WOOOOZNIAK'S ALMANAC

## of the Marginal, the Miserable, and the Miscalibrated

> The in-world edition. The annotated reference edition — with curator's notes on house tie-ins, > the build dials, and trim guidance — lives in the main shelf as Vol 03 — Bestiary.

A Note from the Arch-Mage

Do not look for these creatures in the grand halls or the formal ledgers of the Great Houses. They live in the realm's peripheral vision — glimpsed at the edge of the moor, whispered of by chimney sweeps, heard sneezing in the dark. They are fables with the safety off.

My method is simple. I take a glittering fairytale, follow its own logic until it lands somewhere muddy, sad, or profoundly daft, and I write down the dry moral I find waiting at the bottom. The other compilers on this shelf — the banker, the soldier, the undertaker, the cheese-witch — all do the same thing now, in their own jargon, and pretend they thought of it. Let them. A method that spreads is a method that worked.

Each entry: The Observation · The Moralis · Signpost.

# THE ANCHORS — Three Old Certainties

The Tooth Fairy

Observation. A tradeswoman through and through: thick leather apron, heavy utility belt, her own rusty pliers — the wings a structural afterthought. She does not always wait for a tooth to fall out on its own. She keeps every specimen in a labelled drawer and remembers every child by name, and she is chronically lonely — bound to a trade the whole world relies upon yet is terrified to meet. Moralis. Do necessary, intimate work and the world will both utterly depend on you and actively recoil from you. A revision was proposed (and struck from Addendum the Second) — the Arch-Mage was persuaded, for a season, that she had cornered the market and become a cartel. He has since withdrawn it. He offers no reason. The parish, which leaves a bowl of broth on the step for her and has never once discussed the matter with him, offers no comment either.

The Allergic Werewolf

Observation. When the full moon rises, the moors echo not with terror but with a tragic, violent rhythm — "AWOO—HACHOO—oh, for the love of— AWOOSHTISHOO!" He cannot hunt: every cottage keeps a cat, and the dander is ruinous. He is non-threatening, deeply miserable, and secretly relieved — he never wanted to eat his neighbours anyway. Moralis. The very flaw that disarms your worst self may be the greatest gift you never asked for.

The Liar's Unicorn

Observation. The ancient texts were mistranslated by lesser scholars. The beast is drawn not to the pure of heart but to the realm's most magnificent frauds. It is rare and elusive — most who claim it saw only a flicker of pearlescent white at the eye's corner, the soft clop of unseen hooves, the glow of a spiralled horn that was gone before they turned. It does not gallop; it simply stops not being where it wishes to be, stepping through shadow, mirror, or half-open door with a soft pop and the scent of hay and expensive regret (→ Portals, Vol 05). Yet to one man it shows itself fully and without fail: Lord Percival "Perry" Bastable XXVII. It rests its head in his lap during his boldest lies; its horn glows warm exactly when his deceptions are at their most outrageous; it believes him completely. That is the problem. Origin (the oldest, most contradictory tale). It was not born but made — from the grief of a maiden who believed a silver-tongued man's beautiful lies until he left. From that grief stepped a creature already believing the lie, existing to offer pure, unwavering trust to those whose words least deserve it. Hence the name. Moralis. To be loved entirely for the wrong reason brings no comfort at all — especially when it is the only creature that seems to see you clearly, and likes what it sees. Signpost. Shadows House Bastable; the parish has never agreed on what that signifies, only that something has evidently taken an interest, and that its taste is appalling. It is the one beast that has visibly attached itself to the line; the family's other supernatural hangers-on (a shadow with better credit, a debt-reciting raven, a regret-hound that only sighs) are left to murmur — half-heard gossip the portraits and House Echo repeat, never quite solidifying into canon.

