kattigan Vale and Aster

Aster is the name of a pretty purple flower. It also means “star.”

Aster is a wandering albatross. I usually go with a primarily animal behavior based approach to dæmon forms, but for some reason I can’t articulate, Kattigan called to me to use a more cultural-symbolic approach:

• Wandering albatrosses are associated with travel and wanderlust, due to sailors observing them flying for days on end without ever landing in the water or on land. They have been known to circumnavigate the world three times in one year. They don’t have a territory, they don’t have a patch, they have the open road, and they’re always on the move. Kattigan has traveled and wandered a lot and he can’t seem to stay in one place for more than five minutes without getting antsy. The whole concept of “home” seems foreign to him.

• Albatrosses also symbolize loneliness and independence. They fly alone, and they only return to the island of their hatching to mate every other year. Kattigan spends most of his time alone, and is clearly pretty self-sufficient.

• Because of the famous poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, albatrosses are associated with curses, ill luck, and carrying a heavy burden of one’s past. To carry an albatross around one’s neck is to carry a reminder of the mistakes you’ve made. We don’t know what kind of burden Kattigan carries at this point in canon, not exactly, but he definitely has an albatross around his neck.

• Albatrosses also symbolize endurance because of the way they can keep on flying without landing, even in a storm. Kattigan definitely gives the impression of someone who has endured a lot of storms, and will continue to.

• Albatrosses are also associated with a very particular type of loyalty because of the fact that they mate for life and return to the same islands to nest. But of course, they only go to those islands to mate every other year and spend the rest of the time wandering, so it’s a loyalty combined with distance and independence, which I think suits Kattigan really well.