Pale

by Wildbow

Three teenage girls in Kennet, Ontario are recruited by the local supernatural community to investigate the murder of the Carmine Beast — a Judge-level Other whose death created a power vacuum that threatens everything. Lucy fights with faerie swords. Verona dabbles in shadow magic and wants to stop being human. Avery runs the Paths between worlds with a hockey stick. The killer is someone they know. Wildbow's most accessible serial, blending cozy small-town mystery with genuinely unsettling supernatural horror.

42 characters, locations, and items in this world codex.

Characters

• Alexander Belanger — A Blue Heron Institute administrator with future-sight capabilities — part teacher, part gatekeeper, and formerly Charles Abrams' friend before someth
• Alpeana — A Mare — a night hag with filthy hair, pitch-black eyes, and a Scottish accent who tampers with dreams, harvests echoes, and coordinates supernatural
• Avery Kelly — The Second Witch of Kennet — an anxious, queer, homeschooled athlete who runs the Paths between worlds and discovers that the fastest way through fear
• Bluntmunch — Kennet's head goblin — human-sized, muscular, and holding the 'Head' rank in a community where goblin hierarchy is determined by being the biggest, lo
• Charles Abrams — The primary antagonist — a Forsworn practitioner adopted by Kennet's Others as a 'walking trash bin for curses,' whose ability to lie in a world of en
• Chloe — An NDE Ghoul who became undead after overseas trauma — feral, fanged, and fighting to maintain her humanity while her body decides otherwise.
• Crooked Rook — Kennet's liaison and jailor — Miss's close friend who manages bound Others and new community members with the careful authority of someone responsible
• Edith James — The Girl by Candlelight — a complex spirit inhabiting the body of a woman who tried to end her life, whose eyes glow like fire under the Sight and who
• Gashwad — A three-and-a-half-foot goblin scrapper — fiercely independent, perpetually annoyed, and exactly the kind of goblin who makes Toadswallow's leadership
• Guilherme — A seven-foot Summer Fae warrior who mentors Lucy in swordfighting, despises boredom the way mortals despise death, and is exactly the kind of romantic
• John Stiles — The Dog of War — a composite entity made from twenty soldiers who cannot die while war continues, cannot sleep, and carries the weight of every man he
• Louise Bayer — The primary witness to the Carmine Beast's death — a thirty-five-year-old woman dying of diabetes and kidney failure who traded testimony for pain rel
• Lucy Ellingson — The First Witch of Kennet — a Black girl in a small white Canadian town who fights with faerie swords, refuses to be talked down to, and investigates
• Maricica — A Dark Autumn Fae who blinded the Carmine Beast weeks before its murder — an incredible manipulator from the court that steals children and trades in
• Matthew Moss — A Host practitioner who houses a dark spirit and works at a tackle shop — Kennet's friendliest weapon of mass destruction and the girls' most reliable
• Miss — The woman whose face you've never seen — a Lost Echo who orchestrated the recruitment of three teenage girls to solve a murder, because the supernatur
• Nibble — A Couch Ghoul who sustains on TV light the way plants sustain on sun — pale, clawed, and navigating undeath one screen at a time.
• Nicolette Belanger — A practitioner who survived an awareness that causes severe mental breakdown — practicing incarnate methods with omens and curses while managing the p
• Ray Sunshine — A technomancer whose security system uses seven Others based on urban legends — gruff, pragmatic, and maintaining a hidden domain called SunnyDay wher
• Reid Musser — A world-traveling practitioner with nine implements and two familiars — representing the territorial practitioner families who view Kennet's independe
• Sir Toadswallow — A three-foot goblin with a monocle and a title he awarded himself — Kennet's most vulgar teacher, most insincere diplomat, and eventual council leader
• Snowdrop — A nine-year-old Lost Other in an opossum jacket who communicates exclusively in reversed truths — Avery's familiar, aspiring goblin sage, and the seri
• Tashlit — Kennet Found's undercity support — healer, listener, and Verona's backup when the investigation goes underground.
• The Alabaster Doe — One of the four Judges — associated with purity, innocence, and white light, whose domain provides the moral counterweight to the Carmine's blood-soak
• The Carmine Beast — The murdered Judge — a massive red-furred canid who oversaw monsters, blood, and execution across eastern Ontario, whose death at the K-A Arena is the
• The Hungry Choir — A living ritual with fifty singing children and bloody mouths — the strongest Other the girls encounter, and one of the investigation's most terrifyin
• Verona Hayward — The Third Witch of Kennet — an artistic, methodical dabbler who paints watercolors of crime scenes, practices shadow magic in her cluttered bedroom, a
• Zed Sadler — A 'radical' technomancer and Ray Sunshine's apprentice — good-natured, creative, and practicing a style of magic that most traditionalists consider be

Locations

• Blue Heron Institute — A practitioner school offering summer courses in everything from shamanism to faerie court etiquette — where the next generation of magic users learns
• Forest Ribbon Trail — The first Path — a wild forest trail where a Wolf pursues runners and Miss escaped from prolonged binding, where Avery learned that running from somet
• K-A Arena — Kennet's hockey facility — where the Carmine Beast bled out on the outdoor rink ice, staining it crimson and turning a small-town sports venue into a
• Kennet Found — The supernatural undercity — born from the Carmine Beast's accumulated death-power, where knotted locales break normal rules and Miss builds a communi
• Kennet, Ontario — A small Canadian town of five thousand where the gas station closes at eight, everyone knows whose kid is whose, and the supernatural community under
• Sargent Ave Hall — A residential complex where Aware individuals are exploited through reduced-rent arrangements — Bristow's operation, extracting magical services from
• Station Promenade — A structured Path with over two hundred Lost entities — a supernatural train station where movement follows tiled patterns and the color-coded zones d
• The Paths — Reality's junk drawer — spaces between worlds where fragments of discarded realities clump together into navigable routes for Finders brave or despera
• The Ruins — Where spirits and echoes go to die — a devastated Path of constant rain, peeling paint, and rust where necromancers harvest materials from the remnant
• Thunder Bay — The city where Avery ends up — ruled by an elemental Lord and home to a practitioner council that operates at a scale Kennet is still growing into.

Items

• Avery's Hockey Stick — Avery's implement — a hockey stick inscribed with Mars symbols and earth energy runes, because the most Canadian possible weapon is also the most Cana
• Eavesdropper's Earring — Lucy's implement — an earring that enhances hearing and sensory abilities, because a girl who refuses to be talked down to needs to hear everything th
• John's Dog Tags — Two metal tags that can summon a Dog of War — the most understated summoning artifacts in the Otherverse, because soldiers don't carry ornate weapons.
• The Seal of Kennet — The founding compact — the agreement between practitioners and Others that established Kennet's supernatural community as a governed entity with right

View full codex at Simulacra.Ink