# A BRIEF CATALOGUE OF MINOR IRRITANTS

The lesser phenomena, logged in passing:

- The Insomniac Sandman — pours glorious sleep on the eyelids of the world; hasn't closed his own eyes in four hundred years. - The Hoarding Dragon — ignores gold. His mound is mismatched tupperware lids, half-used biros, and odd socks. He knows precisely where your missing glove is — but you will have to die for it. - The Directionless Will-o'-the-Wisp — entirely lost. It does not lure travellers into the swamp out of malice; it is simply hoping one of them knows the way out. - The Laryngitic Banshee — sits on fences croaking out death-omens that nobody can hear over the wind. - The Retrained Bridge Troll — brought to heel by the councils; in place of three deadly riddles he now administers a five-minute customer-satisfaction survey before letting you cross. - The Agoraphobic Bogeyman — terrified of the dark beneath the bed; stays in the wardrobe, which feels structurally sound. - The Forgetful Headless Horseman — did not lose his head in battle; merely misplaced it in the shrubbery, and is too embarrassed to ask.

# THE REGISTER OF FABLES (trimmed to taste)

1The Endless Gingerbread Man

Observation. He outran the old woman, the cow, and the fox — but never learned how to stop. Decades on, he is still sprinting across the high heather: leathery, stale, exhausted, going nowhere. Moralis. A habit that once saved your life can become the very thing that ends it.

2The Frog Prince Left Preheating

Observation. He waited three hundred years in the muck for true love's kiss. He is now a very old, excessively warty amphibian with catastrophic breath, and the prospect of royalty has lost its lustre. He has made his peace with the pond. Moralis. Some rescues arrive too late to be of any use. Build a life while you wait for the magic. Signpost. Whispered to be an ancestor of House Glubb.

3The Out-of-Tune Piper

Observation. His pipe runs a single semitone sharp. Instead of rats, his melodies summon a bewildered parade of municipal accountants, feral pigeons, and other frustrated woodwind players. Not one rodent has ever twitched. Moralis. A talent slightly miscalibrated is worse than no talent at all — it produces only confident disasters.

4Rumpelstiltskin's Amnesia

Observation. His whole existence rested on the unguessable nature of his name. The centuries passed, and the old imp forgot it himself. He can no longer close a deal, and sits on a chest of unredeemed IOUs he dares not act upon. Moralis. Build your whole identity on a secret and you vanish the day you forget it. (Adult volumes: the IOUs are for firstborns.)

5The Overtaxed Witch

Observation. She built the perfect confectionery trap — then the local economy collapsed. Now hungry village adults nibble her gingerbread siding and eat her window panes; she spends all her dark magic re-rendering the masonry and never catches a child. Moralis. Bait your trap with what the world desperately craves and you'll be eaten out of house and home — by the wrong prey.

6The Traumatised Mirror

Observation. A millennium of devastating, unvarnished truths to vain monarchs has left the glass broken in spirit. Approach it now and it merely mumbles: "You all look perfectly adequate. Please go away." Moralis. Honesty that no one asked for is a burden carried solely by the honest. Signpost. Resides far off in the capital, Murkminster — a cautionary tale of the big city.

7The Petty Genie

Observation. Three thousand years in a brass vessel did not make him wise; it made him spiteful. He grants every wish with malicious literalism, ruining the wielder's life while staying entirely blameless under cosmic law. Moralis. Absolute power in resentful hands is a curse on anyone foolish enough to ask for help.

8Goldilocks the Burglar

Observation. She never outgrew the thrill. A grown woman now, she compulsively breaks into cottages, samples the porridge, sleeps in the master bedding, and cannot fathom why the constabulary is involved. She considers herself a discerning houseguest. Moralis. Entitlement that is charming in a child curdles into a felony once they grow up.

9The Companionable Wolf

Observation. After the village tired of his lies and left him, the boy was entirely alone. Then the actual wolf arrived. With no one else to talk to, they got talking, found common ground, and now share a very small flat near the common. Moralis. Lie until the world leaves you behind, and the only company left is the danger you invented. (A rare warm one.)

