Skip to content

Beasts of Burden

The other half of the bestiary: the creatures the Kingdom milks, herds, harnesses, saddles, shears, and rides. For the ones that eat you instead, see Monsters.

The Scale

Identical to the ladder on the Monsters page, reproduced here for use at the table. A Faerie is three and a half to four inches tall and Medium; the world runs at 18×, so one in-world foot is two-thirds of a real inch.

Size In-world Real-world
Fine up to 6 in up to ⅓ in (8 mm)
Diminutive 6 in – 1 ft ⅓ – ⅔ in (8 – 17 mm)
Tiny 1 – 2 ft ⅔ – 1⅓ in (17 – 34 mm)
Small 2 – 4 ft 1⅓ – 2⅔ in (34 – 68 mm)
Medium 4 – 8 ft 2⅔ – 5⅓ in (68 – 135 mm)
Large 8 – 16 ft 5⅓ – 10⅔ in (13.5 – 27 cm)
Huge 16 – 32 ft 10⅔ – 21⅓ in (27 – 54 cm)
Gargantuan 32 – 64 ft 21⅓ – 42⅔ in (54 – 108 cm)
Colossal 64 ft and up 42⅔ in and up (108 cm+)

Docile and Domesticated

Sorted small to large. "Bred" sizes exceed wild ones — Kingdom stock has been selected for bulk for a very long time.

Size Creature Real size Use
Fine Aphid 2 mm The cattle. Milked for honeydew; the Kingdom's oldest and largest herds.
Fine Springtail 2 mm Compost stock. Turns leaf litter into soil; kept in pits beneath every settlement.
Fine Thrips 2 mm Pollen-gatherers, worked in swarms over a single flowerhead.
Fine Booklouse 2 mm Archive vermin, tolerated and half-tamed. Eat the mold, not the page.
Fine Dust mite 1 mm Groomers. Kept on livestock hides and, discreetly, on noble ones.
Fine Woodlouse (young) 8 mm Weaned pillbug stock; kept in nursery pens.
Diminutive Silverfish 12 mm Scribes' companions and pantry stock. Docile to the point of listlessness.
Diminutive Mealworm, grub 12 mm Meat. The staple protein of every province that can't afford better.
Diminutive Pillbug 15–18 mm The herd animal. Meat, armor plate, and a slow, patient temperament. Bred stock reaches Tiny.
Diminutive Honeybee 13 mm Honey, wax, and the courier post. Kept in the Kingdom's oldest guild hives.
Tiny Cricket 20 mm Song and meat. Every Meadowlands farmstead keeps a singing stall.
Tiny Silkworm 20 mm Thread. The entire Faerie textile economy sits on this one animal.
Tiny Snail, lesser 20 mm Slow haulage over short distances. Shell harvested for lamps and cups.
Tiny Bumblebee (young) 20 mm Trainee flight stock, ridden by children and couriers-in-training.
Small Bumblebee 25 mm Air freight and the winged post. Placid, tireless, and warm to sit on.
Small Grasshopper 40 mm Courier mount. Fifty-foot bounds; the fastest legal way across open meadow.
Small Cicada 40 mm Signal-beast and meat. Bred for volume; a hedge-tower keeps three.
Small Garden snail 35 mm Draft. The ox of the Faerie Kingdom, and the reason nothing arrives on time.
Small Stag beetle 50 mm Armored draft and, in the Ninefold, ceremonial jousting. Bad-tempered but tractable.
Small Slug 50 mm Field labor and rendering stock. Nobody's favorite.
Small Rhinoceros beetle 60 mm Heavy draft. Pulls the nectar wagons of the Nine Roads.
Medium Dung beetle, scarab 30–50 mm Sanitation. The Eternal City would drown in a month without them.
Medium Hornworm caterpillar 80 mm The pig. Meat, fat, and hide, and it eats what nothing else will.
Medium Moth, lesser 40 mm body Night flight. Slower than a bee, quieter, and it does not mind the dark.
Medium Butterfly 50 mm body Show and ceremony. Ruinously expensive, structurally useless, universally coveted.
Medium Goliath beetle 100 mm Plow team. One beetle turns a field a Faerie crew would need a season for.
Medium Millipede 10–15 cm Caravan freight — a living wagon train, loaded segment by segment.
Large Earthworm 15 cm Tiller and tunnel-freight. The Deephearth' entire transit system.
Large Hercules beetle 17 cm Heavy haulage and siege work. Lifts many times a loaded cart.
Large Vole 10 cm Herd stock in the northern provinces. Wool-warm pelt, poor temper, good milk.
Large Mouse 8–10 cm body The horse. Saddle, harness, and cavalry. Everything you know about horses applies.
Large Atlas moth 25 cm span The air-carriage. Silent, enormous, and flown only at night.
Large Squirrel 25 cm Canopy cavalry. Greenmantle's entire military doctrine is built on these.
Huge Chipmunk 15 cm + tail Scout mount. Fast, arboreal, and constitutionally incapable of standing still.
Huge Giant snail 20 cm The true ox. Hauls stone. The shell is quarried after death, and it is a house.
Huge Box turtle 15 cm Mobile fortification. Slow enough to be a fortification.
Huge Giant millipede 30 cm Freight train. Thirty feet of cargo capacity and a placid disposition.
Huge Pigeon, dove 30–35 cm The long post, and passenger flight between provinces. Homes unerringly.
Huge Rabbit 40–50 cm Draft cattle and, for those who can afford them, heavy cavalry.
Huge Groundhog, marmot 50 cm Earthworks. One digs a fortification in a day. Stubborn, and knows its worth.
Gargantuan Tortoise 40 cm Moving ground. Villages are built on the largest; they cross a province a lifetime.
Gargantuan Duck 50–60 cm Water barge. The Manywaters runs on ducks and will not hear otherwise.
Colossal Tortoise, greater 60–80 cm Wandering settlement. Some carry shrines. Some have carried them for centuries.
Colossal Hare 60–75 cm The heaviest cavalry the Kingdom fields. Ruinous to keep, decisive when used.
Colossal Swan 1.2 m State transport. The Queen's barge is a swan and the swan has an opinion about it.
Colossal Deer 1.5–1.8 m Not domesticated. Simply harmless, and vast — a wandering mountain that grazes.
Colossal Sheep, goat, cow, horse 1 – 2.5 m Human stock. To a Faerie these are geography with a pulse, and mostly a hazard.

Running Them

  • Mount sizes work exactly as written. A Medium Faerie rides a Large mouse the way a Medium human rides a Large horse. The mouse is the horse. Everything downstream of that — barding, lances, cavalry charges, remounts — carries over without adjustment.
  • Draft beasts are the economy. Beetle teams pull the Nine Roads caravans; snails move stone; earthworms move everything underground. Interdicting a beetle team is a plot, not a fight.
  • Docile is not the same as tame. Every creature here is sapient. Most are cooperative because cooperation is survivable. Several provinces have had that assumption tested.
  • The herd knows its own name. Any campaign that takes the Kingdom's themes seriously will eventually put a player in the position of the drover, the ostler, or the beetle. That is the intended pressure point, and it should be played straight and without comment until someone at the table notices.

See Also

  • Monsters — the same ladder, for the creatures that hunt Faeries
  • The Low-Brood — the same creatures, as a caste rather than a commodity
  • The Heartland — the nectar caravans, and the ledgers that list their crews as equipment
  • Metamorphosis — the reason no one is entirely sure the ox was always an ox