10The Domesticated Dish

Observation. The dish did run away with the spoon. Twenty years on, the spoon is badly bent, the dish is chipped, and they spend their evenings bickering in a damp bedsit over who eloped with whom. Moralis. Running away together is never the end of the fairytale — only the prologue to the washing-up. Signpost. Cut from the staged world; survives only as a downstairs idiom.

11The Sycophantic Monkeys

Observation. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil — and so they have witnessed every assassination, theft, and coup in the realm and reported not one. They are the smuggest, most self-righteous accessories in the history of crime. Moralis. Studied innocence is complicity by another name. To see nothing and say nothing is to permit everything.

12The Unionised Elves

Observation. The little folk who once cobbled shoes by night have organised: back-pay, recognition, a percentage of the leather budget. The cobbler has discovered, too late, that his whole trade rested on a myth of free magical labour. Moralis. The invisible labour that props up your whole world will, one day, present its invoice. Signpost. Pure ideological fuel for House Turnip.

13The Hydrophobic Mermaid

Observation. Born to the great salt deeps, she is terrified of open water. She spends her life clinging to the shallow rock pools, shivering whenever the tide comes in. Moralis. Being built for a purpose is not the same as being suited to it.

14The Inspector Wolf

Observation. After the business with the three pigs he made a clean career pivot. He now walks the realm as a certified building inspector, condemning straw and sticks and issuing fines — bitter to the bone, because he was structurally correct all along and history cast him as the monster. Moralis. The chronicles remember the huffing and the puffing, never the accuracy of the structural critique. Signpost. Forever arguing with the architects of House Delve.

15The Retail Godmother

Observation. Her enchantments do not expire at midnight — they last precisely as long as the warranty on the receipt. The returns policy is famously brutal, and the carriage reverts to a pumpkin the moment the paperwork fades. Moralis. A grand gift with hidden clauses is no miracle — only a high-interest loan in a prettier dress.

16The Community Scarecrow

Observation. An utter failure at his appointed task. The crows do not fear him; they perch on his shoulders, nest in his straw coat, and hold town-hall meetings on the brim of his hat. He has reluctantly accepted his role as a beloved community centre. Moralis. Fail at your original purpose long enough and you may stumble into a far nobler one. (A warm one.)

17The Underfunded Reaper

Observation. Responsible for three full counties and downscaled to a sputtering moped, he is perpetually late and apologising to the dying: "Terribly sorry — traffic on the afterlife bypass was absolute murder." Moralis. Even the grand, inevitable certainties of the universe are subject to local budget cuts.

18The Content Bridge

Observation. The old troll was cursed to turn to stone — but over the centuries the curse became a vocation. He is a perfectly content, load-bearing archway now, and he dreads the setting sun, which turns him soft and purposeless again. Moralis. We make peace with our prisons, and true freedom can terrify the long-confined. Signpost. Claimed as property by both House Delve and House Quail.

19The Clerical Selkie — STRUCK FROM THE REGISTER

Ruled, on reflection, a single shrug ("it shrank in the wash") rather than a true fable — a tragedy of admin is not a tragedy with a Moralis. Removed from canon; survives only as an archived draft. (See the Addendum the Second.)

20The Desolate Wishing Well

Observation. For generations they threw in copper coins and desperate hopes. The well granted what it could until its workings rusted out under the sheer weight of human wanting. It can still hear the wishes whispered down the shaft. It simply has nothing left to give. Moralis. A vessel everyone pours their hopes into will run dry if no one ever thinks to refill it. Signpost. An ideological cousin to House Echo. Later revised (see Addendum the Second) — it has reopened as a bank, and is now a working scale-model of the Potato Standard itself.

21The Invasive Beanstalk

Observation. The magic beans worked entirely too well. The stalk never stopped; it is an ecological catastrophe now, choking the native flora of the whole valley. Jack is wanted for agricultural crimes, and the giant moved out months ago — the constant rustling was ruining his sleep. Moralis. The miraculous shortcut of today is the permanent infestation of tomorrow. Signpost. Investigated constantly by the muck-rakers of House Squelch.

22The Diagnosed Princess

Observation. Her extreme sensitivity to a single pea beneath twenty mattresses was hailed as proof of pure noble blood. Modern scholars have reassessed the case: not refinement but a severe L4–L5 slipped disc. She needed a physiotherapist, not a crown. Moralis. What one superstitious age celebrates as a divine sign, a more practical age correctly diagnoses.

# ADDENDUM THE SECOND — THE RACKETS

A later, wearier revision, in which certain entries are found to be running rackets, and others ruled beyond improvement.

A Further Note from the Arch-Mage. Reviewing my own catalogue by candlelight (the candle, of course, supplied on credit), I noticed a distinction I had missed. Some of these creatures merely suffer their condition. Others have turned it outward — made a trade of it, a hustle, a racket against the world. A creature whose misery points inward must be left as it is; to give it a business is to cure the very thing that makes it a fable. A creature whose misery points outward, however, may be sharpened into something far more dangerous and far more true. The Moralis survives in every case — a racket without a lesson is merely a heist.

A note appended later still, in a different ink, and plainly in a hurry. Two entries have been struck from what follows. I had made a cartel of the Tooth Fairy and a subscription of the Banshee, and I was pleased with both, and both were wrong — by my own rule, written at the top of this very page. Their misery points inward. It always did. I gave a business to a woman who is lonely and a service to a woman who cannot speak, and in doing so I cured the precise thing that made either of them worth recording. A scholar who cannot tell inward from outward has no business making a catalogue.

I am told the parish has known this for six hundred years, and puts broth on the step, and has never felt the need to publish.

## The Rackets (upgraded — misery turned outward)

The Desolate Wishing Well — now a BANK

The Revision. It can grant nothing, yet it takes the coins regardless, and issues "wish-IOUs" against hope it does not hold — lending out promises it cannot honour, forever one bad day from a run on the well. Moralis. An institution that has run out of what it promised will simply sell the promise instead — right up until the morning everyone asks for it at once. Signpost. No longer a mere cousin to House Echo: a working scale-model of the Potato Standard itself — read it as a warning to the whole realm.

The Banksy Medusa — "STON3" (new entry)

The Observation. She has reframed the curse entirely as an art practice. She does not murder; she commissions — anonymously, by night. The realm wakes to find a flawless marble figure has appeared in the town square: a tax-collector caught mid-sneer, a queue of citizens frozen mid-outrage. The critics have lost their minds over the mysterious sculptor "STON3," whose hyper-real work is praised for "capturing the very soul of the subject." Not one of them has deduced that the medium is people. For the first time in three thousand years she is celebrated for something other than the snakes, and she is quietly, enormously thrilled. Moralis. Give a curse a gallery, and it becomes a gift. It is all in the framing. Signpost. A recurring obstacle-as-character — any soul you require may have become the centrepiece of the spring exhibition, and the gallery will not release it. (An 18+ "dating-con" cut of this entry is filed separately.)

## Beyond Improvement (do NOT racket — here is why) - The Hoarding Dragon — leave as pure obsession. A racket makes him a shopkeeper with a sideline; the whole truth is that he cannot part with any of it. The pile is compulsion, not inventory. He is not gold-hungry — he is just a dragon, and that is the joke and the sorrow both. - The Community Scarecrow — leave passive. The Moralis is his passivity; he stumbled into a nobler purpose precisely because he never schemed for one. - The Hydrophobic Mermaid — leave as phobia. The comedy is the fear, not a trade. - The Companionable Wolf — leave alone. The warmth is the lie collapsing into unlikely friendship, not any scheme. - The Content Bridge — leave at peace. He has surrendered his ambition; a racket would betray the very contentment that is his point.

## Struck from the Register The Clerical Selkie. Ruled, on reflection, to be a single shrug ("it shrank in the wash") rather than a true fable. A tragedy of admin is not a tragedy with a Moralis. Removed.